Should I get 4Gb memory?

dr_shoe · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:22

Been sifting through these forums and there seem to be a lot of mixed opinions on this.

My spec is:

E6600 @ 3.15ghz

2x 1Gb Geil 6400 @ 370mhz or something and 4-4-4-12

ASUS PW5-DH

Now because I'm planning on getting a 8800GTS 320mb, I saw that the memory prices are pretty low atm, so I thought it might be a good time to get 4gb memory.

I have vista ultimate.

Would it be worth it? I mainly play WoW, use normal office software and watch films on my PC, but some times I like to play a few new games (Crysis and CnC3 look good =])

Thanks

Raffi · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:49

i'm going for 4g ocz 6400 c4 right now.Ballistix 5300 may be better but if you're running 4gig it wont overclock as well - so its a waste of money.Go for the ocz 6400 c4.

dr_shoe · 18 Feb 2007 at 11:45

well i already have geil so ill be going for that

bfar · 19 Feb 2007 at 11:57

I haven't intalled x64 yet, I'm still on x86 so I can only use 3 of the 4 gigs available.

Even with 3 gigs, reponsiveness and load times have definately improved noticably. I haven't tried many games, but there seems to be a stabiliy about things...

Zefan · 19 Feb 2007 at 11:59

bfar said:
I haven't intalled x64 yet, I'm still on x86 so I can only use 3 of the 4 gigs available.

Even with 3 gigs, reponsiveness and load times have definately improved noticably. I haven't tried many games, but there seems to be a stabiliy about things...

Is that vista or XP?

bfar · 19 Feb 2007 at 12:16

Zefan said:
Is that vista or XP?

I have both actually, but I haven't really used my XP install in a while. I'm gonna install x64 this week, and see how that works out.

drunkenmaster · 19 Feb 2007 at 12:25

what does "normal office software" include, a guy working for a graphics company and photoshop, 3dmax or whatever can be "normal", or do you just mean office 07 and stuff like that?

quite frankly it depends on how you use your computer, vista WILL use all your 4gigs and load in as much stuff as possible, it will try to remember what you use and when and load in exe's and prefetch stuff for whatever you use most frequently. if you leave office open all the time and open wow twice a day and nothing else it won't really inprove much with more memory, if you use photoshop and 45 other programs for work that you need to keep using and opening then more and more memory will leave vista more responsive so thats down to you.

i very very much doubt that any games will need more than 2 gigs in the next year or two, approaching maybe, but not there. plenty of new games that came out in the last few months will load with a very small amount of memory, then you've got bf2 that used loads but even then no where near 2 gigs.

other question would be what screen do you have, saving £50 on a 640mb 8800gts by getting the 320mb version is a huge mistake if you have a 1600x1200 ish res screen as there are quite a few games, and likely a lot in the future, that a 8800gts can push at 1600x1200 with high aa/af but the 320mb card will die due to lack of memory. then again, if you only have a 1280x1024 screen a £140 x1900 based card will leave everything more than playable

bad time to buy any card really, no new games really before the ati's next gen hit, which at worst means price cuts to x1900, and 8800 series cards.

555BUK · 19 Feb 2007 at 14:44

4 Gigs will not be needed for general use for some time, and by then prices would have dropped.

bfar · 19 Feb 2007 at 15:36

555BUK said:
4 Gigs will not be needed for general use for some time, and by then prices would have dropped.

You'll always notice a bit of difference when you install new memory. If your OS pages to the hard disk, it will use the extra memory - its that simple. That means load and access times can be improved drastically.

It gives you a lot more flexibility in how many apps you can have open, especially if you use memory greedy apps like Maya, photoshop, Visual Studios, CAD apps or games. Even MS office can throw a fit when Windows starts paging heavily - it depends what your working on. The time it takes to encode big jobs like media conversion is slashed in a big way.

For me its always been a "can't go wrong upgrade". I installed 2GB long before most people thought it was "needed", and believe me, I never looked back.

Possibly the most important component in a PC imo. Its cheap at OCUK right now, if you have the money and you're running an Intel, go for it.

bfar · 19 Feb 2007 at 21:50

Just installed Vista 64, and all 4GB are showing up nicely.

system is smooth and responsive as expected - will try some games over the next couple of weeks and report back.