is 12GB RAM overkill?

[Lonbjerg]

If I run a virtual machine and do some gaming with encoding in the background I break 10GB (including cached stuff)

 

[FishAk]

Windows Superfetch will use all the RAM you have, and the more you have, the faster your system will be- regardless of whether your open applications use it. It comes down to price, and in this regard, your SSD is cheaper per GB. Still, W7 x64 will put all your available RAM to use all the time.

 

[DJFuji]

Update: So I did the 12gigs (3x4gb) with the i7 930 and 5850 on my existing Intel SSD.

This thing SCREAMS. I swear to god it boots in about 30 seconds and everything I do is instant. I can't even get CPU usage to go above 5 or 10% unless im encoding video. Firefox used to regularly chew up 50% CPU but it can't even phase the 930.

Oh and it's a good damn thing i got 12 gigs. I'm using 6 gigs right now with a VERY light load (office apps, sony vegas, firefox). Granted, FF is taking up almost 2 gigs by itself lol...

Wait til i throw a VM and photoshop into the mix.

P.S. The 5850 is buggy as hell. I had to o/c it in 2D to get rid of 2nd monitor tearing/flickering (common issue apparently) and my 2nd monitor is still refusing to activate when I take the system out of standby. I have to manually turn it off and on again. Surprised Anand didn't take note of that in his guides.

 

[brandonwh64]

12gb's nAAA! try 81GBs

[/QUOTE]

 

[Dadofamunky]

Getting higher density sticks is worth the price difference IMHO. Photoshop and Premiere alone, aside from the 3D stuff, will eat up as much RAM as you have. I think Faxon is right abt the 1333 RAM as well. Looks you made the right decision. I'm jealous.

 

[faxon]

Getting higher density sticks is worth the price difference IMHO. Photoshop and Premiere alone, aside from the 3D stuff, will eat up as much RAM as you have. I think Faxon is right abt the 1333 RAM as well.

my friend shmee got his 980X ES to 4.3GHz on water using 6GB of supertalent DDR3 1333 C9, so yea im pretty sure im right about that :awe:. at the frys store i work at, i always make sure we have a reasonably priced ($500 for 12gb $300 for 8gb) 4gb dimm kit in stock for the reasons noted. there's a lot of demand in the professional adobe suite space for that memory, and we never have it in stock when they want it if me and my supervisor dont hand count it and order it before we run out. we generally only get 3-5 in stock at a time max, and only 2-3 980X as well. right now if you want a 980X CPU, you cant get one at any frys in california except sacremento for example, but thats the fault of our having just done inventory and not ordering more stock. it may seem expensive, but it sells surprisingly well considering the price/performance ratio on it vs what most people usually need

 

[Skott]

12gb's nAAA! try 81GBs

[/QUOTE]

Wow! And just the other day I was telling the guys over at HF I'd like to see a 24GB RAM build on the new ASUS mATX Rampage III Gene just to see how well it works.

 

[ctark]

In my previous system I use 8gb with my Q6600, and there would be times I used a good portion of it. When I upgraded to I7 i couldnt imagine downgrading to 6gb. I went with 12gb and I've had instances where I've used 8gb, (vitual machines). I guess it just depends on what you do. I like to keep a lot of stuff running and 12gb has been really nice in letting me do that.

 

[Chaotic42]

I upgraded to 12GB after alt-tabbing in APB slowed my system to a dead-crawl. We're talking several minutes to bring up another app. Now it seems flawless.

 

[DominionSeraph]

>30 seconds to boot with a 930 and SSD
>6GB RAM usage with light load.

Ha! Glad I'm still running XP.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

>30 seconds to boot with a 930 and SSD
>6GB RAM usage with light load.

Ha! Glad I'm still running XP.

No kidding. Those damn bloated programs thinking they need lots of RAM! 4GB is enough for *all* my programs. Well, except that you don't get all 4 with XP, so... 3.5GB is enough for *all* my programs. Except sometimes when I try to run lots of them at once it seems like my computer is really slow. But I'm not sure why.

 

[DominionSeraph]

No kidding. Those damn bloated programs thinking they need lots of RAM! 4GB is enough for *all* my programs. Well, except that you don't get all 4 with XP, so... 3.5GB is enough for *all* my programs. Except sometimes when I try to run lots of them at once it seems like my computer is really slow. But I'm not sure why.

Get better programs.

Running Failfox while burning with Nero, torrenting with Vuze ("protected" by Mcafee), and watching videos on Windows Media Player while using Adobe Reader to browse a pdf you opened from Outlook, and then wondering why you're running into your swapfile...

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Get better programs.

Running Failfox while burning with Nero, torrenting with Vuze ("protected" by Mcafee), and watching videos on Windows Media Player while using Adobe Reader to browse a pdf you opened from Outlook, and then wondering why you're running into your swapfile...

Get better programs. That's funny. How about a better OS? Yeah, I've already got one. I think everyone but you knows I was being sarcastic and making fun of an oblivious XP-holdout.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Get better programs. That's funny. How about a better OS?

What, needing +$1000 in hardware to keep boot times under a minute just for an upgraded security model?
I'm smart enough to stay out of trouble when logged in as Admin. I guess you're not. Have fun when UAC asks you if you're sure you want to wipe your ass after taking a dump.

 

[Voo]

What, needing +$1000 in hardware to keep boot times under a minute just for an upgraded security model?
I'm smart enough to stay out of trouble when logged in as Admin. I guess you're not. Have fun when UAC asks you if you're sure you want to wipe your ass after taking a dump.

Nah he's probably just smart enough to check that XP64 isn't something you want to use (yep those drivers still aren't that great), you can turn off UAC if you want to, the way better scheduler and so on. You're obviously just flexible enough to change your OS every other decade

And we don't talk about the obvious thought errors like.. how exactly the OS having anything to do with how much RAM programs need or the fact that "failfox" obviously needs less RAM/tab than chrome.


You don't have to upgrade an ancient OS if you're fine with it, but don't tell others who do that they can't handle their PCs, just because they like features a decade old OS doesn't have..

 

[LokutusofBorg]

What, needing +$1000 in hardware to keep boot times under a minute just for an upgraded security model?
I'm smart enough to stay out of trouble when logged in as Admin. I guess you're not. Have fun when UAC asks you if you're sure you want to wipe your ass after taking a dump.

Windows 7 is the best operating system I've ever used, and I've been using and programming computers since the 286 days. You are a clueless tool if you think XP is superior to Windows 7 in any way that matters to normal people. Get over the Vista grudge, the rest of humanity is well beyond it at this point.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Windows 7 is the best operating system I've ever used, and I've been using and programming computers since the 286 days. You are a clueless tool if you think XP is superior to Windows 7 in any way that matters to normal people. Get over the Vista grudge, the rest of humanity is well beyond it at this point.

What's your issue with Vista?
I have a Vista box. Got the OS for $10 from Dell, and it works fine. It needs a Raptor to keep boots under control, and file transfers are still not something I want to think about, but it's certainly worth the $10.
It's not superior to XP though.

Windows 7 needing a SSD and high-end quad-core to achieve 30 seconds boots and 6GB of ram for light usage would also not put it above XP.
I get 23 second boots of a 800JB. Yes, a hard drive that was released in 2002. And my commit charge is almost always under 1GB, leaving tons of ram for the cache. XP may not have Superfetch, but that doesn't mean a program disappears from RAM upon close. And with XP's speed, it's no big deal if you have flushed something out. Oh no -- 2 seconds for the browser to come up. 0.2 seconds for Notepad and calculator. Kill me now. [/sarcasm]

E: Just tested, it's 6 seconds for Chrome upon fresh boot. That's slower than I though. I guess that's because the only time I see it is after a power outage takes down my S3.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I'm going to go with the tool option here. Reading a thread so you know what a discussion is even about is generally good form.

 

[Voo]

Windows 7 needing a SSD and high-end quad-core to achieve 30 seconds boots and 6GB of ram for light usage would also not put it above XP.
I get 23 second boots of a 800JB.

Ah luckily for this comparisons it's not as if any other programs or hardware specifications could change the time needed to boot an OS.
Aside from the fact that nobody said when we start and stop counting, that really must be the best way to measure an OS!

And apart from prefetching applications and data (which XP doesn't do in that form), the OS can't really noticeably affect the bootup time of applications - how should it do that?

PS: Complaining about FF using that much RAM and then using chrome is hilarious btw.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Ah luckily for this comparisons it's not as if any other programs or hardware specifications could change the time needed to boot an OS.

If a driver or service was hanging, that would be the opposite of a system which "SCREAMS."

Try to keep up.

Aside from the fact that nobody said when we start and stop counting, that really must be the best way to measure an OS!

I count from hitting the power switch to when my hard drive goes quiet and CPU is at 0%, so "30 seconds" is not going to beat my 23 seconds unless you start counting over 7 seconds before you hit the switch.
Will your system beat mine if you start counting 7 seconds before you hit the switch?

And apart from prefetching applications and data (which XP doesn't do in that form), the OS can't really noticeably affect the bootup time of applications

Oh, like how it can't affect file transfer times?

PS: Complaining about FF using that much RAM and then using chrome is hilarious btw.

I just installed it and about:memoried, and look at that. It does use less RAM. It even uses less HDD space.

I assumed its speed issues were due to it being bloated and thus requiring more time to transfer a greater quantity of data. Seems I was wrong. I guess it's just poorly written.

Oh my, will you look at that? It seems that there is something that Firefox accomplishes quickly.
Uninstallation.

 

[Lonbjerg]

>30 seconds to boot with a 930 and SSD
>6GB RAM usage with light load.

Ha! Glad I'm still running XP.

Unused RAM is wasted RAM

It's not like using 8GB of my 12 GB makes my PC any slower...infact it's the opposite...

 

[Lonbjerg]

If a driver or service was hanging, that would be the opposite of a system which "SCREAMS."

Try to keep up.



I count from hitting the power switch to when my hard drive goes quiet and CPU is at 0%, so "30 seconds" is not going to beat my 23 seconds unless you start counting over 7 seconds before you hit the switch.
Will your system beat mine if you start counting 7 seconds before you hit the switch?



Oh, like how it can't affect file transfer times?



I just installed it and about:memoried, and look at that. It does use less RAM. It even uses less HDD space.

I assumed its speed issues were due to it being bloated and thus requiring more time to transfer a greater quantity of data. Seems I was wrong. I guess it's just poorly written.

Oh my, will you look at that? It seems that there is something that Firefox accomplishes quickly.
Uninstallation.

Now that my Windows 7 is so stable that I can't remeber the last time I rebooted (even GFX-driver installs goes without a reboot), I can't be arsed to due so an..."old" meassure...

But I will pitch my performance in Apps against yours...especially when multitasking...

 

[billyb0b]

go for 12 if you can afford it

i did 12 because i can. not sure if i'll ever tax it enough but it's there if need be

 

[Voo]

If a driver or service was hanging, that would be the opposite of a system which "SCREAMS."

I count from hitting the power switch to when my hard drive goes quiet and CPU is at 0%, so "30 seconds" is not going to beat my 23 seconds unless you start counting over 7 seconds before you hit the switch.
Will your system beat mine if you start counting 7 seconds before you hit the switch?

Oh THAT'S great, you count the whole BIOS startup time as well! Now that's obviously perfectly fine to compare between different hardware.
And not to forget all those things like background processes or services that may or may not be loaded depending solely on the user and not on the OS.

You can't reasonably compare two completely different installs, with different hardware, different programs, different services with each other and expect to get any kind of useful result.

Oh, like how it can't affect file transfer times?

Ahm what exactly has the file transfer time to do with the bootup time of a program? Nothing. Oh but file transfer is a great example why Win7 is just better than XP: You still get all the old APIs that were available in XP (so if you want to, you can just use those, though they were tweaked a bit) and you get some nice new ones that depending on the specific workload will be faster.
If you think that the Win XP explorer file transfer is much faster than the Vista/Win7 one, than that has not much to do with the OS itself, but more importantly - you most probably just didn't understand the differences between the two versions and what really is going on (well I grant you that the whole cached file I/O and write back thread stuff isn't that obvious)

I just installed it and about:memoried, and look at that. It does use less RAM. It even uses less HDD space.

The reason why chrome needs more RAM/tab is that it uses single processes for every tab, which has great advantages (and is the by far better implementation from a security standpoint) but obviously needs more RAM.
Another thing is that FF also counted memory needed by plugins (I'm looking at you flash) for a long time, while other browsers did not (that is not in the <browsername>.exe process).

That all has absolutely nothing to do with startup time or sluggishness - that most often depends on some amok running plugins - you just can't deduct from one thing to the other. But we're drifting apart, just to show that if someone doesn't know the intrinsics of a situation he better shouldn't make claims that he can't backup in a sensible manner.