Vista Memory Upgrade Advice

[rikky]

Hi folks,
I am planning to upgrade to a Quad Q6600 shortly from my E4300, the question is should I also upgrade my memory from 2gb to 4GB??
I have 2gb of Crucial Ballistix PC6400 at the moment using Vista Ultimate 32 bit and my ram usage never really goes above 60% using this core 2 duo chip no matter how many tasks I have running at the same time.
Seems Vista hogs a lot of memory but as soon as it is actually needed by another programme it tends to release it.
So do I upgrade to 4 gig or get 2 x 512mb and run in dual channel (to make 3gb total) as Vista 32 bit cannot see/use 4 gig I believe??

thanks for looking
rikky

 

[Admiral Huddy]

The best thing is to check how much paging is occuring during intensive operation. If the page file is being used extensively (over 50%) then buy more RAM otherwise, let the system handle the memory itself.

Just because you have more memory, dosn't mean that things are going to work any faster because 1) Paging will still occur unless you turn it off and 2) the memory still needs to be refreshed as part of each cycle the more you have the more data that needs to be refreshed. So if your system isn't paging that much.. stick with 2gb

 

[rikky]

Ok thanks for that, yeah it never really is getting above 60% Ram Usage no matter how many programmes I seem to run, I will go with 2gig and see how that copes with my new quad core.
cheers
rikky.