4gig ram
- Thread starter Voltage
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Seriously at the moment, the answer for me personally is no. You can optimise windows a lot to remove a lot of what is actually being reserved.
64-bit editions of Windows can utilise the full 4gb, so unless you are using either of those I would stick with 2gb for now
Badass had a great guide here for tweaking Windows
64-bit editions of Windows can utilise the full 4gb, so unless you are using either of those I would stick with 2gb for now
Badass had a great guide here for tweaking Windows
With Vista 64-bit you will find a significant performance improvement, particularly in games if you have graphics cards with large memories.
It is easy to forget that in order for your CPU to address your video card memory, that video card memory has to be copied to your RAM first. So, anyone running a pair of 768Mb 8800GTX's in SLi would see more benefit under certain circumstances (the CPU test in 3DMark '06). Likewise, the more data that can be RAM cached off the HDD, the faster you can access it, that's much more obvious.
Do also remember that 4 sticks of RAM will mean you have to run at 2T (assuming your motherboard supports that level of timing control) which will reduce the performance of fast RAM.
It is easy to forget that in order for your CPU to address your video card memory, that video card memory has to be copied to your RAM first. So, anyone running a pair of 768Mb 8800GTX's in SLi would see more benefit under certain circumstances (the CPU test in 3DMark '06). Likewise, the more data that can be RAM cached off the HDD, the faster you can access it, that's much more obvious.
Do also remember that 4 sticks of RAM will mean you have to run at 2T (assuming your motherboard supports that level of timing control) which will reduce the performance of fast RAM.
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speaking of the 2T command rate i wonder how long it will take until the performance ram manufactures start making 2 x 2gig kits. already seen them for sale by crucial and a few others im sure. also believe they are ddr400 only
Another question...would 4x1gig sticks with a conroe give less performance? Is dual mode disabled with 4 installed? Not that worried about timings/T rating as they dont really make *that* much of a performance difference.
Is dual mode even that important in Intel chips? It gave a farely noticeable improvement on A64 I remember.
Found more paired 4gig sets from Team aswell, not that good timings wise but like I said, its negligible in performance so some reviews have you believe...Two matched 2Gb PC2-6400 modules, rated CL6 (6-6-6-18) at 800MHz.
Also doesnt look like much overclocking potential.
Is dual mode even that important in Intel chips? It gave a farely noticeable improvement on A64 I remember.
Found more paired 4gig sets from Team aswell, not that good timings wise but like I said, its negligible in performance so some reviews have you believe...Two matched 2Gb PC2-6400 modules, rated CL6 (6-6-6-18) at 800MHz.
Also doesnt look like much overclocking potential.
Confusion said:
For a decent gaming performance in Vista, 2GB is the absolute minimum.
It's never worth having the minimum - that's why I went for 4gig.
Games that spring to mind are the likes of battlefield - in XP you need 2gig for that to run properly - so in vista I'd say you'll need more.
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tastyweat said:
Agreed. Running Vista it was using 520MB+ just idle, no apps running and just bare minimum processes!
I can see 4GB been the standard very soon for enthusiast machines.
Confusion said:
4Gb won't give you more performance... adding more memory than can be used does not make things faster.
4GB can only be addressed by 64-bit operating systems, so as long as you are running 32-bit then kiss goodbye to the idea and necessity of 4GB.
