4gb Kits

gamesreviewer · 11 Oct 2006 at 15:39

Hi,
was wondering when 4gb kits would be available, i.e 2gb DDR2 sticks. Most boards support 8 gb in 4 slots so they must be available at some point. I've searched the interweb and can't find much info.

thanks
Richard

Stelly · 11 Oct 2006 at 15:54

Hi there,

The reason that 4Gb kits are not currently on the market is that Windows Xp does not support 4Gb of memory so its pretty much pointless untill Vista is out.. and then Vista is pretty pointless untill people start programming games in DX10... ah well

Stelly

Minstadave · 11 Oct 2006 at 16:11

Seen the odd early 2x2GB kit being tested, they are coming

gamesreviewer · 11 Oct 2006 at 22:03

Do you think the 2x2gb will perform better than 4x1gb. I'm hoping so. Suspect the price will be high when they first hit the shops. Hoping to upgrade my computer soon, and don't really want 2gb of ram as it's the norm now. Won't be long until Vista comes along and gobbles it all up.
Richard

Minstadave · 11 Oct 2006 at 22:05

gamesreviewer said:
Do you think the 2x2gb will perform better than 4x1gb. I'm hoping so. Suspect the price will be high when they first hit the shops. Hoping to upgrade my computer soon, and don't really want 2gb of ram as it's the norm now. Won't be long until Vista comes along and gobbles it all up.
Richard

4GB kits will be horribly overpriced for a fair while yet, I can't see why they'd offer much performance increase too (apart from the usual AMD 1T/2T limitations), as the early modules will probably clock poorly as the tech is new.

4 modules get a slight performance boost as a higher level of bank interleave can be used.

Cyber-Mav · 12 Oct 2006 at 01:33

Stelly said:
Hi there,

The reason that 4Gb kits are not currently on the market is that Windows Xp does not support 4Gb of memory so its pretty much pointless untill Vista is out.. and then Vista is pretty pointless untill people start programming games in DX10... ah well

Stelly

what you on about mate? im running xp x64 and it easily supports more than 4 gig of ram. :confused:

Minstadave · 12 Oct 2006 at 09:36

Cyber-Mav said:
what you on about mate? im running xp x64 and it easily supports more than 4 gig of ram.

He means 32bit XP which most people are running. It won't recognise the full 4GB of RAM.

Skiddley · 12 Oct 2006 at 13:07

Stelly said:
Hi there,

The reason that 4Gb kits are not currently on the market is that Windows Xp does not support 4Gb of memory so its pretty much pointless untill Vista is out.. and then Vista is pretty pointless untill people start programming games in DX10... ah well

Stelly

BS. I'm running 4GB on this very beast and it's running XP.

Minstadave · 12 Oct 2006 at 13:09

Skiddley said:
BS. I'm running 4GB on this very beast and it's running XP.

It will run fine but 32bit Windows XP will only recognise about 3.25GBs of it.

Skiddley · 12 Oct 2006 at 13:11

He never said anything about 64-bit

And I believe with current versions of 32-bit XP Pro, 3Gb is now available to applications and 1Gb is available to kernel and executive components. So I guess it depends on how you use your system.

Macro · 14 Oct 2006 at 16:33

Time for me to ask a daft question.

I seem to remember AMD X2 939 systems had a problem with the memory controller(?) if you used 4 sticks of RAM. I seem to remember (as mentioned in this thread) you ended up having to run at 2T which was slower.

For a Conroe board/CPU is there the same problem, or could you use 4 x 1GB DD2 sticks with no slow problems compared to only using 2 x (if you see what i mean.

I'm thinking of XP/Vista 32 initialy but possibly Vista 64 later.

Minstadave · 14 Oct 2006 at 16:34

Athanor said:
For a Conroe board/CPU is there the same problem, or could you use 4 x 1GB DD2 sticks with no slow problems compared to only using 2 x (if you see what i mean.

I'm thinking of XP/Vista 32 initialy but possibly Vista 64 later.

I seem to remember that conroe runs 2T all the time, atleast with any kind of overclocking potential.

Macro · 14 Oct 2006 at 16:36

Ta... So in theory 4 sticks will work the same or quicker than 2

On a seperate question am I right in saying that there is almost no reason go for 8500 RAM at the moment as 6400 is just as quick day to day (i'm vaguely planning on a new system based around a E6600 which I would like to O/C to X6800 speeds (on air, I'm a n00b at this

)

Minstadave · 14 Oct 2006 at 16:36

Athanor said:
Ta... So in theory 4 sticks will work the same or quicker than 2

On a seperate question am I right in saying that there is almost no reason go for 8500 RAM at the moment as 6400 is just as quick day to day (i'm vaguely planning on a new system based around a E6600 which I would like to O/C to X6800 speeds (on air, I'm a n00b at this )

Yup to the first one.

Any unless you're pushing for really high clocks PC8500 is a total waste of money.

Macro · 14 Oct 2006 at 16:40

Thanks

Andy298 · 15 Oct 2006 at 10:05

Minstadave said:
It will run fine but 32bit Windows XP will only recognise about 3.25GBs of it.

Max memory Windows XP supports is 4GB. This is taking the page file into account also so if you have 4GB physical and say 1GB virtual then yes Windows will only see 3GB.