16gb or 8gb

Muel · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:29

paradisiac said:
how do you know when your ram is full, other than performance in taskmanager?

Because your system slows down to a crawl as it starts to move everything to the page file.

kylew said:
4GB is fail, I struggle to get by with 4GB in day to day usage, like web browsing, it just feels sluggish.

4gb is definitely not fail at all. When I'm doing normal browsing, (MSN/Firefox/Winamp open), I don't even use 2gb. Maybe you just need to address how much stuff you have open rather than assuming that 4gb isn't enough?

paradisiac · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:32

Muel said:
Because your system slows down to a crawl as it starts to move everything to the page file.

but are there not other things to factor into why the machine might be running slow? if he has multi web browsers open, how do you know his broadband speed isnt the thing holding him back, and no mention of his cpu, maybe thats not a decent multi tasker?
my question was merely to establish how he came to the conclusion it was definatly 100% ram restricting him and not something else.

kylew · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:40

paradisiac said:
have you not answered your own original question there?
on idle you are using 40% of 8GB, so when multi tasking heavily like you say, then that will be nearer the 60-80% atleast, so yes, you would benifit from the extra 8GB.
or am i just missing something?

I wasn't asking any questions, have you confused me with the OP?

kylew · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:40

Muel said:
Because your system slows down to a crawl as it starts to move everything to the page file.

4gb is definitely not fail at all. When I'm doing normal browsing, (MSN/Firefox/Winamp open), I don't even use 2gb. Maybe you just need to address how much stuff you have open rather than assuming that 4gb isn't enough?

4GB is fail, FACT!

Why would I need to address how much stuff I have open, when I can just get more RAM? :confused:

paradisiac · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:43

kylew said:
I wasn't asking any questions, have you confused me with the OP?

oh yeh, sorry

Muel · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:46

paradisiac said:
but are there not other things to factor into why the machine might be running slow? if he has multi web browsers open, how do you know his broadband speed isnt the thing holding him back, and no mention of his cpu, maybe thats not a decent multi tasker?
my question was merely to establish how he came to the conclusion it was definatly 100% ram restricting him and not something else.

Just going off my own experience, when my system hits the page file, it literally slows to a crawl. Not talking a small drop in performance, it takes about 5-10 times as long to do anything. It's only happened once to me though. Took me half an hour to press ctrl-alt-del and end the games process.

kylew said:
4GB is fail, FACT!

Why would I need to address how much stuff I have open, when I can just get more RAM?

You can choose to deal with that problem however you like, if it was me and I was regularly exceeding 4gb, then of course I'd just buy more as well because I'm a nerd with a £1k+ computer, but that doesn't mean to say that 4gb can be classed as a failure...

paradisiac · 14 Feb 2011 at 15:50

kylew said:
4GB is fail, FACT!

Why would I need to address how much stuff I have open, when I can just get more RAM?

especially with it being soo cheap at the moment, best to stock up on it

gug54321 · 16 Feb 2011 at 15:19

i would probably stick with it and put it in, you will use it one day!

OCDStevo · 16 Feb 2011 at 17:29

From what you say you use the PC for, your 8GB is plenty... sell!

lolwithtim · 16 Feb 2011 at 17:59

8GB should definitely be enough for what you want to do. 16GB is overkill.

And I've been getting fine doing some web browsing, video editing and simple photoshopping on 2GB of DDR2 RAM, haven't had much trouble.

drifting · 17 Feb 2011 at 13:08

eddiew said:
I can easily make 8GB feel small with a 4000x3000 photoshop file with 50+ layers...

If you don't do that kind of thing, then 8 is probably sufficient for a while. Never heard of a game eating that much, and most photo editing (unless you're talking mahoosive megapixels) won't be particularly heavy either.

+1

I run multiple virtual machines so I can easily eat up more than 8GB here

Randomface74 · 17 Feb 2011 at 13:11

Assuming both kits are 1600 DDR3, sell the new kit as new (don't open it).

FrenchTart · 17 Feb 2011 at 23:58

kylew said:
4GB is fail, FACT!

Why would I need to address how much stuff I have open, when I can just get more RAM?

4GB is fail for you rather than for everyone. On my desktop PC I'm more than happy with 4GB. That said, I do offload a lot of tasks to my dedi server, which has 8GB of ram.

dustofnations · 18 Feb 2011 at 22:26

drifting said:
+1

I run multiple virtual machines so I can easily eat up more than 8GB here

Same situation, my machines have 8 but could do with a bit more, once you exhaust RAM availability and start cache thrashing, the system more-or-less grinds to a halt.

fk506 · 19 Feb 2011 at 09:38

How about 36Gb ?

dustofnations · 19 Feb 2011 at 17:41

fk506 said:
How about 36Gb ?

For a VM server, sure .. Amazon's EC2 is filled with machines with RAM of that quantity and above.

fk506 · 19 Feb 2011 at 21:05

I was thinking more for a home PC. Still, when you get a good deal, one doesn't say no

hlennie · 20 Feb 2011 at 08:07

Go with 16GB I have simple reason if I go 2011 end of the year then I can run it in quad channel as those kits are going to be expensive

:(Rhodri:) · 28 Feb 2011 at 10:23

Speaking of quad channel, are triple channel kits going to be phased out now? I have a 6gb dominator kit at the mo, and will probably want to add another in the future but can't afford to right now.

hlennie · 4 Mar 2011 at 17:27

I don't think so there are still people buying the x58 platform

Sell those dominators get quad vengeance set use 3 sticks then if u upgrade to sandy use all four in duel mode or all four on the 2011 in quad channel

Each stick 4GB just wish these kits had been out when I first brought my x58