Upgrading to 24GB of RAM....

[DJFuji]

A few years ago I asked if 12gb of RAM was excessive. Turns out, 12gb was IDEAL. And now here we are again with the next evolution of upgrades.

My win7 setup uses about 4-5 gigs of RAM on boot (with basic apps I always have open -- outlook, skype x 2, evernote, etc. -- does not include browser).

But when I open chrome (granted, with a lot of tabs open), memory usage shoots up to 11-12GB. I've googled around for why chrome uses up so much ram, but everyone seems to say the same thing -- because it's programmed to be a mem hog and thats why the performance is so good.

Fine, i guess we're going to 24gb then.

First, my specs:

Core i7 730
Gigabyte GA-X58A UD3R v2.0
12gb G.Skill RAM (3x4gb) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231356
Win 7 x64

Now what i'm wondering is if i should:

a) buy the exact same memory from new egg again ($80) to make 6x4gb = 24gb

or

b) Remove the existing 12gb DDR3 and replace with 3x8gb of rougly equivalent corsair ram. (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-1x8GB-.../dp/B006XB56VI) ($120)

I don't recall reading anything where using all the mem slots up causes it to run at a slower speed. I think that was something that used to only happen on older systems?

Thoughts?

 

[postmortemIA]

I am afraid is that Chrome stores pages into RAM and does not free it as long as you have any free RAM left. Simply because it is quicker to load already parsed data, in the case that you go back to that page. Thus increasing RAM won't necessarily lead to better performance, as it has diminishing returns. I doubt any other piece of software you use is such memory hog.

 

[DJFuji]

Yeah that makes sense, but it appears that chrome doesn't free up the RAM when it's needed by other programs. The machine instead seems to try to use the swap file (slowing everything down). With Chrome open, i'm regularly using ~11.8gb of RAM.

 

[spinejam]

Yeah that makes sense, but it appears that chrome doesn't free up the RAM when it's needed by other programs. The machine instead seems to try to use the swap file (slowing everything down). With Chrome open, i'm regularly using ~11.8gb of RAM.

Wow!

 

[postmortemIA]

Yeah, I say that too, these must be some special web pages. Just for test, I opened 135 bookmarks as tabs in Chrome, and I still had 3GB left from 8GB of total RAM.

 

[tweakboy]

Don't bother doing this UNLESS. You are a video editor or audio production....

 

[tweakboy]

You will in no way use all that 24GB ..... unless youw anna lanch like 12 games at once....... lol

 

[DJFuji]

I have 9 tabs open for a total of 2 gigs of physical ram usage. When I start managing upward of 50 tabs, chrome can start eating all available ram.

The issue is pretty highly documented on their site: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113983

 

[davidthemaster3]

Let's not forget that Windows 7 also uses unused RAM as cache (you can see how much in the performance tab in the Task Manager). I have 16Gb of RAM and Windows uses as much a 3Gb as cache sometimes.

I'm at work at the moment, but chrome stills uses a least 1 Gb for me

 

[Phynaz]

What version of Win7? Home only supports 16GB.

 

[randomrogue]

24GB of ram to run Chrome? Hmm....

 

[dawks]

24GB of ram to run Chrome? Hmm....

Yea, something isn't right here...

 

[nenforcer]

I'm not sure your X58 motherboard can even support 8GB DIMMS. The most those boards could support was 24GB across all 6 DIMM slots in a 6 x 4 GB configuration.

Check to see if you motherboard can even handle the full 24GB, as a lot of motherboards which claim to support a peak amount have difficulty getting it to actually work.

 

[DJFuji]

Good call, nenforcer. DId some research... looks like 3x8gb *should* work, and may also support faster speeds since filling all 6 banks tends to cause the memory to run slower (as we've seen in previous chipsets).

On the other hand, at this point 6x4gb is officially supported, cheaper, and since 24gb is the max for x58 anyway, I can't really see any advantage to going with 3x8gb except for the aforementioned speed thing.

 

[Dadofamunky]

On top of everything else, Chrome is a memory hog? Looks like a big reason to ditch Chrome, except that the alternatives somehow manage to suck even more.

Mommy, why do Web browsers suck so bad?

 

[RussianSensation]

I have 9 tabs open for a total of 2 gigs of physical ram usage. When I start managing upward of 50 tabs, chrome can start eating all available ram.

The issue is pretty highly documented on their site: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113983

Something is wrong with your system. I am running 11 open tabs in Chrome and my system is only using 1.43GB of memory. I can manage more than 20 tabs under 2GB.

You should be able to run 50 tabs no problem with less than 6GB of RAM. What you need is an SSD. I've read people running 200-300 tabs in Chrome no problem with 16GB of RAM and an SSD.

Also if you have that much memory, you should get AMD RamDisk. The performance increase is huge.

The machine instead seems to try to use the swap file (slowing everything down).

Get an SSD. I am telling you right now you can run way more tabs with an SSD vs. a mechanical drive with the same amount of RAM. I remember reading an article testing this with a mechanical drive PC coming to a crawl with 25 tabs and the same system with an SSD handled 200+. Nothing else was changed. As a matter of fact when my OCZ Vertex 2 60GB failed, I had to run the OS off the Hitachi 1TB drive and my system was a dog under the same browsing usage scenarios. Out of curiousity I swapped in the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD into my backup Core 2 Duo desktop and it mopped the floor with my i5 2500K + mechanical drive when running 20 tabs open. It wasn't even close. With the mechanical drive I'd get Chrome crashing and "Non-responding" / hanging; and get this my Core 2 Duo system only has 2GB of DDR2!

Here I just ran the test on my Core 2 Duo for you. 1.90GB with 20 Tabs open in Chrome Version 24.0.1312.57. The Core 2 Duo system also has an OCZ Vertex 3 (an average SSD by today's standards).

Samsung 840 Pro, OCZ Vector, OCZ Vertex 4. Lots of great options out there.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Also if you have that much memory, you should get AMD RamDisk. The performance increase is huge.

I prefer HDD caching, it helps with all HDD usage and not just selected programs.
Even reasonably small cache can improve loading times nicely.
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/index.html

 

[BFG10K]

Yea, something isn't right here...

Agreed. A plug-in is either leaking memory or he's got some kind of virus. With just web browsing I struggle to even reach 3GB total system usage.

 

[Golgatha]

Good call, nenforcer. DId some research... looks like 3x8gb *should* work, and may also support faster speeds since filling all 6 banks tends to cause the memory to run slower (as we've seen in previous chipsets).

On the other hand, at this point 6x4gb is officially supported, cheaper, and since 24gb is the max for x58 anyway, I can't really see any advantage to going with 3x8gb except for the aforementioned speed thing.

I can confirm that the x58 chipset will work with 48GB of RAM installed. I upgraded a Matlab workstation here at work recently for a doctoral level physical chemist friend of mine. According to Intel's specs 8GB is the realistic max because of pricing and dual rank compatibility.

 

[Golgatha]

Agreed. A plug-in is either leaking memory or he's got some kind of virus. With just web browsing I struggle to even reach 3GB total system usage.

Yeah, I installed 24GB into my old X58 system mainly because RAM was dirt cheap and I could reuse the 1.5v stuff for my next system. Also, I reused the 6x2GB for a HTPC I built. Anyway, I did break past 12GB running video encoding, WinXP in a VM, and gaming all at once, but those times were few and far between. 24GB was fun to play with for caching my RAID0 array with physical RAM, but the Intel RST 64GB SSD cache (currently on Z77 chipset) is less expensive and provides a much larger cache size with really good performance.

 

[poohbear]

200-300 tabs in Chrome??? how do u ever keep track of any of those things???

 

[DJFuji]

Couple things to note here:

1. I'm already running an SSD. The old Intel x-25m 80gb from a few years ago.

2. With chrome, i believe the more memory you have, the more it uses. I have a laptop with 4gigs on it and it runs ok but i don't push it as hard as my desktop.

3. Standard load on my desktop is 5-6 gigs NOT INCLUDING chrome. Chrome itself uses another 4-5 gigs (including about a dozen plugins). This is pretty well-documented on chrome's site.

 

[Obsoleet]

Yeah that makes sense, but it appears that chrome doesn't free up the RAM when it's needed by other programs. The machine instead seems to try to use the swap file (slowing everything down). With Chrome open, i'm regularly using ~11.8gb of RAM.

WOW.

Chrome uninstalled. Thanks.

 

[beginner99]

3. Standard load on my desktop is 5-6 gigs NOT INCLUDING chrome. Chrome itself uses another 4-5 gigs (including about a dozen plugins). This is pretty well-documented on chrome's site.

Agreed. A plug-in is either leaking memory or he's got some kind of virus. With just web browsing I struggle to even reach 3GB total system usage.

exactly sounds like some kind of virus, spyware, adware or other stuff. What are "basic apps"? skype and evernote won't use gigabyte of RAM...

I have 12 GB but when browsing (firefox) I rarley even hit more than 3GB total same as BFG10K.

Note: The task manager has 4 values for RAM

total: obvious
cached: eg preloaded stuff in RAM (prefetch / superfetch)
available: the actual available RAM (cached + free)
free: total-used-cached (should actually be named "unused")

cached RAM is evicted automatically by Win 7 if another application needs more. That why it is essential available.

 

[DJFuji]

Well i have 51 icons in my systray. And keep in mind that's AFTER pruning all the unnecessary ones. Granted, some of them are things like volume control and windows update, but still. That kind of gives you an idea of how many apps i'm running at once.

I can guarantee you my system is clean. I'm just a pretty heavy power user. I regularly run double instances of skype, outlook, gvnotifier (which is bloated and uses ~200 megs of RAM but there's no other alternative), photoshop, dreamweaver, etc. (though 5-6 gig ram usage generally doesnt include anything from the CS5 apps)

And you can't compare firefox to chrome. Chrome easily uses twice as much ram as firefox for the same number of tabs open. And that's not counting the dozen or so extensions i have installed on chrome.

Task Manager Screenshot:

Chrome is currently using 7.5 gigs of RAM. If we count virtual memory, it's even higher. Granted, i have a lot of high-memory tabs open (51 total, including about:memory).