8gb rather than 4gb?

Thekwango · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:07

i'm guessing everyone is gonna say no, but would i be likely to see any noticeable gains going from 4gb to 8gb?

only asking cause i see the ram i already have on offer slightly cheaper than what i paid a few months ago and was thinking of shedding a **** dollars seeing as they seem a good price, tho only if it'd be worth it??

Cheers

Subliminal Aura · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:27

' noticeable gains ' in what exactly ?

What's your average memory usage during a session ?

Nyoron · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:33

Don't think you'd see any noticeable gains in performance unless you are already using near the 4gb limit.

Thekwango · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:37

1.2-1.4 gb, sometimes upto 2.6 on rare occasions, depending what i'm doing. sorry wasn't very specific with the 'noticeable gains' question, really just mean in every day useage, downloading, gaming, movies, music etc.

in reality i'm just looking for an excuse to buy them, or someone to talk me out of it!

Psypher5 · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:37

No. Probably not..

darkwildchild79 · 8 Sep 2010 at 20:49

it all depends, my system has 8gb because it was cheap to buy at the *bay and also i have a lot of items running in the background, at the end of the day. It all depends on your OS and why you need it for, if you got the money it is always good to get a bit more memory as a future proof since windows is always hungry

Psypher5 · 8 Sep 2010 at 21:03

windows is efficient* I think you'll find.

if you dont use 4gig save the money. Simple as. IT wont make a spit of difference to you.

Thekwango · 8 Sep 2010 at 21:42

Psypher5 said:
windows is efficient* I think you'll find.

if you dont use 4gig save the money. Simple as. IT wont make a spit of difference to you.

aye you're probably right

i guess it'd serve me better to throw the 80 notes towards a better graphics card or summat else anyway. plus after looking inside the case i'd have to take the dremmel to at least some of the heatsink fans to get the all four sticks and the cpu cooler mounted. ah well....

sturmtruppe · 8 Sep 2010 at 21:55

I went for an extra 8gb and tbh I hardly ever hit 3 gb of total usage. I guess i just went for it because I could.

Although, I can comfortably run as much as I want to without worrying about going into page file usage - which is nice!

ishoeyi · 8 Sep 2010 at 22:43

gaming and internet no

if for ppl who need it for their job as in running programs like CAD etc etc then hell yes

zoomee · 9 Sep 2010 at 04:13

I found this usefull in making my decision mate

http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN902_8GB_or_More_of_System_RAM.pdf

Also note games like the new Stalker are already using a FULL 4Gb - so as time passes you may find more RAM is better.

Only downside is that if your overclocking - using all four banks of memory can affect your CPU's overclocking abilities.

hth.

thepeganator · 9 Sep 2010 at 04:29

I have 8gb in my main pc, means I don't worry too much about random processes, makes things seem quite snappy.

Did only cost me £40 for the extra 4gb though.

Stonedofmoo · 9 Sep 2010 at 08:14

Aye exactly. I got 8Gb when it was dirt cheap and have never regretted it since. Can't say I've noticed much difference compared to 4Gb, but it does mean I don't have to worry about what apps preload these days.

Subliminal Aura · 9 Sep 2010 at 08:15

zoomee said:
http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN902_8GB_or_More_of_System_RAM.pdf

Nice marketing blurb there, it even made me feel like going for an upgrade !

Then I saw this statement ...

" Perhaps a Bloomfield Core i7 PC with 12GB of triple-channel memory would be a worthwhile upgrade! "

:rolleyes:

Loosely translates to ...

" Perhaps you could help our poor sales and buy some more RAM - PLEASE " "

EDIT: But for the record 4gb should be the new minimum - For me personally I need 8 gig due to running virtual machines and what not. And it's always nice to have a little overhead especially on the rare occasion you need to use Photoshop or some form of Video editing.

MooMoo444 · 9 Sep 2010 at 09:22

If you game, light apps - not worth it.

If you Photoshop/Design/Render/Earn money with your computer - very much worth it.

fezster · 9 Sep 2010 at 09:41

I have multiple users on my PC, and find if more than one logged in, it can significantly slow down when I try to use it. But with ram prices the way they are, cant bring myself to upgrade to 8gb just yet.

Muel · 9 Sep 2010 at 10:34

I was thinking of going to 8gb when I built this computer, my current kit was £53. 10 months later, it's £87.

There's some price fixing thing going on apparantly, one company somewhere makes the ram chips themselves which other manufactureres buy then put on their DIMMs, and because the people making the ram chips have realised they supply like 90% of the market, they're ramping the price up.

Or so I've been told, I don't have a proper source for that.

Gaming is worth going to 8gb IMO in certain very specific situation. Crysis managed to hit my page file, and I'm told GTA4 can too.

It won't add any performance at all unless you hit the page file, and I believe it starts being utilised around 3.8gb of usage, but doesn't really impact performance until you're using the full 4gb.

I've been looking out for another 4gb on ebay for months, but I will not pay more for second hand ram than I paid for new ram 10 months ago.

ThomasTheTankEngine · 9 Sep 2010 at 15:24

Chances are you won't be able to clock your CPU as high if all the ram slots are full.

Diggsy · 9 Sep 2010 at 16:22

jimbob27 said:
Chances are you won't be able to clock your CPU as high if all the ram slots are full.

Not necessarily, I upgraded to 8gb and after a little tinkering I am still running at 3.6ghz.

But yes, it does put a lot more strain on the memory controller.

bledd · 9 Sep 2010 at 16:54

I had 8gb for about a year, bought a media centre and took 4 from my gaming pc to put in that.

Didn't notice the drop in performance, so stayed at 4