8gb worth it (over 4gb)

[Fire Wizard]

If anyone is interested in this, you may find this article here quite interesting. You may also find this article here (PDF file) written by Corsair which shows the performance difference between 2GB and 4GB. Admittedly, it has already been posted but for those who haven't seen it yet, it's a good read.

 

[Johnnytoxic]

I find with 6gb ram my hard drive is not going as crazy all the time when doing the simplist of tasks than with 4gb.

 

[platinum87]

if no1 has suggested

RAMDISK.

sure mabye the extra 4GB would be slightly pointless, but make a 4GB virtual ram drive. and use it to do HDD intensive tasks, like run a game from it?

 

[Phil2008]

Its like the q6600 most ppl wont benefit from it but some will, like Ive got 8gb, Iim not benefiting from it at all yet. It just sounds better..lol. I got my extra 4gb of mem purely cos I thought in a yrs time when I need more mem ddr2 would be well expensive like ddr1 was, but I having my doubts now cos I bought my extra 4gb in may, and the prices still remans the same..

 

[bitterSTAR]

Windows is currently using 3.52GB on my system and i only have Winamp, MSN, and Firefox open. SQL Server is using half a gig, Winamp is using 170MB, Firefox is using 140MB, MSN is using 40MB, Kaspersky 20MB, and the rest is mostly Windows services and little bits and pieces.

 

[Talrinys]

With this week only, its only £63 to upgrade to 8gb, does it make windows nippier all round, or is there no real gains (using vista 64).

It will make it nippier all round, there is no doubt about it No gains in games though.

 

[Talrinys]

Windows is currently using 3.52GB on my system and i only have Winamp, MSN, and Firefox open. SQL Server is using half a gig, Winamp is using 170MB, Firefox is using 140MB, MSN is using 40MB, Kaspersky 20MB, and the rest is mostly Windows services and little bits and pieces.

Rest will be superfetch doing it's job i'd guess

 

[bitterSTAR]

Rest will be superfetch doing it's job i'd guess

No, Windows doesn't include superfetch in the usage stats. Instead, Windows monitors superfetch seperately and calls it "cached memory". The rest of the memory left available, in my case approx 4.5GB out of 8GB is cached. The 3.52GB that I said Windows is currently using on my system, is definitely not superfetch.



Anyways, I've just restarted my computer and the memory usage is now at 2.05GB, down from 3.52GB... interesting!

 

[PishY]

ive got 8gb, but got it cheap in america, so thought why not!

 

[MikeHunt79]

if no1 has suggested

RAMDISK.

sure mabye the extra 4GB would be slightly pointless, but make a 4GB virtual ram drive. and use it to do HDD intensive tasks, like run a game from it?

Sounds good to me, I'm running 8 gig, my windows directory is only 1 gig. How do I do this?

 

[platinum87]

Sounds good to me, I'm running 8 gig, my windows directory is only 1 gig. How do I do this?

http://www.superspeed.com/ramdisk.php

search that on google...

i have not got enough space to run BF2 (like 5GB :S) i did make a 1gb ram disk and run some winrar benchmark...

(FYI, winrar benchmark is not affected by HDD), extraction of 350mb was 2 seconds, rather than 8 on rubbish sata disk


anyway to run the game you just copy the entire folder and others just install on the ramdisk.. (for HL2 you dont need to install the game, ive run it from a DVD without installing anything)

 

[eyetrip]

Decided to buy upgrade to 8GB. Had the choice of settings up 2nd computer for development/video editing/photo editing/office apps, and using current for gaming and stripping everything else out, or just maxing out my current pc and not having to worry about anything slowing it down.

This, along with sticking my quad in tonight will hopefully be my last upgrade for about a year, maybe more, with the exception of maybe upgrading graphics around early next year.

Have been curious to see what the difference is like going from 4gb to 8gb for a while now - hopefully it will pay off

 

[beefybarn]

Can you let me know what difference it makes ffallic as i might join the 8gb club as mem is so cheap now.

 

[eyetrip]

Well, as expected it does not make a huge diff. Certainly with the q6600 and 8 gigs, everything is very responsive, and when you got loads of apps doing stuff, you really don't notice it.

Might just be me, but I think Crysis runs slightly better - more steady frame rate I mean.

Hardly spent much time on it tonight, so will give a better update over the weekend.

 

[helmutcheese]

HDD used less ? (should be and that's only a good thing).

 

[Cupra]

HDD used less ? (should be and that's only a good thing).

yep i have hardly any hdd usage now (obvious loading and stuff) my pc feels quicker with 8gb

 

[beefybarn]

Well ordered my extra 4gb today so will test over the weekend and see if theres any difference.

 

[manveruppd]

Regarding the RAMdisk idea, would it be a good idea to run your pagefile off it? As in, not have a HDD-based swap file at all, just allocate half your RAM (say 4GB if you've got 8 total) to a RAMdisk and tell Windows to put pagefile.sys on that?

Yeah, I know it's reccomended to allocate at least 1.5x the amount of physical RAM for your pagefile, but if one were willing to sacrifice a bit of stability for a massive speed increase wouldn't this be an efficient and reasonably cheap way of doing it?

 

[mattross]

I'd love 8GB, my VMware images would really benefit. Stuck with XP 32-bit though so maybe when I next upgrade I'll go Server 2008 64-bit and get the RAM then.

 

[Phemo]

What's the point of using a RAM drive to store the pagefile on? The only time Windows performance should suffer due to the pagefile is if you're running low on RAM anyway, so it's a waste of time.