8 gigs vs 16 gigs

[Melanie]

for gaming set up i have 8 gigs now but with the great deal at the egg has i can add 8 more gigs total of 16 gigs of ram ... my question is is it over kill or just planing ahead ..i also plan on updateing to eighter the new intell or amd cpu . mother board in the short short time frame ..when Bd comes out .. trying to plan ahead also with these price. it cant be bad right ????


thanks

 

[dma0991]

8GB of RAM is a lot to work with already and getting 16GB of RAM is certainly overkill for the regular user or gamer. If you think it is a bargain then get it for maybe another rig or something in that context.

 

[insurgent]

My impression is unless you're rendering or video editing and the like, 4gb is usually enough. I'm a renderer and 4gb is lacking for me so I upgraded to 8gb and observed if I needed more; turns out I really don't since around 2gb is still left when rendering my heavier scenes. I imagine HD video editing would need more.

 

[noblemo]

Try using a system monitor tool to see whether your existing memory is max'd out under heavy load.

 

[Emulex]

8gb is $39 - 16gb is great!

 

[cmanser7]

8gb is $39 - 16gb is great!

Can you link the $39 8GB of memory you are seeing?

Thanks

 

[Emulex]

hmm seems like its $49 now. check corsair deals on fry's - in-store - or microcenter -instore- B&M deals always better than online. of course after rebate. there was 6gb for $59 recently too (after rebate). you know the drill deals change every day. get your pricegrabber notify on

 

[Melanie]

heres the ram i was talking about adding more to my system again i have 8 gigs but fort his price with code i would only pay like 109 thats shipped for 8 more gigs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145327

 

[Emulex]

thats junk ram 1.65V default voltage. why do you need 1600? 1333 works fine.

1. you don't need heatsinks if you don't overvolt/clock
2. 1.50v for standard ddr3 (higher failed at 1.50)

I have 1.50V ddr3-1333 ecc in a server and all 18 DIMMS have no heatsinks

 

[SickBeast]

The more memory you have, the more stuff gets cached into it. Really you can never have enough.

I enjoy using a ramdisk to put my temp folders and scratch drives on.

 

[Melanie]

i dont understand the big difference between the 1.65 vs the 1.50 v there u talk about Emulex whats the different and also why not get the 1600 vs 1333 for the upgrade on the next build ....

 

[Soundmanred]

16GB of RAM is overkill

 

[SickBeast]

16GB of RAM is overkill

We'll see if you say that in a year or two when DDR3 is a dying platform and it costs $20+/gig.

 

[LagunaX]

There is a difference from 4gb to 8gb with loading and running modern games.
I doubt you will ever touch more than 8gb though in usage.
Save your money for another upgrade.

 

[Soundmanred]

We'll see if you say that in a year or two when DDR3 is a dying platform and it costs $20+/gig.

Then I'll be buying DDR4 or whatever the new stuff is. Why would I buy old RAM? I don't invest in dying platforms.
It was a question of usage, not future economics.

 

[TheDarkKnight]

Some of the posts on here I have to disagree with. Please, if you make claims at least offer an explanation of why you believe what you do. Otherwise, it doesn't really help anybody. Just because you can live comfortably on 8GB of RAM doesn't mean that everybody can. I believe that it is always better to have too much memory than not enough. I am also a person that likes to have as many programs loaded at once as my system will allow. To say that there is no video game that requires over 8GB to run maybe true but maybe somebody like myself wants to run that game alongside my "Windows Media Center", along IE9 with 20-30 open tabs, along side lots of other software. All I am saying is that whether or not 16GB of memory is overkill is relative to each individuals own wants. Remember what Bill Gates once said, “640K of memory should be enough for anybody.” So all you people who think 16GB is overkill, keep on thinking that. I'll see you on the other side.

Please explain why RAM is junk if it operates at 1.65V. Maybe Patriot and Corsair are flyby night companies who just fell off the turnip truck? And why tell somebody they don't need 1600MHz memory? Its not that much more expensive than 1333MHz so why not get it.

​

 

[Concillian]

16GB is not always overkill
but
16GB for a gaming rig is definitely overkill.

There are few, VERY FEW games that use more than 2GB. You're not running out of 8GB (or even 4GB) while gaming unless you're running a lot of games simultaneously and alt-tabbing between them. Or you're doing something else memory intensive in the background.

Eventually everyone will have 16GB, yadda yadda arguments:

Game tech moves slow in this regard. Memory doesn't scale with game options well, and they have to program games for a common denominator. That common denominator right now is 4GB. Any game that would benefit from more than 8GB will lock out an extremely large portion of potential customers (those with 4GB or less) due to the memory requirement, they can't really make use of 8GB but scale back so performance is 'acceptable' with 4, so games still perform perfect with 4GB.

Eventually that common denominator will be 8GB, but it's not that yet. 8GB will give you years on a gaming machine. 16GB is just ludicrous unless you're doing something else with the machine that requires the additional memory

4GB is enough for a gaming rig.
8GB is building for the future and taking advantage of inexpensive RAM.
16GB for a gaming rig is like buying a dozen roses for your computer. You're wasting money, but it might make you feel better.

 

[SickBeast]

You know what's nice about 16gb for gaming? You can run 2 or 3 different games and they'll always be in memory so long as you don't reboot your computer. The games that you play the most will load up instantaneously. Not only that, but you won't get any disk thrashing when you alt-tab out of one or even when you quit the game. To me that's a big deal.

 

[jjmIII]

Mo' memory mo' problems....isn't that the old saying?

I vote 16gb for e-penis alone!

 

[heymrdj]

I moved from 2x2GB to 2x4GB (8GB) for my rig (gaming and vmware). I put those 2x2 in my girls computer so she has 4x2GB. I'm thinking of getting another set of 2x4GB and going 16GB cause I still max out 8 all the time. The prices are starting to get good. DDR3-1600 on an overclocked 1050T. Delicious!

 

[Phynaz]

One word:

Ramdisk.

 

[sswingle]

I have 12GB in my editing system and Premiere Pro CS5 managed to use 8GB by itself while rendering.

 

[pcunite]

If you plan on buying RamDisk 11, a battery UPS, and don't reboot your machine often, then yes 16GB would be very nice as you could install software directly into RAM and it would be crazy fast to load things.

 

[996GT2]

You really don't need more than 8 GB for most normal uses. With 8 GB I can photoshop while batch processing images in Lightroom 3 and still have some RAM left

 

[magomago]

for gaminng 16 gigs is mos def overkill. I have 16 gigs and its just ridiculous lol. I haven't gone over 5-6 gigs, and that is when I was stiching around 40 14MP photos together. I think I came near 7 when I opened up several games at the same time (all still played smoothly though).

If you are gaming I'd stick with 8 gigs. 8 gigs is still extremely overkill imo, but you don't have to spend more. You'd benefit from other stuff. Of course if you got $$ to burn, then sure go for 16 gigs, but I'd rather get 4x of the same stick; I've seen mobos have more issues filling in all banks of ram with different kind of sticks.