Another 4GB vs 8GB thread

e36Adz

e36Adz

e36Adz

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I do tend to browse in these parts of the forums once in awhile and have noticed on occasions this question does come up a fair bit.

Will I notice any difference upgrading from 4GB to 8GB?

System spec in sig. Everything is running well apart from the seagate hdd which will be replaced soon, but I want to know if 8GB is worthwhile?

This is the exact ram I have at the moment:

OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) EPP (Nvidia Approved)

Capacity 4GB (2x2GB)
Cas CL 5-5-5-18
Clock speed 1000MHz
Special features Heatspreader
Technology DDR2
Warranty Lifetime Warranty
Voltage 2.1V

I can pick up another set for £42 thus taking me to 8GB, so for this price, would you go for it?

Do you think I will notice any improvements in vista 64? I am hoping to move over to windows 7 once it becomes available, will that benefit from having 8GB over 4GB? Am I likely to encounter any problems adding an additional 2 sticks of ram to the system?

I am interested to hear from those of you who actually went to 8GB from 4GB and what improvements if any, you noticed. :)
 
windows 7 (in my experience) uses less memory than windows vista

i can honestly say ive noticed no improvements in general windows performance / everyday tasks / gaming

but having said that, ive told you a million times "do it" for the sake of it :p

like i did ;)

just do it and get it over with, and stop posting this noob memory posts again and again lol (im joking)
 
Last edited:
I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB.

Was a waste, as I can notice absolutely no difference. It was at least a cheap ugrade, and I should be able to get most of my money back anytime I want to sell it on.
 
I think it was a healthy upgrade. Made my Vista really move as it should rather than the bloatware it is.

Teamed up with a Quad core CPU and its petty much how it should be IMHO.
 
If you want to, you might as well get it. I mean, DDR2 is cheap as chips (not i7's :p) nowadays, and with DDR the prices will start to rise again.

Even if you hardly use it, at least its there for when you do or games/programs become more demanding.
 
Adrianr said:
Screw 8GB, i'm still trying to get hold of a P45 board and the 16GB OCZ Ram kit!
Click to expand...

I came very close to getting the OCZ 16GB set before Xmas. With I7 release now i think i will avoid the 16GB DDR2 sets and save for I7 components and DDR3. You can still have 12GB DDR3 :D :D
 
i went from 4gb dual core opteron to 8gb quad core intel

i probably don't need the extra 4gb, but i wouldn't downgrade to 4..

i'm sure most others on here with 8gb are in the same boat as me..
 
Went from 4gb to 8gb.

To this day no idea why, I saw absolutely no difference what so ever. I also bought a new HDD and setup a RAID 0 config and saw a massive difference.
 
There is no point moving to 8GB unless you have very resource hungry applications that can make use of it (for example running virtual pc's) for normal usage you won't notice any difference, however as prices are so cheap and if it makes you feel happy they I guess it won't do any harm.
 
Hey guys, I have a similar question.

I currently have 2gb DDR2 RAM and was wondering whether I would see a visible (or worthwhile) performance boost from upgrading to 4gb? It seems incredibly cheap atm!

I'm currently on the Windows 7 BETA and the task manager shows quite a high RAM utilisation; here's a pic to illustrate my point:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2hwnyfo.jpg
It seems to be utilising a big chunk of the RAM and caching the rest. So do you reckon I'd benefit from having 4gb instead of 2gb RAM? Would the OS just simply cache the extra 2gb RAM?

Thanks.
 
Does W7 cache all of your free RAM then? Or does it leave a certain amount as free memory? I'm just wondering because mine always seems to be cached.
 
I was also pondering whether to get 4 or 8GB

Got the 8GB as it was cheap, couldnt get windows to start up / install with 8GB

Took ages to figure out what was causing it, in the end i removed 4 gig, installed windows, threw 6 gig and be done with it.

It annoyed it i had another 8GB sitting there doing nothing, asked on OCUK, I have to get a lot of things manually in the BIOS as the auto settings just were not letting me have any fun, had to up the ram voltage in the end as the AUTO setting was just not enough

Seems to be ok so far, although i've noticed absaloutely no difference what so ever, if anything it wa sa pain to get going

Vista only uses up to 4 GB anyway, you could put vista SP1 on it to make it show 8GB although if you CTRL, ALT, DEL you see it still only shows you 3326 MB in the processes, naughty microsoft lol

I'm told its to shut people up from moaning when they buy manfacturer pcs and stuff

Not to sure whether it shows you 8GB in the processes in vista 64, i downgraded back to 32 bit coz nothing i had was working with it
I know it definately showed me 6GB when i just had that in here, in 64 bit system information

Just a gimmick if you ask me
 
ken1307 said:
I run W7 with 8GB ram as well so far it makes no different whatsoever :p
Click to expand...

On booting, w7 uses about 1.5GB RAM with my 8GB setup (no paging file either), which is actually about the same as Vista did. For 7, 4GB is probably sufficient, but like someone posted earlier, it's nice not to have to worry about upgrading the RAM.
 
e36Adz said:
I do tend to browse in these parts of the forums once in awhile and have noticed on occasions this question does come up a fair bit.

Will I notice any difference upgrading from 4GB to 8GB?

System spec in sig. Everything is running well apart from the seagate hdd which will be replaced soon, but I want to know if 8GB is worthwhile?

This is the exact ram I have at the moment:

OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (2x2GB) EPP (Nvidia Approved)

Capacity 4GB (2x2GB)
Cas CL 5-5-5-18
Clock speed 1000MHz
Special features Heatspreader
Technology DDR2
Warranty Lifetime Warranty
Voltage 2.1V

I can pick up another set for £42 thus taking me to 8GB, so for this price, would you go for it?

Do you think I will notice any improvements in vista 64? I am hoping to move over to windows 7 once it becomes available, will that benefit from having 8GB over 4GB? Am I likely to encounter any problems adding an additional 2 sticks of ram to the system?

I am interested to hear from those of you who actually went to 8GB from 4GB and what improvements if any, you noticed. :)
Click to expand...


I had the same mobo as you, it doesn't seem to like all 4 ram slots being occupied. Ive 4x1 gig sticks and after a year started getting "det dram" errors till eventually all 4 ram slots seemed to die. If i were you id stick to 4 gigs (2x2 gigs), this bug seems pretty common with this mobo.
 
mazza7282 said:
I was also pondering whether to get 4 or 8GB

Got the 8GB as it was cheap, couldnt get windows to start up / install with 8GB

Took ages to figure out what was causing it, in the end i removed 4 gig, installed windows, threw 6 gig and be done with it.

It annoyed it i had another 8GB sitting there doing nothing, asked on OCUK, I have to get a lot of things manually in the BIOS as the auto settings just were not letting me have any fun, had to up the ram voltage in the end as the AUTO setting was just not enough

Seems to be ok so far, although i've noticed absaloutely no difference what so ever, if anything it wa sa pain to get going

Vista only uses up to 4 GB anyway, you could put vista SP1 on it to make it show 8GB although if you CTRL, ALT, DEL you see it still only shows you 3326 MB in the processes, naughty microsoft lol

I'm told its to shut people up from moaning when they buy manfacturer pcs and stuff

Not to sure whether it shows you 8GB in the processes in vista 64, i downgraded back to 32 bit coz nothing i had was working with it
I know it definately showed me 6GB when i just had that in here, in 64 bit system information

Just a gimmick if you ask me
Click to expand...

Some boards can have ram address limitations unfortuantely. :( You did apply all hotfixes didnt you? Because there was one for systems with 4GB+ that would cause issues getting into windows, although that one could now be in SP1.
 
I have 8GB of Ram on Vista x64. Have I ever seen it use that much? Never :)

Saying that, i certainly do not regret it as I picked up the 8GB for about £75 and to be honest, for that price, why not. This PC will be lasting me around 3 years or so (CPU/RAM and probably the mobo) so who knows how much RAM will be in use by games then, especially considering some of the new MMORPG games around the corner, and they love RAM.

- Pea0n
 
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