why not 8 GB ram?

[naisanza]

Hey all. I don't mean to jump into this forum, but I thought this question might be relevant.

Should you only use 3 ram modules with an x58?

If that's the case then upgrading to 8gb would break the triple channel, which is one of the biggest advantage of the i7.

If you all feel this should go some place else, I apologize.

--
Eric

 

[richierich1212]

That's why you either go 6GB or 12GB with triple channel.

 

[naisanza]

My best guess is, if you're going for an i7 setup, you would want to go for 12gb.

I currently use 6gb and I find it to be a bit lacking at most times.

I am soon going to upgrade to 12gb, but I want to ask everybody if you have to stick to the triple channel setup (meaning you should use only three sticks for maximum performance).

--
Eric

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: ilkhan

Originally posted by: Nizology
If you're gonna go 8, you might as well double it up to 16.

acquiring/affording 16GB (4x4GB) is a lot harder than 8GB (4x2GB), mostly because many boards have 4 slots and 2GB modules are incredibly cheap.

As I said, I have 8 and regularly use 5GB. Encoding a 1080p h264 while playing demigod pushed it to 7.3GB/8GB used. :/ (and with a quad and slight priority change, didn't even slow the game down, although while recording at full 1920x1200 res with fraps it kind've choked...)

Do you really need a quad core to be able to do both of those at the same time without it even slowing a game down or would a dual core be able to handle it as well without noticing any kind of slowdown?

 

[Russwinters]

I think that it is a good investment. I have had 8GB of RAM in my system since I built it last march, and I love it.

That being said I rarely use even 1/3 of it. I typically run IE/Firefox, ventrilo, winamp, evga precision, and a game at the same time and still havent really utilized much over 1/4th of my RAM.


I think that unless you are a HUGE multitasker you wont see a huge performance benefit (yet), but once games and other apps begin being written and optimized for 64bit, and can use over 1.8GB of ram (whatever it is) per application, then the benfits will really begin to be seen.



I think the only reason for not using 8GB of ram is that some competative OC'ers taht basically dont even game just bench get better performance will less RAM because more RAM stresses the motherboards chipset more, and lowers their peak OC. So the less DIMMS populated, the less power being drawn from the memory which stabilizes the motherboard further for a slightely higher OC.

 

[beginner99]

But do you guys ever use more than 4 gb? of course if you run sql server or VM's, but just for browsing, gaming, multimedia-stuff?
I'm just curious.

 

[deimos3428]

I have 8GB DDR2-800 in my current rig, precisely because it was affordable. I don't think I've ever used more than 4GB, yet -- but I might someday. On the other hand, I'm building another rig with DDR3-1600, and it's not affordable enough to warrant the extra RAM in my opinion.

 

[Emulex]

i got 8gb in my inspiron 530 q6600 because well it was cheap 4x2gb g.skill. it is that much faster esp if you do some tricks like ramdisk..

well at least until i get some SSD going

virtualization is a nice tool. get used to it. i bet the next windows os will sit on top of a hypervisor

 

[isp]

i've got 8gb in my main machine, hardly ever go past 50%...i like that

 

[Zoomer]

The only downside of more RAM is that hibernating and sleeping will likely take more time to enter and exit. Not a bad trade-off, though,

Thank you for reminding me to disable and delete the hibernate temp file.

 

[pjkenned]

Do you really need a quad core to be able to do both of those at the same time without it even slowing a game down or would a dual core be able to handle it as well without noticing any kind of slowdown?

Yes. Try this on a fast dual core versus an i7 and it is night and day. In fact, it is one of the first easily noticeable things that my i7 destroyed the old 3.6ghz Q6600 on.

 

[Zap]

I've got 8GB on my gaming rig running 32-bit Windows XP.

3.25GB for Windows/apps, the rest is a RAMDISK for the swap file.

 

[netxzero64]

gaming, demands most memory usage... and today you would see the highest requirement would be at the 2gb above memory, and still there is a 32bit OS, so considering game developers would develop a game that would go over 4gigs, how can the consumers play that game if they only have a 32bit OS?

so I think its too early to say that you would need to go more than 4gigs...

 

[pcslookout]

Yes. Try this on a fast dual core versus an i7 and it is night and day. In fact, it is one of the first easily noticeable things that my i7 destroyed the old 3.6ghz Q6600 on.

How much is a i7 system right now though ? What about benchmarks? I am sure seeing it in action would be a better way to tell how much better it is in multitasking it is though.

 

[jimhsu]

But do you guys ever use more than 4 gb? of course if you run sql server or VM's, but just for browsing, gaming, multimedia-stuff?
I'm just curious.

Developing easily gets you over 4 GB. 3ds max (or equivalent) + Photoshop + editor + game (plus the rest of the junk you usually have open) is limited even by a 6GB system. I don't know about everyone else, but I develop casually all the time (modding, level design, mesh tweaking, script writing).

 

[ilkhan]

Do you really need a quad core to be able to do both of those at the same time without it even slowing a game down or would a dual core be able to handle it as well without noticing any kind of slowdown?

The priority change kept it from slowing down, the # of cores increases the speed of the encoding. My current HDD (got the G2 after that) would just chew up the HDD access for those things, too.

 

[Nocturnal]

I don't know what it is but something is taking up like 6GB in Windows 7 lol. I'm going to figure it out tonight. But I want more, I would like 24GB ideally.

 

[pjkenned]

How much is a i7 system right now though ? What about benchmarks? I am sure seeing it in action would be a better way to tell how much better it is in multitasking it is though.

The i7's are much cheaper than a year ago. Really the i7 920 is $199 at microcenter, then figure ~$200 for a motherboard. One other reason I like the X58 is that most of the boards have dual GigE's on them while getting dual GigE's on P55 motherboards tends to mean you are getting something higher end anyway.

Just to give you an idea of the i7 920 @ only 3GHz, doing DVD quality to x264 for the ipod touch using handbrake I do like 260fps average at <25% CPU utilization these days. It's wild. My T9400 notebook at 2.53ghz is pegged 100% CPU utilization and is putting out about 65fps. It isn't even comperable. The Q6600 @3.6ghz was usually sitting 70-80% CPU utilization at about 230fps.

When your CPU is 70-100% utilized, you will notice a slowdown doing other things that need CPU cycles. When it is 25% utilized, there's a good chance you won't notice it.

The cool thing about the i7 is that you can multi-task in Win 7, and use XP mode without slowdowns. I actually have a second monitor that I use for the XP mode window now. It really is like having 2 PC's in one.

 

[pcslookout]

The i7's are much cheaper than a year ago. Really the i7 920 is $199 at microcenter, then figure ~$200 for a motherboard. One other reason I like the X58 is that most of the boards have dual GigE's on them while getting dual GigE's on P55 motherboards tends to mean you are getting something higher end anyway.

Just to give you an idea of the i7 920 @ only 3GHz, doing DVD quality to x264 for the ipod touch using handbrake I do like 260fps average at <25% CPU utilization these days. It's wild. My T9400 notebook at 2.53ghz is pegged 100% CPU utilization and is putting out about 65fps. It isn't even comperable. The Q6600 @3.6ghz was usually sitting 70-80% CPU utilization at about 230fps.

When your CPU is 70-100% utilized, you will notice a slowdown doing other things that need CPU cycles. When it is 25% utilized, there's a good chance you won't notice it.

The cool thing about the i7 is that you can multi-task in Win 7, and use XP mode without slowdowns. I actually have a second monitor that I use for the XP mode window now. It really is like having 2 PC's in one.

Sounds nice and I see exactly what your saying.

The most interesting question I have though may surprise you. When you run java based programs and flash how much cpu usage is used?

 

[pjkenned]

When you run java based programs and flash how much cpu usage is used?

Trick question? That answer will depend heavily on what type of program it is right? Something that is single threaded obviously won't need more than 1-2 cores (second for anything else that is running on the system) so the i7 won't be that much better. With VM's running, encoding tasks and such, the i7 is great though.

 

[pcslookout]

Trick question? That answer will depend heavily on what type of program it is right? Something that is single threaded obviously won't need more than 1-2 cores (second for anything else that is running on the system) so the i7 won't be that much better. With VM's running, encoding tasks and such, the i7 is great though.

No. I just see java easily use 70 to 90% of the cpu when running anything based on it. Makes everything else on my system runs slow until I close that java based program sucks. Thought maybe a i7 would help fix that slowdown. Same with Flash sometimes.

 

[pjkenned]

No. I just see java easily use 70 to 90&#37; of the cpu when running anything based on it. Makes everything else on my system runs slow until I close that java based program sucks. Thought maybe a i7 would help fix that slowdown. Same with Flash sometimes.

It will most likely depend on how well threaded the application is. When we moved from dual to quad cores en masse (a la Q6600's) some applications pegged 1-2 cores at 100% still while others were able to touch cores 3 and 4.

 

[Idontcare]

I've got 8GB on my gaming rig running 32-bit Windows XP.

3.25GB for Windows/apps, the rest is a RAMDISK for the swap file.

Heh, exact same thing here. Been looking at moving to 64bit win7 though and ditching the ramdisk.

 

[Skott]

Generally speaking 4GB RAM is plenty for gaming in 64bit (2GB for 32bit). Why go more? Well, if you do a lot of heavy multitasking or run rendering or photoshop, editing work software then more RAM will make that go faster and probably worth the extra money if you have it.

There is also bragging rights excuse. I HAVE __ GB RAM I AM SO GODLIKE!

I tend to sarcasticly snicker at those types of people though. Heh heh.