8 gigs vs 16 gigs

[LamTek]

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.

That sounds pretty cool but I just got a nice new 256 GB SSD, so I wonder if it would still help some....

 

[bunnyfubbles]

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

did you not see how that's CAS7 RAM? Most 1.5v or lower DDR3-1600 is CAS9

I'd bet quite a bit of money this ram will do 1600 @ CAS9 w/ 1.5v easy

 

[Concillian]

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.

This is pretty true with 8GB too.

I haven't seen a game that takes up more than about 1.5 gigs. I think people don't realize just how much memory headroom is available on an 8GB gaming machine. There are plenty of apps that eat memory, but games... not so much.

 

[bradley]

1.5v is the JEDEC standard spec for DDR3, 1.8v for DDR2. So yeah, 1.65v DDR3 is lower grade stuff with higher power consumption.

As far as 8GB vs. 16GB, look at your task manager and available memory throughout the day. Between my ramdisk, disabled swapfile, and overall usage, I use at least 12G+.

 

[Emulex]

we'll never need more than 640k

 

[Hyperlite]

1.5v is the JEDEC standard spec for DDR3, 1.8v for DDR2. So yeah, 1.65v DDR3 is lower grade stuff with higher power consumption.

As far as 8GB vs. 16GB, look at your task manager and available memory throughout the day. Between my ramdisk, disabled swapfile, and overall usage, I use at least 12G+.

This gets tossed around a lot, but what do you keep on your ramdisk and what do you use to manage it? Dataram RAMdisk?

 

[bunnyfubbles]

1.5v is the JEDEC standard spec for DDR3, 1.8v for DDR2. So yeah, 1.65v DDR3 is lower grade stuff with higher power consumption.

As far as 8GB vs. 16GB, look at your task manager and available memory throughout the day. Between my ramdisk, disabled swapfile, and overall usage, I use at least 12G+.

again, this is CAS7 ram, not CAS9, which is not JDEC standard either. Back it down to CAS9 and I would be shocked if it couldn't do it at 1.5v if not lower.

 

[jiffylube1024]

For normal home users, 8GB is overkill. 16GB is just a waste.

If you don't have an SSD yet, THAT's how you address the computer speed bottleneck.

 

[Rvenger]

again, this is CAS7 ram, not CAS9, which is not JDEC standard either. Back it down to CAS9 and I would be shocked if it couldn't do it at 1.5v if not lower.

Look in my Sig. I run 12gb of XMS3 rated at 1.65v with an SPD timing of 9-9-9-24. I run the memory at 1.5v. Plus if you run the memory at 1333, it is 1.5v memory. This memory by all means is not junk. Corsair has it on rebate now and when Newegg throws it on sale + the rebate, it makes the memory very low in price for 1600 rated memory.

 

[jimhsu]

If you scratch out gaming and put in "game development", then 8GB or even 16GB becomes a reasonable proposition. With game development, you might have multiple instances of a game open at once (each using more than 1G), a 3D modeling program (2G), Photoshop (1G), source textures, Visual C++, something like Premiere Pro or After Effects if you're doing machinima, blah blah blah. If you're a big MMO fan, you might also multibox (log onto several accounts at once) and use memory that way.

But it really depends on your usage model. For simple gaming ... no you're unlikely to need 8GB at this present time.

 

[Edrick]

You can never have too much RAM. Sure you may not need it all, but it doesn't hurt. And if price is not an issue for you, then by all means get more.

 

[LamTek]

Adding more RAM can slow down your system slightly in terms of extra latency and each stick can be the equivalent of another hard drive in terms of power consumption.

 

[TJCS]

I think 6GB or 8GB is more than adequate for norma/gamingl usage. Unless your are running VMware or other apps thats require memory.

 

[Lonbjerg]

*snip* Remember what Bill Gates once said, “640K of memory should be enough for anybody.”

*snip*


That is actually an urban myth...let it die please.

 

[Makaveli]

Adding more RAM can slow down your system slightly in terms of extra latency and each stick can be the equivalent of another hard drive in terms of power consumption.

This is mostly true if you buy cheap memory.

Look at the sticks in my rig that's 12gb's at 7-8-7-20 1t because I went with matchings sticks I didn't have to change anything related to memory timings when I upgraded from 6GB.

Memory is cheap these days if you can afford it do it, as others have said you can never have enough ram.

 

[Makaveli]

This gets tossed around a lot, but what do you keep on your ramdisk and what do you use to manage it? Dataram RAMdisk?

I have my Browser caches and windows temp files on my Ramdisc.

I also run quite a few VM's

I use Ramdisc Plus works great.

 

[sLaYDeMOn]

what sickbeast said is above is what i agree w/ most.

you can never have enough ram, never. there will always be more programs that you don't have to close, and can leave open. Games are an excellent example, as well as editing tools such as premiere and photoshop.

I usually have 30-40 tabs open in chrome, and with everything else running, that usually runs me at around 3gigs when page file is off (always turn page file off.) Adding left 4 dead increases it to 4-5 gigs. I minimize left4dead and do some more browsing, i'm at 6-7 gigs already.

Ram is awesome. Wish i could get 16gigs for my sager laptop.