2gb vs 4gb

Unbreakable

Unbreakable

Unbreakable

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Going to be building a new machice for a mate based around an i3 and h55 with intergrated graphics. It will mainly be used for internet and general PC use along with the occasional photo editing.

My question is would it be worth using 4gb of ram or would 2gb be enough?
 
With the price of ram, i would stick with 2GB, i have 4gb, i barely use that for gaming, and still have not found any real use for it in photoshop, well till ridiculous resolutions anyway.
 
I barely ever break 1.2GB even when gaming. I usually do when playing Crysis but even then it's a lot lower than 2GB.
 
Unbreakable said:
Going to be building a new machice for a mate based around an i3 and h55 with intergrated graphics. It will mainly be used for internet and general PC use along with the occasional photo editing.

My question is would it be worth using 4gb of ram or would 2gb be enough?
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I would assume by 'occaisional photo editing' it's likely to be minor edits, in which case 2GB would be enough if dealing with low to medium resolution jpegs. However, if you simply mean general editing but not too often, when dealing with medium to larger resolution RAW and TIFF files you will certainly be wanting 4GB.

For general PC use 2GB is fine, but providing the extra expense is of no real bother to the customer I would certainly recommend 4GB, if only for a little longevity.
 
IMHO, optimal for 32bit windows might as well stick with 2GB, as the gains from 2 - 3.25(3.5ish) are less than you would expect as 32bit windows still has a 2gb wall in "userspace".

64bit windows, especially with ATI drivers can be a bit of a memory hog, and 6GB seems to be around the sweet spot for performace v value for money.
 
Corasik said:
64bit windows, especially with ATI drivers can be a bit of a memory hog, and 6GB seems to be around the sweet spot for performace v value for money.
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Is this in an i7 system where you are running triple channel memory?
i3 will be dual channel memory iirc, so 2*2 would seem reasonable, as you polulate dual channels.

I have an i7 system, 64 bit windows 7, and currently using 2.3GB of ram when idle, using IE, yahoo msn, and not a lot else. granted i have 12GB, so never tend to bump into memory issues.
 
im not sure if this is correct, but doesnt 64-bit windows use twice the amount of ram as 32-bit windows anyway? So 2gb on 32bit is effective the same - performance wise - as 4 on 64bit?
 
No, that isn't correct.

64-bit windows does use slightly more memory (for storing memory addresses) but nowhere near twice as much as 32bit.
 
Another reason for getting 4GB now is that it's matched.

Over the years i've ran systems with different memory (due to later upgrades), and had various random (but rare) memory problems. All my systems I build now I fit memory for life of machine.

I use 8GB myself on XP 64, but have a lot of applications open at once.
 
I ran Windows 7 x64 with 2GB for a while before going back to 4GB, difference very noticeable between the two. Playing some games exceeded 2GB easily, slowing them down due to increased use of page file.
 
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