4Gb the new 2Gb? FAO Vista x64 users

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Caporegime
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I'm interested to know whether people making the switch from 2Gb to 4Gb in Vista 64-bit edition have noticed much of a difference in the performance of applications Does it just gloss things over, or does it really make another leap in terms of speed and performance?

I have 2Gb with Vista 64 and am trying to decide whether to bother upgrading while memory prices are cheap. I game with things like CoD2 (yes, still!) and BF2 / 2142. I have now got a DDR3 compatible board so maybe I'd be better advised to wait for DDR3 to get cheaper before I go to 4Gb?
 
I don't see the point in getting another 2GB of ram until it is actually needed in games, which it won't for a while yet.

Anyway I've read that the performance difference is minimal to non-existant in some programs, Photoshop and other rendering applications can make use of it though.
 
Vista x64 precaches a lot into ram. Mine is sitting here with 1.6Gb used out of my 4gb. With the likes of 2142 it is a bonus, but since ive never tried it with 2gb, i cant really give a comparison.
 
PhillyDee said:
Vista x64 precaches a lot into ram. Mine is sitting here with 1.6Gb used out of my 4gb. With the likes of 2142 it is a bonus, but since ive never tried it with 2gb, i cant really give a comparison.
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Maybe a boost of FPS or loading time perhaps but I can run 2142 with all set to high and 4xAA/16AF @1440x900 perfectly. (2GB)

I'm just gonna wait for it to come down tbh, I don't even think Crysis will require 3/4GB.
 
I had Corsair 4GiG Dominator, it wont clock worth a %&@£, I cant tighten the timings to 4-4-4-12 or raise mhz more than 20mhz, the 2GiG modules are too new, it was same when 1GiG modules came out when 512GiG modules was the in thing.
I think this will improve over time.
 
helmutcheese said:
I had Corsair 4GiG Dominator, it wont clock worth a %&@£, I cant tighten the timings to 4-4-4-12 or raise mhz more than 20mhz, the 2GiG modules are too new, it was same when 1GiG modules came out when 512GiG modules was the in thing.
I think this will improve over time.
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Im currently running my mushkin at 4-3-3-10 and about 950.
 
Someone here did rec them ones you got to me and say the above ones I got were bad for OC but it took so long to get regged here that I had them by then :(.
 
Hmm well I'm only playing SupCom and Oblivion atm, I have a dual head TV tuner and a TV pluged in to the ATI as well.

So i put on the TV + recording another program in the background, had some general stuff open like FF. Loaded up SupCom on a large map and memory usage went up to 2.3GB. I can alt-tab in and out with no load or slowdown (why I got 4gb). Kinda suprised with the CPU usage, CPU 1 was at 50%, CPU 2 at 30% while playing SupCom (thought it was a CPU hog :) ).

It just smooths things out, makes multi-tasking with a fast CP very nice but I don't think there are any games out that will get a FPS boost from it.
 
I found that it made a noticable difference to the general smoothness of apps and the OS itself.
Looking at the performance in Task Manager I noticed that Vista went from using about 500MB RAM when idle to about 1GB when I added the other 2GB.
Without a doubt it's Vista's 'Super-fetch' at work.
 
Running with 4gb of the Geil ddr2, and i've noticed my ram usage in BF2 has come to 2.3gb, whilst DiRT has used upto 2.6gb.

Had no bad affects by having 4gb, so may as well just do it!
 
Went from 2GB Ballistix (2 x 1) to 4GB Ballistix (4 x 1) on a Vista 64bit setup, and have to say there is a difference, large programs open that bit faster, although Vista ran smoothly on 2GB, on 4 it really purrs along (not a very "technical" comment, but I'm sure you get the point), basically there is a difference, and it is noticeable. :)
 
I recently added another 2GB of Corsair totalling 4GB on Vista 64.

Everything is a lot smoother and Lord of The Rings Online performs much better. I can even ALT TAB out of the game and open IE instantly without the hard disk grinding away to find virtual memory.
Definately worth it especially at todays prices.
 
helmutcheese said:
Someone here did rec them ones you got to me and say the above ones I got were bad for OC but it took so long to get regged here that I had them by then :(.
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Have you tried putting the voltage to the RAM up slightly? :)
 
Went as high as 2.4v, Crosshair can go way more, could not even boot out of the bios screens PC locked, I can only say they dont OC well just as the peep here told me but just too late. :(
I build customers machines with normal XMS2 and it does 1000mhz at its 4-4-4-12 timings with 2.1v. :)

Since I aint using my free copy of Vista till SP1, I will get the 2gig 4-4-4-12 kit and OC it to 1000 (going by comments left in store section) and will run XP64 Pro which 2GiG is plenty for high end gaming, only Vista needs 4GiG for same use, then in time better 4GiG kits will appear as it becomes mainstream.
 
Its def worth it, coh with ultra textures fills up 1.4 gb alone, add the usual vista ram (non cache) usage of 600 mb and u have 2 full gb's used, except that vista's cacheing makes use of the full 4 gb so it caches even the lesser used things so they start intstantly, wich is nice imo.


Only hint of me is to use matched ram, I used to use 4 gb of mixed stuff, and it was 35% slower as 2x1gb matched ( winrar benchmark), also scored just 5.1 with 4 gb mixed while 5.9 with 2x1 matched, so get matched ram :p (or at least ram with same rated speeds) .
 
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