8GB..
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Because in the real world, 8Gb is pointless. The £60-£110 you'll spend on a 4Gb upgrade will buy a faster/bigger hard drive, better graphics card or 2-4 new games.
The truth is that all you're doing is populating slots because you can. Keep your cash in the bank for when a proper upgrade comes out. And proper upgrades are coming out all the time.
Well i figured there would be some nay-sayers, so you'll just have to believe me that 8GB would be a good system upgrade for me, even though it may not be for you 
I could spend it on more HD space, but i have loads. I have an 8800GT which flies through everything i play, and i already dont have time to play the games i have.
I'm not just populating the slots because i can. I've already said i run into the 4GB wall, this topic was to ask if i were to put in 8GB what problems would i encounter.
Seems the main problem i would encounter is a load of people telling me i don't need 8GB of ram!
Cheers for the help folks
I could spend it on more HD space, but i have loads. I have an 8800GT which flies through everything i play, and i already dont have time to play the games i have. I'm not just populating the slots because i can. I've already said i run into the 4GB wall, this topic was to ask if i were to put in 8GB what problems would i encounter.
Seems the main problem i would encounter is a load of people telling me i don't need 8GB of ram!
Cheers for the help folks
I'm pretty sure you are.
What application?
I've had 8Gb of PC8000 RAM in a stressed machine running pretty much every application I can lay my hands on, including 8 copies of Virtual PC, and it was no faster than 4Gb. I promise you, you're only looking at it because it looks cheap. If it was £500 to upgrade you would not be considering it.
What about an 8Gb SLC SATA SSD for £85 instead? That will actually speed your system up if you use it for your OS drive.
Well thankyou for calling me a liar! If you'de read the thread i've already stated what application. If it was £500 i wouldn't be looking at it, so whats your point? Because it's cheap it's a worthless upgrade? Do i have to video my computer running into the 4GB wall and slowing down as it writes to the HD to persuade you or something? Sure i could put up with it being slightly slower when this happens, but then i may aswell put up with a slower CPU, slower hardrive.. slower graphics card..
The ram is the best way to speed up Photoshop. I could put in a Raid0 scratchdisk, but not only would it be slower, it would be more expensive.
My questions were the implementation of 8GB of ram, and what it would do to my motherboard. It seems it wouldn't do a great deal to my motherboard, apart from maybe having to up the NB volts with some extra cooling. So AFAIC, thread has served it purpose, job done
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I can't believe either that people are telling him how much ram he is using, the OP has said in more than one post that he uses more than 4gb at times so moving to 8gb seems like a good idea in his situation.
The answer to your original question is that the mobo should be fine with 8gb installed, as you have said you will more than likely have to add a little more northbridge voltage. 425FSB should be do-able on ram that has a stock of 400 but I would think that high overclocking ability would be hampered somewhat by the extra chipset strain.
The answer to your original question is that the mobo should be fine with 8gb installed, as you have said you will more than likely have to add a little more northbridge voltage. 425FSB should be do-able on ram that has a stock of 400 but I would think that high overclocking ability would be hampered somewhat by the extra chipset strain.
I didn't call you a liar, if I wanted to call you a liar I'd have used the word. What I think you are is mistaken. Mistaken in your belief that an extra 4Gb of RAM will speed up your system.
You said something about Photo-ee-things, which isn't an application that I'm aware of.
Almost. Just being cheap doesn't make it worthless, but even though people who have TRIED IT tell you it's pointless you're still prepared to do it because you're convinced it's RAM. It's worthless because it's not worth doing. Pointless.
If it's photoshop then it doesn't speed up under 64 bit Vista with 8Gb RAM over 4Gb RAM. I have tested this to death and the only way I could get ANY performance improvement was to run a DDR RAM iDrive or with an SSD as OS disk.
I disagree.
My questions were the implementation of 8GB of ram, and what it would do to my motherboard. It seems it wouldn't do a great deal to my motherboard, apart from maybe having to up the NB volts with some extra cooling. So AFAIC, thread has served it purpose, job done
I answered that question, as I suspect I'm one of the very few people to have the exact same combination, and to have actually tested it with 8Gb of GeIL RAM. You don't need to adjust anything if you're already running 2 sticks. Just put the extra 2 sticks in and it'll be fine.
Your self-denial on this is understandable, as you've convinced yourself that your machine only writes to disk because it's run out of RAM. OK. Try it, expand your RAM by all means. And if you open up to the concept of taking advice from someone who has experience of what you are trying to do, then you might actually get the point. Some of us are actually trying to help by advising, as well as answer yes/no questions.
I'm the last person to beat anyone over the head for spending money on an upgrade, but I would just say I've actually tried it, and it didn't help with Photoshop manipulation speeds for me.
You've no idea what I do with the RAM, so how can you say it's pointless? I think you're assuming I do the same things with my machine that you do with yours - and I obviously don't.
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Peeps are trying to help you so more info would have helped and the fact this gets asked about 1x per 2 weeks and you could have used SEARCH.
All I can add has been already in that THG review above that opens new eyes to 8GB useage.
All I can add has been already in that THG review above that opens new eyes to 8GB useage.
OK, I'll bite - what do you do with yours? I've tested most applications with 8Gb and 16Gb and I only see a marked improvement in scaleability with servers (especially Citrix type applications). In single-user/multiple applications open at the same time use, I really find it hard to shave even a few seconds off benchmarks. Photoshop on the PC is infamously limited to 3Gb anyway, so what's faster for you?
And oddly enough, I'm not trolling, I'm interested.
"I'm not just populating the slots because i can"
"I'm pretty sure you are"
You read that in a different way than calling me a liar? Fair enough. It sounded pretty insinuated from where im sat.
And 2 posts down i mentioned about Photoshop. Alright i didn't expressly say "I use photoshop, thats why i need more ram", but i thought it was pretty obvious from the way the sentence was written.
Seems the only people who have told me it's pointless are those who have noticed no speedup in their own systems using 8Gb. Which none of them have said they're using Photoshop to edit large files that run into the 4GB wall. You only mentioned you use photoshop yourself afterwards. Said it initially your advice would have had some more weight.
That's fine, why didn't you say that? If it really doesn't, then i won't consider the upgrade. You simply said it was pointless..
Fine, why? Surely the read/write times of RAM are far faster than a 2 disk Raid0 array? If you know something i don't please share. I'm trying to make this a fast photoshop machine that wont slow down at the odd large file. From research it seems far and away the best thing to do is add more ram!
There is no self denial. You have created a debate out of something i didn't even ask in the first place. I wanted to know what it would do to my motherboard, not whether i actually needed it. Consider this thread 'forum-fied'.
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8gb does make a difference, if you are like me and you like to keep 100s of programs open
(Right now I had TF2, Photoshop CS3, Premiere CS3, VMWare, Flash CS3, Outlook 2007, many windows of IE, Visual .NET, WM11, Symantec Endpoint plus loads more. With 4gb before, coming out of games would result in disk thrashing, now its instant )
PS Adrianr I'd go and get it, the difference between 4gb and 8gb is not big as 2gb versus 4gb, but I am sure if you use many memory intensive apps at once, you will notice a benefit....my main catalyst was the low prices
(Right now I had TF2, Photoshop CS3, Premiere CS3, VMWare, Flash CS3, Outlook 2007, many windows of IE, Visual .NET, WM11, Symantec Endpoint plus loads more. With 4gb before, coming out of games would result in disk thrashing, now its instant
)PS Adrianr I'd go and get it, the difference between 4gb and 8gb is not big as 2gb versus 4gb, but I am sure if you use many memory intensive apps at once, you will notice a benefit....my main catalyst was the low prices
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Photoshop (at least the versions upto CS) is limited to 3Gb in the PC version. I did say that I had tested lots of scenarios with variable amounts of RAM and I did not find any noticeable benefit from doing so. The Toms Hardware link repeatedly says getting 8Gb of RAM for 64 OS is a good thing, but never really shows a significant improvement anywhere. It does mention the 3Gb limit for Photoshop and it does say to make sure memory remap is turned on (it is by default on the P5K Premium WiFi AP) but it doesn't mention that CrossfireX messes the whole thing up (I know you haven't got that, but it might help someone).
I'm really not out to insult anyone, although I do appreciate that you can't see my expression when I'm typing, so if it comes across a bit brusque, then I'm sorry. I found a long time ago that 99.9% of the people posting on here were worthy of my respect and I do treat everyone as I would expect to be treated myself. I do sometimes read a post and think - "Is that an insult?" but 99.9% of the time it's not (and it's not here btw) however we are a pretty savvy bunch on here and there has to be a reason why - if so many people turn around and say immediately "It's not worth doing" - there probably is a good reason.
One thing that has made me change my mind 100% about 8Gb vs 4Gb is that first page where it shows how the memory utilised by going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS is increased substantially - you may as well stick with the 32-bit OS and just accept the overhead hit on 4Gb, no point in going 64-bit unless you are going to get 8Gb from that information.
It's a very complex subject, and not one that really lends itself to being discussed like this. I really wish we could have meets where we could take a decent system and mess with it in terms of changing graphics, CPUs, RAM configuration, disk configuration etc., bench test the changes and go away with some degree of increased knowledge through collaboration.
Sorry for the long post, what it boils down to is this;
I apologise if I caused any offence, none was intended, I only wanted to save you repeating what, for me, was an expensive experiment.
I'm really not out to insult anyone, although I do appreciate that you can't see my expression when I'm typing, so if it comes across a bit brusque, then I'm sorry. I found a long time ago that 99.9% of the people posting on here were worthy of my respect and I do treat everyone as I would expect to be treated myself. I do sometimes read a post and think - "Is that an insult?" but 99.9% of the time it's not (and it's not here btw) however we are a pretty savvy bunch on here and there has to be a reason why - if so many people turn around and say immediately "It's not worth doing" - there probably is a good reason.
One thing that has made me change my mind 100% about 8Gb vs 4Gb is that first page where it shows how the memory utilised by going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS is increased substantially - you may as well stick with the 32-bit OS and just accept the overhead hit on 4Gb, no point in going 64-bit unless you are going to get 8Gb from that information.
It's a very complex subject, and not one that really lends itself to being discussed like this. I really wish we could have meets where we could take a decent system and mess with it in terms of changing graphics, CPUs, RAM configuration, disk configuration etc., bench test the changes and go away with some degree of increased knowledge through collaboration.
Sorry for the long post, what it boils down to is this;
I apologise if I caused any offence, none was intended, I only wanted to save you repeating what, for me, was an expensive experiment.
Hi WJA. I'm a software developer and do all my work these days inside of virtual machines. Some projects require multiple machines, and I often need to dip and it out of several differnt projects during the day, so I keep a lot of VMs open. When it starts swapping to disk things really grind to a halt. 8GB gives me much more headroom.
As far as gaming goes, I think you're right. In fact, I have an XP 32 partition for that.
WJA96: I appreciate your apology, and i must also apologise myself for going a little off the rails when reading the "populate the slots" comment! It did seem a little offensive, but as you have explained it was not intended, that's fair game.
Indeed it would be nice to meet up and bench various configurations to find the best and most cost effective for performance. I'de certainly be game I'm genuinely interested on how to make CS3 run as quick as possible. I could RAID0 up two more 250Gb drives for about £20 more, you think this would give a larger performance boost than 4GB more ram? (Unfortunately raptor raid is off the charts due to cost)
Like i say, any research i've done so far has pointed to throwing as much RAM as you possibly can at it. Although CS3 is limited to 3.25GB, it can use 2GB more as a scratchdisk cache, not to mention having the other 2.85GB to run anything else along with it (namely bridge or similar). Under normal files photoshop efficiency is at 100%, but i have had this down to 60-70, the area at which Adobe reccommend getting more ram.
Indeed it would be nice to meet up and bench various configurations to find the best and most cost effective for performance. I'de certainly be game
I'm genuinely interested on how to make CS3 run as quick as possible. I could RAID0 up two more 250Gb drives for about £20 more, you think this would give a larger performance boost than 4GB more ram? (Unfortunately raptor raid is off the charts due to cost)Like i say, any research i've done so far has pointed to throwing as much RAM as you possibly can at it. Although CS3 is limited to 3.25GB, it can use 2GB more as a scratchdisk cache, not to mention having the other 2.85GB to run anything else along with it (namely bridge or similar). Under normal files photoshop efficiency is at 100%, but i have had this down to 60-70, the area at which Adobe reccommend getting more ram.
I've just bought a pair of £85 8Gb SLC SSD SATA HDD from a competitor and I have them set up as a RAID 0 boot drive for Windows. Quick? Oh yes. 
We're talking from fully off to fully booted in around 14 seconds. Vista is only scoring me a 1.0 on my HDD score though which just goes to show how stupid that is.
I'm going to get another pair next week and use an 8 or 16K stripe. Normally I wouldn't go that small on a RAID 0 because of the high likelihood of errors, but as it's all solid state I reckon it'll be safe enough, and even faster.
I reckon 32Gb is plenty for the OS and applications. OK - You could argue that £10/Gigabyte is way too much to pay, but I suspect that it's the only way I'll really speed up CS3.
We're talking from fully off to fully booted in around 14 seconds. Vista is only scoring me a 1.0 on my HDD score though which just goes to show how stupid that is.I'm going to get another pair next week and use an 8 or 16K stripe. Normally I wouldn't go that small on a RAID 0 because of the high likelihood of errors, but as it's all solid state I reckon it'll be safe enough, and even faster.
I reckon 32Gb is plenty for the OS and applications. OK - You could argue that £10/Gigabyte is way too much to pay, but I suspect that it's the only way I'll really speed up CS3.
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well what do you do? i know unless you run two or more video editing/decompression you will not use more then 4gb of ram.. you have only mentioned photoshop which doesnt use that much ram.. and the other reason would be a server?
non-proffessional software doesnt make use of that. but anway you insult the guy who has wrote out a ******** of stuff to try to answer your intial question, WJA96 said it would work fine. so thats out of the equation..
the only question left is what memory intensive software do you use? until you answer that people will assume, quite rightly that your using adobe photoshop, which in that case would prove them right that 8gb would be pointless in your case.
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32gb might be large, but check out my games, supcom+expan =15gb, c&c3+expan 14gb, BF2+PR= 4.5gb cod4=6gb , fuel of war =11gb, fear 2gb rtw 2gb, and then TDU/crysis/R6V, etc etc..
you think to put all the games on another drive, only os and apps like you say on the SSD would that really speed it up?