Well, on a forum I visit, some people are giving Tech advice to a user, and he's got 4GB of Corsair XM3, and everyone is telling him to buy MOAR as 4GB is the minimum today and won't last long. http://forum.esforces.com/threads/51581-What-type-of-computer-do-you-have/page26 4GB of RAM is still fine for a few more years, nice to have more, but gamewise, a guy with 4GB VS 8 GB will pretty much play the same. He's not doing stuff like transcoding or whatever, but I just hate when people give out bad tech advice to people on a budget, such as telling him 4GB is not enough / the minimum for todays games.
agreed. 4gb is perfectly fine if all your doing is gaming and surfing the internet. anything else like photoshop, transcoding videos and music, i would recommend more. for the simple fact that programs like that love lots of memory and high cpu clocks.
4 GB is my recommended gaming and general usage RAM amount, 8 GB is my preferred recommendation. 16 GB is overboard, recommended for real power users only. 2 GB is recommended minimum for me for basic computer usage. 1 GB is bare minimum. EDIT: As for it being a pipe, unless there's a lot of data being transferred between the system, it's more of place where the system loads from storage to memory for faster access (caching) between CPU and RAM and the size of RAM isn't as paramount for data I/O between the processor and the I/O devices unless you're transferring a huge amount of data. In normal scenarios, RAM response/speed is more important than size for device I/O operations. deltatux
4GB is plenty for gaming. Btw you can tell Mr Z Power that 1333 is NOT latency, it's clock speed. lol
No doubt 8gb helps, but 4gb is enough right now and most likely will be for another year or 2. Hell, I'm still straggiling along with 2gb! But the examples used in that topic don't make too much sense. Just because you have more memory doesn't automatically mean that ram usage is going to go up! You can have double the memory, but that won't equal double the performance of the whole rig. Let's say you have a core 2 quad at 3.66 ghz, and have 4gb of memory along side that. If you add the same exact 4gb kit to it for 8gb, you still have the same cpu at 3.66 ghz and mostly the same performance and multitasking(Unless you're running apps that use 2gb+ memory) in the OS. Hell, I have 2gb of memory and I'm doing okay still! 4gb would help out a lot for me, but I have more than enough for 720p resolution, the game, and the Steam UI and browser all at once. My advice as far as memory goes, ddr3 kits for 8gb memory is around what, 35-50% more than a 4gb kit? I would invest my money into a 4gb kit, and go for something else as part as the system for a better upgrade. Maybe even a video card that has more memory than usual, or even a factory OC'ed card.
Personally I would expect a lot of paging in and out from your HDD to handle all that traffic, no? deltatux
You brought up something I did not think about at all, and this proves more that 4gb is enough for gaming! I see that a lot too, and honestly aside from steam, games, some apps, and superfetch, I see a lot of svchost processes that can take up memory quick.
Well I can vouch for this because I have my PF disabled with only 4GB, and have never run out of memory so yeah...
Personally I put the page file on a RAMDisk, so the computer and some older programs who for some reason need a pagefile (no clue why) won't complain that I don't have a page file. Essentially, my computer fully runs on my 8 GB of RAM. Even all the Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Thunderbird caches are all stored on a 1 GB RAMDisk that I created for that. Also, all Temp files are also pushed to the RAMDisk so that they're cleared upon reboot. deltatux
I would say right now the bare minimum for a modern system for games is 3gb, but only 3gb considering the original triple channel Nehalem based systems. Anything else right now, 4gb would be minimum I would go for, but also 4gb would be the amount I would recommend unless you do a lot of video editing.
The last time I remember when a game fully used up my system resources was when I used to only have 512 MB of DDR-400 RAM for my old Pentium 4 rig (running Windows XP), and I tried playing Battlefield 2 and then BF2 crashed because I ran out of system resources due to I think was a memory leak lol. deltatux
To be honest, if hasn't bought the RAM yet then go for 8GB. The price difference is minimal today ($30 for 4GB and $45 for 8GB on average) so there is honestly no reason not to.
He has the 4GB already, can you believe this guys latest post? Probably infuriate some of your Guru's
Interesting, Vista used to load lots of stuff into memory which it thought that you would be using next. If you did something else, it did free memory for other applications which needed it. Same thing with Win7, just that it doesnt load that much stuff. How much does Win7 actually need then ? I'm on laptop at, which has IE9 (this is the only page) & Messenger with one active chat window. ATM Task Manager reports, that 764Mb of RAM is used. EDIT:
Update xp 4g fine win 7 64bit, 4g not enough (nor 6(just) recommended 8g ram+ latest games are using 3-3.5g ram(battlefielf 3 beta) win 7 64bit will use a lot of page file as ram, if not enough, hence slowing game down on large maps.... older games use up 2-2.5g ram want to test. turn off page file (virt memory on win 7 64bit) + install vista gadget all cpu meter, see free ram, wait for bf3 to say low memory+ quits win 7 will eat 3g itself run the tests yourself sinse xp dead for gaming....it 64bit o/s to play
