I'm planning to upgrade my pc, and currently have 4Gx2 DDR3 1333 RAM (MEM 4Gx2|PNY MD8192KD3-1333 R). Should I upgrade to 8GB of DDR3 1600 RAM or just keep my current RAM?
I wouldn't. No way are you going to see a performance difference in daily usage. Not enough to justify the cost anyway.
On a side note what are you doing with that 2500k you're using now? You plan on selling it?
If you aren't sure, chances are the answer is no.
How much RAM can you actually use?
If at 16GB there's lots of paging, 32GB would be the next step. Same reason anyone ever needs more RAM: being able to utilize more than they have. If you can't use it, though, it's not going to be of any help.His board maxes out at 32. I just posted above.....and, that he might consider doubling what he has.
He could even double that......but why anyone needs 32 I do not understand.
If at 16GB there's lots of paging, 32GB would be the next step. Same reason anyone ever needs more RAM: being able to utilize more than they have. If you can't use it, though, it's not going to be of any help.
His board maxes out at 32. I just posted above.....and, that he might consider doubling what he has.
He could even double that......but why anyone needs 32 I do not understand.
I already answered your question about the ram. An i5-4670 should net you a few more fps and a little bit less power consumption but at what price? The 2500 is still a very nice cpu.I'm actually good with the 8 I already have, just wasn't sure if there was a noticeable difference in gaming to go with the 1600 over 1333.
I was planning to upgrade my CPU to an i5-4670K, do you think it is worth it or should I wait?
And yeah, I love the monitor but have been thinking about getting a 27" - 30" for more real estate.
I'm actually good with the 8 I already have, just wasn't sure if there was a noticeable difference in gaming to go with the 1600 over 1333.
I was planning to upgrade my CPU to an i5-4670K, do you think it is worth it or should I wait?
Photographic processing such as stitched panoramas, etc.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-Memory-Optimization-182/page4
I set up my current with 32 GB, when I started running into memory problems I switched to one stick of the 8GB. Other than having to run it a lot slower than it was rated for most of the normal stuff I do was fine.
When even that single stick started having even more issues, I RMA the lot of them and in the mean time I tried running 4GB only to have things run really slow and too much multi tasking or even single programs needing more ram caused issues, so I put in the third stick of 2GB ram and a lot of the issues went away. So I tend to recommend any one running a 64 bit OS, to run 4GB for the OS, 2GB for the graphic card to be able to swap textures to system memory rather than your hard drive, and 2GB for programs to use. Which gives you a base number of 8GB of system memory.
In your case I would just grab a single stick of 8GB and work from there. The best way to see if you need more ram is run Process Explorer when you are running your normal usage, and see if you break 70%, in memory or cpu, if you do you are hitting a bottleneck and need more breathing room, because unless you are equal across the board you generally will not max at 90 to 100% because the system is not feeding data fast enough.
If you are below 70% you generally are not bottlenecked unless the system is so bogged down that it is sluggish. If it is that bad generally you will not reliable data as the system collecting the data is being distorted. My system with 4GB in it was not maxing out but it was also taking too long to swap between programs because it was swapping everything to the disk, which is bad for the disk and a lot slower.
Now ya'all have me questioning whether I should wait on my upgrade lol. I will start a different thread specifically on that question. Thanks for the great info, especially the references to Process Explorer and cpu benchmarks.