4Gb RAM in an Asus Striker?

Burki · 13 Mar 2007 at 13:11

Hi
I just bought an asus striker extreme motherboard and have 2x1Gb sticks of Corsair 8500 Dominator memory for it. But, i got such a good price on the ram that I have considered getting another 2 sticks.

Has anyone got experience of using 4Gb...especially on the striker mobo?

Any issues I should be aware of?

Cheers :confused:

PhillyDee · 13 Mar 2007 at 13:19

1Gb - 2Gb you can see the difference.
2Gb - 4Gb theres not much difference, dont expect miracles. The only game which uses a lot is BF2142. Even Sup Com only uses about 1.2Gb Ram.

Burki · 13 Mar 2007 at 15:15

PhillyDee said:
1Gb - 2Gb you can see the difference.
2Gb - 4Gb theres not much difference, dont expect miracles. The only game which uses a lot is BF2142. Even Sup Com only uses about 1.2Gb Ram.

Thanks for that PhillyDee...you think running Vista would be considerably better with 4Gb? (I know Vista isn't ideal for a gaming machine yet, but I'm looking at a little future proofing

)

iMacMart · 13 Mar 2007 at 17:28

Not sure but I think it's only 64bit Vista that see's 4gb RAM?

I may be wrong though, just a thought.

masslac · 13 Mar 2007 at 18:29

tweakinfreak said:
Not sure but I think it's only 64bit Vista that see's 4gb RAM?

I may be wrong though, just a thought.

Yeah, XP can only handle 2GB. Even so, you do NOT need 4GB, even with Vista.

drak3 · 13 Mar 2007 at 18:41

For now is better to spend double the money on quality of 2GB instead of 4GB. My thoughts!

gnr26 · 13 Mar 2007 at 19:07

There is a command to get Vista 32bit to see 4GB of ram. bootcfg /raw "\pae" /A /ID 1

PhillyDee · 13 Mar 2007 at 23:08

My XP pro 32bit uses 3.5Gb RAM, thats it. Thats all it can see. Theres not a lot can use that amount. Ive never even seen vista yet.

Flanno · 14 Mar 2007 at 19:23

tweakinfreak said:
Not sure but I think it's only 64bit Vista that see's 4gb RAM?

I may be wrong though, just a thought.

Vista32 can address up to 4gigs total ram, whether this is system ram or gpu ram or some other type of ram. This is the thing people should remember.

Usually you only see 3070+ meg in system properties (at least on Intel chipsets), maybe a little more depending on what video card you have. This is due to the OS having to deal with other devices which either have memory themselves and vista has to address them (video cards) or devices which eat memory as vista has to use resources to manage them (onboard gpu's, audio, other pci devices). Plus there is a certain amount of memory taken up by the kernel. So what you are seeing in the system properties is the total amount of usable memory that apps can use. This is not advertised at all really. How much you see will vary from chipset to chipset.

Trying to map the additional memory so that apps can use it (like the poster suggested below) is not recommended for Vista and can lead to unexpected behaviour to say the least.

chesterstu · 14 Mar 2007 at 19:27

Not sure if this has been posted in another thread but this explains it nicely and there is a lively debate at the bottom about it with some good tips

Flanno · 14 Mar 2007 at 19:35

Yep...memory mapped i/o. Most of that 4th stick of memory is not even accessible.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

"...if you have a video card that has 256 MB of onboard memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system. "

And very importantly :

"to avoid potential driver compatibility issues, the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista limit the total available memory to 3.12 GB. If a computer has many installed devices, the available memory may be reduced to 3 GB or less. However, the maximum memory available in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista is typically 3.12 GB."

I can only see 3.07GB myself.

Yellowbeard · 15 Mar 2007 at 13:15

I have not run 4gb on a Striker yet as I don't have the board at my lab. However, I am running 4gb on a P5N-E SLI for gaming purposes. I am running 32b XP so, I too do not get much of that last full gb of memory. However, I do notice the difference between 2gb and 4gb playing BF2. Everything I do while gaming is smoother, maps load faster, etc. If you are a heavy gamer, 4gb will help over 2gb even with 32b OS limitations. And, it will improve when/if you move to a 64b OS.

Tombo · 15 Mar 2007 at 13:50

masslac said:
Yeah, XP can only handle 2GB. Even so, you do NOT need 4GB, even with Vista.

It's 3 isn't it for 32 bit and 4+ for 64.

Yellowbeard · 15 Mar 2007 at 13:53

Tombo said:
It's 3 isn't it for 32 bit and 4+ for 64.

Any 32bit version of the OS, XP or Vista, will "manage" 4gb of memory . However, with all the listed variations above, it averages out to approximately 2.7gb to 3.2gb depending. So, there is some gain to be made with 4gb even on a 32bit OS.

Burki · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:02

Yellowbeard said:
I have not run 4gb on a Striker yet as I don't have the board at my lab. However, I am running 4gb on a P5N-E SLI for gaming purposes. I am running 32b XP so, I too do not get much of that last full gb of memory. However, I do notice the difference between 2gb and 4gb playing BF2. Everything I do while gaming is smoother, maps load faster, etc. If you are a heavy gamer, 4gb will help over 2gb even with 32b OS limitations. And, it will improve when/if you move to a 64b OS.

That's the real issue isn't it - not so much about what the system 'sees', but what's the difference if any when running applications.

All of the responses above have been really helpful and very informative - thanks for the feedback all!

masslac · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:44

Yellowbeard said:
Any 32bit version of the OS, XP or Vista, will "manage" 4gb of memory . However, with all the listed variations above, it averages out to approximately 2.7gb to 3.2gb depending. So, there is some gain to be made with 4gb even on a 32bit OS.

Considering there are VERY few apps which will actually use it, there really isn't.

Yellowbeard · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:51

masslac said:
Considering there are VERY few apps which will actually use it, there really isn't.

You are absolutely correct and there are very few desktop users that truly "need" 4gb. However, in the specific case of gaming, 4gb will outperform 2gb on some of the newer games. In my testing 3.2gb outperforms 2gb. This will increase greatly over the next 12 months. And, I assume that a majority of users building with Strikers are building to play games.

andyr · 15 Mar 2007 at 22:27

Hi , i am thinking about getting another 2 gig of cellshock but might not be for a few weeks yet so if you go ahead and try 4 gig can you post how it goes

Stolly · 19 Mar 2007 at 20:24

Yellowbeard said:
I have not run 4gb on a Striker yet as I don't have the board at my lab. However, I am running 4gb on a P5N-E SLI for gaming purposes. I am running 32b XP so, I too do not get much of that last full gb of memory. However, I do notice the difference between 2gb and 4gb playing BF2. Everything I do while gaming is smoother, maps load faster, etc. If you are a heavy gamer, 4gb will help over 2gb even with 32b OS limitations. And, it will improve when/if you move to a 64b OS.

You'd never expect an employee of Corsair to advocate loading up with memory now would you ?

Flanno · 19 Mar 2007 at 21:14

Out of interest if you load up with 4gigs ddr2 800mhz on the Striker will it default it back to 667mhz ?