Worth going from 4GB to 8GB of ram?

MeEsH BaKkA

MeEsH BaKkA

MeEsH BaKkA

Soldato
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12 Dec 2002
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Im planning on staying with my current Q9650 @3.8ghz and P5Q-E for a couple more years and am concidering buying another 4GB of ram seeing as its rather cheap, will there be much benifit in gaming?
 
Erm, as long as you are using DDR3 then I would say yes depending on what you use for system for.

If you are gaming at 1920*1080, video editing or using heavy resource software then yes the extra memory will help! Especially in games such as BF3, MW3 or DiRT3. xD
 
CinderzFTW said:
Erm, as long as you are using DDR3 then I would say yes depending on what you use for system for.

If you are gaming at 1920*1080, video editing or using heavy resource software then yes the extra memory will help! Especially in games such as BF3, MW3 or DiRT3. xD
Click to expand...

Erm, the P5Q-E uses DDR2 if that makes any difference to your answer.
 
I use a 1920X1200 res and mainly use it for gaming and occasional photo editing etc...
TBH im not having any issues at the moment but am thinking ahead as im keeping the system for around another 2 years and as DDR3 is now the standard I expect it is going to get harder and harder to find decent DDR2 ram.

Is there any reasons to stay at 4GB on DDR2 (bar losing interleaved(sp) mode)?
 
DDR2 isn't particularly cheap.

4GB will set you back ~£40-£50 at OcUK. It's double the price of DDR3.

As far as I'm aware there aren't many games which will use more than 4GB (waits to be shot down) but who knows where we'll be in 2 years time.

It's up to you if you think spending £40-£50 offers you some future proofing.

As a final thought I'll give you two things to consider:

1) You need a 64 bit operating system to make use of more than 4GB

2) Filling all 4 RAM slots may affect your CPU overclock
 
I would buy a new board if you are looking to upgrade the memory. You can pick up a nice asrock lga775 board with ddr3 support that runs 1333mhz, my misses has one for her q6600 and runs 4gb ddr3 fine.

if not, then I wouldn't bother with an upgrade to 8gb, use what you have or at least build a new rig!
 
Surveyor said:
DDR2 isn't particularly cheap.

4GB will set you back ~£40-£50 at OcUK. It's double the price of DDR3.

As far as I'm aware there aren't many games which will use more than 4GB (waits to be shot down) but who knows where we'll be in 2 years time.

It's up to you if you think spending £40-£50 offers you some future proofing.

As a final thought I'll give you two things to consider:

1) You need a 64 bit operating system to make use of more than 4GB

2) Filling all 4 RAM slots may affect your CPU overclock
Click to expand...

i got 8gb ddr2 because i use vmware which needs lots of ram. Sometimes i have two instances running.

For gaming you don't really need it to be honest.

Also ddr2 is expensive cos of supply and demand, DDR3 is becoming the norm, and ddr2 is disconntinued or at least approaching that era. Due to falling demand price just shoots up.

That's why sometimes it's best to just go for a modern ram+mobo+cpu combo when an old componenet fails, cos the price of discontinued specced items can be steep.
 
Well ram doesn't ever play a big roll in gaming, it is mostly to be able to run more programs simultaneously. When I went from 4 to 8gb on my laptop I actually noticed a decrease in perfomance
 
you may aswell pick up 8gb for £45 while its ever so cheap, who knows, it might rise stupidly high again soon when 4gb of 1600mhz ddr3 was like £100 :/ back when I got my 1333mhz kit in june 10 for £93
 
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