Faster Ram or More Ram?

virdee2

virdee2

virdee2

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10 Jan 2008
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388
Location
Kent, UK
Hiya people!

I have just one question which i need your help with if you would be so kind :-)

I have vista 32bit with my Geil 2gb 800mhz running at 1000mhz and obviously stable. I cant push it further but not a bad thing i guess. i wanna imporve my system as i have lost the edge that i once felt this rig had. Would adding a further 2 gb of the same Geil ram be effective on my rig or would faster 2gb ram be better?

I noticed the kingston ram on offer at the mo (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-023-KS)
This is a lot faster and i could perhaps overclock it too.
The gel sticks are usually the ones that are on offer every now and then with cool orange heatsinks :-)

I appreciate the help guys.
 
with a 32-bit OS, adding the additional 2gb will give you about an additional 1.6gb to play with. based on the resource monitor for ram, whats your ram utilisation like? (close opera if using before you do this though) if its not near 100%, then faster ram is your answer, if its being fully utilised all the time, then the extra amount should do you. just keep in mind that the 32 bit OS can't page/see all 4gb of ram.
 
thats a very clever idea lol, i never thought of it like that...

i'll use the computer for a while then check on it.

Thanx Grimgoth :-)
 
I would say more ram is always the better option, even adding more ram at the same speed you have would give you a noticable difference, especially in games.

If you went for the same amount of faster ram and depending on how much faster the new ram is, you might not really notice the difference.

For overclocking it would be better if you had 2 x 2Gb modules for 4Gb dual channel, but if you are only overclocking slightly then it may not matter too much. You may just need to increase the voltages slightly to keep the same clocks with 4 x 1Gb.
 
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i expected to have to drop my overclock if i got another 2x1gb modules because its currently as fast as i could stretch it. but thats fine i think as long as the extra ram makes enough of a difference.

thanx for the help.
 
Considering the prices of Ram at the moment it may pay to sell what you have now and buy a 2 x 2Gb kit. I doubt there would be much in it compaired to buying another 2 x 1Gb, the bay might get best results price wise for your 2nd hand sticks.
 
Unless your SuperPi benching, the speed of your RAM has hardly any noticable effect on performance. I ran my RAM in sig at stock (800) and at (980) and saw no difference in any bench or realtime test.
 
More RAM anyday.
Personally i think 4GB of RAM is needed these days and so handy with it, really tempted to get 8GB and see how that goes.
 
Yeah I'd have to go with the more ram crowd too, I've never noticed any major diference between super tight memory timings and quite relaxed in every day use.
 
Definitely more RAM, though if you could get both more and faster that is the best :) I have Vista 32bit and upgraded from 2Gb to 4Gb (so I see about 3.5Gb) about a year ago noticing a dramatic improvement. Particularly switching between programs was instantaneous and dropping out of games showed the desktop strait away whereas before it would redraw very slowly. I completely disabled the pagefile when upgrading and noticed the HD usage go way down.

Recently purchased 8Gb of OCZ RAM and will install together with some new components and Vista 64bit. I know that I won't see any major benefit now, but with 64bit addressing using more RAM than 32bit addressing, no swapfile, the low prices (the 8Gb was £100 in the OcUK sale, minus what I sell my 4Gb for at the bay) and increasing memory usage it was a good buy for me. I learnt a while back that you can never have too much memory in the computing world (be it RAM or disk based), particularly if you keep your components for a while like I do.
 
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