2GB (4x512) - Not recommended at all?

[skyeclad]

I'm on the fence on this one, but given the price/performance equation, would I actually suffer enough of a latency issue to make an upgrade from 1GB(2x512) to 2GB(4x512) using OCZ PC3200 Premier RAM worse than not upgrading at all? Right now, the idea of pulling my current chips and replacing with 2GB(2x1GB) isn't all that favorable given my standing with the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations(wife).

My guess is that if my current PC use taxes the system with enough memory intensive apps, I would be doing better upgrading with another 2x512 than resorting accessing the swapfile. But, if I don't often tax the memory limit, I would suffer increased latency thereby experiencing a slight slow-down in comparison to where I am today.

I have the following:

Asus A8N-E

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 512K 90nm Rev. E Venice

RAM - DDR (400) 3200 - 1 GB (2 pcs 512) OCZ

ATI (Connect3D) Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR/PCI-E/TV-Out/VGA/DVI

OCZ OCZ45012U ModStream ATX 2.0 450W Power Supply

 

[Quinton McLeod]

Using 4 sticks will cause stability issues under tight timings. You'd be better of with 2 1GB sticks.

 

[superHARD]

Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod
Using 4 sticks will cause stability issues under tight timings. You'd be better of with 2 1GB sticks.

???

Got a linky to back that up?

 

[Creideike]

*Bump*

I would be interested to know as well since I am currently running 4 512 sticks!

 

[SynthDude2001]

You will be limited to 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's pretty much it. I've been running 4x512 for a month now (maybe a bit more), and I have absolutely no regrets. 2T is something like a 3% performance hit in the real world (or less), and the speed-up from not having to constantly page to the hard drive completely outweighs the small latency increase. If you don't need 2GB at all, ever, then sure, don't bother upgrading...but if you do, I wouldn't be scared off from 4x512 like a lot of people in this forum would have you be.

 

[Creideike]

Would 4 512 sticks effect overclocking? I can't get my Opteron 165 past 2Gigs and have Windows load. Windows just locks up on start up, and then it gave me hard disk errors in which I had to run CHKDSK and a restore point in order to get my computers PS2 ports to work again!

Could this be do to memory issues because everything else in my system shoud be preforming up to par?

Thank you

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Creideike
Would 4 512 sticks effect overclocking? I can't get my Opteron 165 past 2Gigs and have Windows load. Windows just locks up on start up, and then it gave me hard disk errors in which I had to run CHKDSK and a restore point in order to get my computers PS2 ports to work again!

Could this be do to memory issues because everything else in my system shoud be preforming up to par?

Thank you

Possibly. Are all 4 sticks the same brand/Model? If not, that's likely the issue, though you may have to relax timings as mentioned earlier.

 

[Ika]

4 sticks would affect performance by maybe 5-8%; more importantly, though, if you get 4x512MB you would be cutting off any future memory upgrade potential, unless you are willing to replace all four sticks. Stick with two 1GB modules.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: guoziming
4 sticks would affect performance by maybe 5-8%; more importantly, though, if you get 4x512MB you would be cutting off any future memory upgrade potential, unless you are willing to replace all four sticks. Stick with two 1GB modules.

Yeah, but realistically how long is it going to be before anyone really needs 4GB - especially those people who are just now considering an inexpensive upgrade to 4x512? Never mind that DDR1 will probably be a thing of the past by that point anyway...

Edit: My point is that someone who's not necessarily willing to spend lots of money on 2x1GB right now (when they have perfectly serviceable memory to begin with), isn't going to be the type of person who will need more than 2GB any time soon. I personally used 1GB for about 2.5 years before I felt like I could make use of an upgrade...

 

[skyeclad]

Yeah, but realistically how long is it going to be before anyone really needs 4GB - especially those people who are just now considering an inexpensive upgrade to 4x512? Never mind that DDR1 will probably be a thing of the past by that point anyway...

Edit: My point is that someone who's not necessarily willing to spend lots of money on 2x1GB right now (when they have perfectly serviceable memory to begin with), isn't going to be the type of person who will need more than 2GB any time soon. I personally used 1GB for about 2.5 years before I felt like I could make use of an upgrade...

Synthdude, I have to agree, I'm not willing to discard perfectly good memory(or eBay) right now and 2GB is probably all that I care about for the life of this MoBo. Beyond that, I'll probably be upgrading the Mobo, CPU, RAM, etc. However, with that being said, my main goal is to make sure that 4x512MB isn't going to slow down what I do 85% of the time just so that I can speed things up when I'm doing something memory intensive, like batching RAW files.

The bottom line, my hope PC is mostly spent photo developing and gaming, both of which should benefit from 2GB. If 4X512MB with 2T and potentially slower memory timings isn't going to be much faster then maybe I will stick with 2X512MB. Really, 2x1GB is kind of off the table right now.

 

[Duvie]

For photoshop get the 2gb....2t timings will effect gaming performance, but if you do more then run 3dmock or benchmark you may never notice....



To the guy above populating all dimms has always been an inhibitor when it has come to ocing...technically I am not sure why....I have had and tried it in several boards including my current neo2.....My dimms 3-4 could not do the same timings and had issues with dividers that worked before....I also speculate power draw on the board can be an issue...

ONe thing to try is raise vdimm at least .1v from default (for the ram)...This may be difficult on same brands that dont like raising voltage much....

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: skyeclad

Yeah, but realistically how long is it going to be before anyone really needs 4GB - especially those people who are just now considering an inexpensive upgrade to 4x512? Never mind that DDR1 will probably be a thing of the past by that point anyway...

Edit: My point is that someone who's not necessarily willing to spend lots of money on 2x1GB right now (when they have perfectly serviceable memory to begin with), isn't going to be the type of person who will need more than 2GB any time soon. I personally used 1GB for about 2.5 years before I felt like I could make use of an upgrade...

Synthdude, I have to agree, I'm not willing to discard perfectly good memory(or eBay) right now and 2GB is probably all that I care about for the life of this MoBo. Beyond that, I'll probably be upgrading the Mobo, CPU, RAM, etc. However, with that being said, my main goal is to make sure that 4x512MB isn't going to slow down what I do 85% of the time just so that I can speed things up when I'm doing something memory intensive, like batching RAW files.

The bottom line, my hope PC is mostly spent photo developing and gaming, both of which should benefit from 2GB. If 4X512MB with 2T and potentially slower memory timings isn't going to be much faster then maybe I will stick with 2X512MB. Really, 2x1GB is kind of off the table right now.

Well, my experience is that I noticed absolutely no slowdowns in upgrading from 2x512MB to 4x512MB. I do a fair amount of gaming (when I can find the time to do so ), and I honestly believe that the minimal performance hits you incur in going from 1T to 2T are something that no one would ever notice in real usage, assuming they don't stare at an FPS counter instead of play a game of course (and even then it would be small...)

If you do a lot of heavy photo manipulation, it sounds like you could definitely make use of 2GB of RAM. You didn't mention whether or not you were overclocking your CPU, but my experience was that adding the extra 2x512MB didn't affect my CPU overclock at all - I'm still running 2.6GHz with no problems (260x10 with a 166MHz memory divider so that the RAM runs at ~216MHz...if I were trying to run my RAM at a higher speed it might possibly turn into an issue, I can't say either way since I haven't tried and don't need to or care to run the RAM at really high speeds to get the overclocks I want).

Overall, the $55 I paid for my second gig of RAM was probably the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade I've done in a long while (perhaps tied with the $55 250GB hard drive I also recently bought to serve as a dedicated drive for HDTV recording/encoding workspace ). If you're running your RAM at stock, or not too far above stock, then I'd say go for the extra 2x512MB without hesitation.

 

[AkumaX]

are there any reviews that show performance hits of 4 x 512mb vs 2 x 512mb? what about 1 x 1gb in 1ch and 2 x 512mb in 2ch?

 

[sxr7171]

How many people here have really seen a peak commit charge of greater than 1GB?

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: sxr7171
How many people here have really seen a peak commit charge of greater than 1GB?

when I play WoW and use Azureus and mr. memory hog firefox

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: sxr7171
How many people here have really seen a peak commit charge of greater than 1GB?

when I play WoW and use Azureus and mr. memory hog firefox

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily take a whole lot anymore. 1GB is surely still fine for lots of people, but it's not nearly as hard to "use up" as it was a year or two ago. Needless to say, simultaneous encoding and gaming sends my peak commit charge way over 1GB, but even sometimes when I would just play a game and keep Firefox and maybe a few other small things open, I'd quickly hit 1GB and then get a lot of page file hits. It's not at all "necessary" yet for standard computing, but it sure is nice to have if you can make use of it. And, if you can cheaply upgrade from 1GB to 2GB (which is basically the theme of this thread ), you potentially remove a lot of hitches and/or increase performance for not a whole lot of money.

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: sxr7171
How many people here have really seen a peak commit charge of greater than 1GB?

when I play WoW and use Azureus and mr. memory hog firefox

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily take a whole lot anymore. 1GB is surely still fine for lots of people, but it's not nearly as hard to "use up" as it was a year or two ago. Needless to say, simultaneous encoding and gaming sends my peak commit charge way over 1GB, but even sometimes when I would just play a game and keep Firefox and maybe a few other small things open, I'd quickly hit 1GB and then get a lot of page file hits. It's not at all "necessary" yet for standard computing, but it sure is nice to have if you can make use of it. And, if you can cheaply upgrade from 1GB to 2GB (which is basically the theme of this thread ), you potentially remove a lot of hitches and/or increase performance for not a whole lot of money.

yeah.. if i had 2gb i'd definitely turn off my page file. i turned it off when i had a gb, but eventually with more power user computer usage, had to turn it back on

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: AkumaX
yeah.. if i had 2gb i'd definitely turn off my page file. i turned it off when i had a gb, but eventually with more power user computer usage, had to turn it back on

I hear so many conflicting reports on what's best for that, that I just leave it on for now (at a fixed size). I doubt I'd ever go over 2GB RAM usage any time soon (though I have come surprisingly close, like 300-400MB free RAM), so I wonder if it would even make any difference to disable the file (other than gaining a bit of free HDD space, which I could always make use of...). As it is, I assume that the Windows memory management is working correctly and not using the paging file when I clearly have lots of free RAM...

 

[Creideike]

Thank you all for the inforamative replies.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: sxr7171
How many people here have really seen a peak commit charge of greater than 1GB?

Battlefield 2, Eve, and Star Wars Galaxies have all given me a peak commit charge above 1gb.

 

[skyeclad]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Overall, the $55 I paid for my second gig of RAM was probably the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade I've done in a long while (perhaps tied with the $55 250GB hard drive I also recently bought to serve as a dedicated drive for HDTV recording/encoding workspace ). If you're running your RAM at stock, or not too far above stock, then I'd say go for the extra 2x512MB without hesitation.

I haven't OC'd my memory yet so I'm not pushing the limits by any means. I'm going to check on my peak commit to see how often I push 1GB. If it's often enough, then I'm sure 4 sticks would be faster than the swapfile.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
You will be limited to 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's pretty much it. I've been running 4x512 for a month now (maybe a bit more), and I have absolutely no regrets. 2T is something like a 3% performance hit in the real world (or less), and the speed-up from not having to constantly page to the hard drive completely outweighs the small latency increase. If you don't need 2GB at all, ever, then sure, don't bother upgrading...but if you do, I wouldn't be scared off from 4x512 like a lot of people in this forum would have you be.

You're using the asrock board correct? I'm in the same boat as you were...but I can't run 1t with 2 sticks in the first place, so I'm not even sure if there IS any reason for me to be concerned.

 

[PAP]

I get way over 1 gb. Even with 2gb and doing photoshop (well, Paint shop pro actually) I get large pagefile useage.

 

[superHARD]

I'm running 4x512 in my server...It is at 1T...I have never ever had a lock up or anything like that.

I'm using Corsair VS ram and running it OC'ed too...3200 memory at like 220mhz and at 1T...

 

[skyeclad]

I'm running 4x512 in my server...It is at 1T...I have never ever had a lock up or anything like that.

What kind of Mobo do you have?