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1GB vs 4GB RAM

Legolash2o

By Legolash2o
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Mercury_22

Mercury_22

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It seems that optimal amount of memory for vista it's 2GB, but you may want to add more according to the memory requirement of your APPs! Also DUAL CHANNEL configuration it's a MUST !

In my opinion 2GB it's OK ! B) but, (since your OS is x64) 4GB it's better! :angel

That's not the "optimal", that's the sweet spot where you get a noticeable performance difference over say 512MB or 1GB. 4GB certainly isn't going make the machine perform slower than 2GB.

How did you come to that conclusion? = that I said : 4GB it's going to make the machine perform slower ???? :blink:

What optimal mean to you ? :o

Edited by Mercury_22
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nmX.Memnoch

nmX.Memnoch

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How did you come to that conclusion? = that I said : 4GB it's going to make the machine perform slower ???? :blink:

What optimal mean to you ? :o

Optimal = the best solution

In other words, saying 2GB is the "optimal" means that adding anything more than that won't give you a performance increase. 2GB is the desired minimum for acceptable performance, but not necessarily the optimal (based on the usage of the system).

i also use my computer for programming (Visual Studio 2005), music and web browsing, VMWare, some games too...

Taking those statements into account I would say more than 2GB will definitely be of benefit to him, especially if he's using VMware and VS2005 at the same time (and if he's like me, listening to some music while he works). Virtual instances are great for development environments, and running multiple VM's with different configurations is nice to have as well. That's hard to do if you're RAM limited.

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Legolash2o

Legolash2o

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Taking those statements into account I would say more than 2GB will definitely be of benefit to him, especially if he's using VMware and VS2005 at the same time (and if he's like me, listening to some music while he works). Virtual instances are great for development environments, and running multiple VM's with different configurations is nice to have as well. That's hard to do if you're RAM limited.

Yes i listen to music while i work, i only use one vmware one at a time though, 2 VM's at a time is not possible for me at the moment

I've chosen to buy an AMD 4600+ first

Edited by legolash2o
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Mercury_22

Mercury_22

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it says on my motherboard manufactuere website and i quote....
Due to the South Bridge resource deployment, the system density will only be detected up to 3+ GB (not full 4GB) when each DIMM is installed with an 1GB memory module

Yes, some will be lost but not a whole GB. Let´s say 0.2 to 0.3 GB ;).

I would also know why dual channel is a MUST have. :blink:
Because of the speed difference between single channel and dual channel ! Like the difference between single disk drive and RAID 0. B)

No no my friend, it doesn’t work like that, especially not when iNTEL uses bigger cache and AMD his build in memory controller. You would be glad to see real life performance, IF you already can see (notice) it. Please, don’t compare it to RAID, I know that most people did that 5 years ago, but it’s simply not true…

So you're saying that there is no speed difference between single channel and dual channel? :blink:

I just like you to read this

Dual-channel architecture DDR/DDR2 SDRAM describes a motherboard technology that effectively doubles data throughput from RAM to the memory controller. Dual-channel-enabled memory controllers utilize two 64-bit data channels, resulting in a total bandwidth of 128-bits, to move data from RAM to the CPU
B)

Also i compared with the

DIFFERANCE between single disk drive and RAID 0
not with RAID Edited by Mercury_22
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puntoMX

puntoMX

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No no my friend, it doesn’t work like that, especially not when iNTEL uses bigger cache and AMD his build in memory controller. You would be glad to see real life performance, IF you already can see (notice) it. Please, don’t compare it to RAID, I know that most people did that 5 years ago, but it’s simply not true…

Tell me something new ;)... Where did you read that I said "no speed difference"?

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Mercury_22

Mercury_22

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Optimal = the best solution

In other words, saying 2GB is the "optimal" means that adding anything more than that won't give you a performance increase. 2GB is the desired minimum for acceptable performance, but not necessarily the optimal (based on the usage of the system).

Well it seems we have different meanings for optimal! :} I mean it's worthless adding more taking into consideration Price/performance gain ratio! B)

Anyhow, please read more carefully my post because i said

It seems that optimal amount of memory for vista it's 2GB, ............In my opinion 2GB it's OK ! but, (since your OS is x64) 4GB it's better!
which mean that i also recommended 4GB ;)
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nmX.Memnoch

nmX.Memnoch

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only get 4GB if you plan on playing top end games, i definatly notice a difference when it comes to that. i went from 2GB to 4GB.
Errr...people do use their computers for things other than playing games. Programming, web development, virtual machines, creating/editing documents, working with databases...those things all take processing power and RAM as well. I dare say that if he was doing some programming using Visual Studio 2005 against an ASP.NET site hosted within a VM he could potentially be using more RAM than any of the newer games on the market.
Well it seems we have different meanings for optimal! :} I mean it's worthless adding more taking into consideration Price/performance gain ratio! B)
Worthless to who? People who actually need that much RAM will gladly pay the price premium. If you're only web browsing, playing the occassional game, checking email, running IRC and/or an IM client then yeah, 4GB isn't going to give you any better performance than 2GB (which makes it the optimal choice for your situation). But if you're doing any video/audio editing, programming, running virtual machines, etc, then you definitely want to get as much RAM as you can.

Let me ask you this question. What gives better performance:

1. Having 2GB of RAM and paging to the hard drive.

(or)

2. Spending the extra cash to get 4GB of RAM so you don't have to page to the hard drive.

Anyhow, please read more carefully my post because i said
It seems that optimal amount of memory for vista it's 2GB, ............In my opinion 2GB it's OK ! but, (since your OS is x64) 4GB it's better!
which mean that i also recommended 4GB ;)
I read exactly what you said. But you used a blanket "2GB is the optimal for Vista" statement. Again, that all depends on what the PC is being used for. Which is why I fealt the need to clarify that 2GB is the desired minimum for Vista and not necessarily the optimal for every situation. :)
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puntoMX

puntoMX

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Let me ask you this question. What gives better performance:

1. Having 2GB of RAM and paging to the hard drive.

(or)

2. Spending the extra cash to get 4GB of RAM so you don't have to page to the hard drive.

Cool, a quiz! :thumbup

I guess I go for number 2 ;). Did I win something?

Prices are low any way, so why would you not go for 4GB even when a part is used by I/O...

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ripken204

ripken204

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only get 4GB if you plan on playing top end games, i definatly notice a difference when it comes to that. i went from 2GB to 4GB.
Errr...people do use their computers for things other than playing games. Programming, web development, virtual machines, creating/editing documents, working with databases...those things all take processing power and RAM as well. I dare say that if he was doing some programming using Visual Studio 2005 against an ASP.NET site hosted within a VM he could potentially be using more RAM than any of the newer games on the market.

well if he used programs that needed a large amount of memory then it wouldnt even be a question about getting 4GB of ram. i do lots of web development and you dont really need 4GB of ram for that unless you are running like dreamweaver,flash, and photoshop all at the same time, which i on rare occasions do. but if he is doing some intensive programming then he will know to get alot of ram.

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Zxian

Zxian

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well if he used programs that needed a large amount of memory then it wouldnt even be a question about getting 4GB of ram. i do lots of web development and you dont really need 4GB of ram for that unless you are running like dreamweaver,flash, and photoshop all at the same time, which i on rare occasions do. but if he is doing some intensive programming then he will know to get alot of ram.

You do a lot of PHP web development. Start coding in ASP.NET using VS2005 and you'll quickly realize that you're using more RAM than a few instances of notepad uses up (which is all you need for most PHP programming).

Add that to Photoshop and some other tasks... and we're back to the original statement. ;)

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