How much difference does Ram make?

Count_Zero99uk · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:21

Hi,

Ive been running on 4gb Ram (probably, one is faulty and could have been faulty for some time) Due to varying reasons im upgrading to 8 gb, using 2 of these.

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

I have the i5 intel processor on the Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 Mobo

And a HD 5070 1gb Graphics card.

Finaly there is a 1tb Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache HDD

Will there be any improvement in my system with the increase of the RAM?

Also ill be looking and another upgrade come christmas, any suggestions of what would make the biggest impact.

The pc is mainly used for gaming.

Liquid · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:41

I hope you are using Windos 64bit os otherwise 4gb is max for 32bit os.

Max3 · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:42

There's no real improvement from going from 4gb to 8gb for gaming except you'll be able to alt tab out of them real fast

Put some money towards another graphics card instead.

King Damager · 13 Mar 2011 at 13:50

For gaming, I doubt you're going to see a massive upgrade from 4-8GB. If you start doing encoding, photoshop etc... then you would, but yeah not for Gaming.

Also, as for Xmas, without knowing the rest of your spec, wouldn't be able to tell you what to upgrade as the best. Also by Christmas lot's will have changed, I'd say come back and ask again then xD

kd

Count_Zero99uk · 13 Mar 2011 at 15:51

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

I have the i5 intel processor on the Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 Mobo

And a HD 5770 1gb Graphics card.

Finaly there is a 1tb Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache HDD

This is all on windows 7 64 bit home.

crisbduck · 13 Mar 2011 at 17:11

If you use all your slots doesn't it limit an overclock for intel processors?
That's if you have overclocked though

Count_Zero99uk · 13 Mar 2011 at 19:43

im not oc'd

timciren · 14 Mar 2011 at 13:50

buy another 5770 instead

dannycivic02 · 14 Mar 2011 at 16:08

Sorry to just jump in on the thread but would it be detrimental to gaming having say 8gb as opposed to 4gb as Im mostly gaming but now and again like to mess around with photos and video but if it would affect the gaming I would stay with 4gb as that takes priority.

Cheers

jolardy · 14 Mar 2011 at 16:13

My personal input, yes and no, your CPU is an i5, okay thats alright, but like my PC im running 4GB and an AMD athlon X64 6000+, which is running @ 3.3Ghz, so any increase in my ram will make opening processes better, but boot times and gaming wont be a whole lot better, and as liquid said, if your not running Win7 or Win vista x64, your pretty much stuck, a better idea may be to replace with the same amount of ram, and increase the Mhz output of them, mabye to a 1800Mhz output, rather than a 1600

joxang · 14 Mar 2011 at 16:44

jolardy said:
A better idea may be to replace with the same amount of ram, and increase the Mhz output of them, mabye to a 1800Mhz output, rather than a 1600

That won't make any difference at all. At least half a dozen 'official' benchmarks have shown that RAM speed in general usage, gaming etc has no impact on performance whatsoever. The only times it's useful to have fast rated RAM are for (1) overclocking headroom, and (2) in RAM benchmarks.

Like others have said, you'd be much better off getting another gpu.