Looking to upgrade to 8GB of RAM

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by LordAboveAll, May 24, 2009.

  1. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    I'm currently running Vista 32bit and OS X 10.5.7 on my rig. And I want to upgrade to 8GB of RAM.

    I know my mobo supports 16GB of RAM so I'm good there.
    I currently have OCZ's Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800.
    I was wondering if I should buy another 4GB OCZ's Reaper HPC Edition kit or should I get some faster Ram say 8GB of DDR2 1066.

    I'll be reinstalling Vista 64bit soon and I'll be testing Windows 7 64bit.
    I play games like FarCry 2 and Crysis.
    And I have Parallels installed on my Hacintosh and I'm running Windows 7 on it.

    Thanks for the help.
     
  2. bp9801

    bp9801 Ancient Guru

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    You'll only notice more than 3.75GB of RAM on a 64 bit OS, so you really need to reformat to 64bit Vista and Windows 7 when you drop it in. Otherwise, no matter how much RAM your motherboard can take, a 32bit OS will never show more than 4GB. It depends on the price of the RAM for the upgrade, if you want 8GB of 1066 and it costs just a little more, then I say to get it. But remember, you'll need to use a 64bit OS to get any gain with it.
     
  3. David Lake

    David Lake Master Guru

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    4GB is enuf!
     
  4. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    As I said before in my post. I'm currently running Vista 32bit. But I'm going to go 64bit Vista and Windows 7. So I am aware of the limit of a 32bit operating system. :)
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2009

  5. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    Right now I'm in OS X running Parallels with Windows 7. I'm close to hitting 4 GB right now.
     
  6. David Lake

    David Lake Master Guru

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    You wont benefit from more than 4GB of ram or even raster ram for that matter, I was mad to get 8GB as its not realy that usefull you would benefit much more by upgrading that 8800GT instead.
     
  7. David Lake

    David Lake Master Guru

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    In that case you are 1 of the few that might.
     
  8. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    Yeah I'll be upgrading my GPU when the new version of Snow Leopard comes out and gives support to the GTX 260 and 280.
     
  9. Corrupt^

    Corrupt^ Ancient Guru

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    Considering the prices of ram lately and the memory intensive things you're doing I'd get them. Hell if I was running something that pushed my ram that much I'd rage if I saw slowdowns and get the ram myself :p
     
  10. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    Loi. Yeah looking at iStat menus (a application that monitors cpu, ram etc.) I've got 97mb of ram free! and 1gb of inactive ram, don't know what that means myself.
     

  11. deltatux

    deltatux Guest

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    You still won't be able to use the full 4 GB on Mac OS X. Granted, MacOS X's PAE actually works properly and that you won't have those quirks that you get with Windows memory management. You can actually allocate the FULL 4 GB on MacOS X since MacOS X is a UNIX system and they don't have these issues.

    Note that MacOS X doesn't have a 64-bit kernel, so you may have to use PAE for now until MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

    In reality, unless you're running professional applications you do NOT need more than 4 GB of RAM anyways. It's more than sufficient.

    deltatux
     
  12. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    deltatux,
    iMacs and the Quad-core Mac Pro's support up to 8gb of ram. And the 8-core Mac Pro supports up to 32GB.

    BTW I'm also use Photoshop.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2009
  13. bp9801

    bp9801 Ancient Guru

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    Photoshop uses all of half a gig to a gig at the most. Photoshop isn't some super intensive program that needs 8GBs for itself, it barely needs one. Now, if you're running Photoshop, Maya and ZBrush at the same time, then yeah, more than 4GB could be beneficial. But if all you run is Photoshop, you don't need over 4GB.
     
  14. deltatux

    deltatux Guest

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    I did state that it can use the full thing for 4 GB or more. I guess I should elaborate better then. That's only for physical addressing for being able for the operating system to use 4 GB or more. Each software still can't use more than 4 GB. Hence me saying that PAE actually works properly on Macs.

    Photoshop on Macs unfortunately is a 32-bit application so if you're rendering an image that is large enough that Photoshop needs to use more than 4 GB of its virtual addressing, it'll either lag or crash out since even if PAE is enabled, it can only do the physical addressing and not the virtual addressing that software relies on. It won't matter if you have 8 GB or not by then. You may be able to shove more software into it, but if you account for physical and pagefile (or swap space since MacOS X is a UNIX system), it may still exceed the 4 GB virtual barrier which the software relies on. The software doesn't know how much RAM you really have. On Windows, it only gets 2 GB to work with on 32-bit systems (The other 2 GB goes to system and Windows itself). On UNIX machines like MacOS X, the operating system and other software get their own 4 GB addressing and won't partition it from the software like Windows. Unless you're running 64-bit, no software can use more than 4 GB, esp. in the virtual space. Hence, PAE is only a temporary solution.

    EDIT: The only reason why MacOS X can use more than 4 GB is through the technique which is mentioned called PAE which stands for Physical Address Extension. This means, through some workaround, it can extend physical addressing. However, it doesn't do virtual addressing which software relies on. Since there's no virtual address extensions, it won't extend pass the 4 GB barrier. Such is life on the 32-64-bit transition phase.

    EDIT2: By shoving more software, I mean that the "Virtual Memory Manager" which handles both physical memory and swap space (this system exist in all modern operating systems) will take that 4 GB allocation in virtual address and shove it inside that physical memory. It's called memory mapping. That 4 GB in the virtual address can no way be expanded since there's no workaround for that. Think like hosting space. You have an 1 TB drive on your server and you have a set limit of 200 MB per hosting account (and that's the only space you may be able to set it due to some strange theoritical limit if it exists). Even though you can buy a larger drive, those hosting accounts still can't be expanded, your customers still have that 200 MB limit even if you got a 2 TB drive. This is the same idea with the virtual memory manager and the 32-bit virtual address limit.

    deltatux
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2009
  15. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    Ah, thanks very much deltatux. I didn't quite understand what you said at first and didn't know what PAE was until now.
    Very informative post! Usually you don't often learn so much at one time in a forum post.

    So your saying Snow Leopard will change this?
    Edit: Ah I see Apple's web site states that 10.6 will be 64-bit. Nice, I guess I'll have to take a look at the developer release.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2009

  16. vbetts

    vbetts Don Vincenzo Staff Member

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    The unix kernal Mac os X uses is not like a windows kernal. The unix kernal does not have memory limitations like windows kernals. It could address more than 4gb of ram before, and right now it's using a hybrid kernal.

    For photoshop and such, 8gb of ram is nice. But if you're just playing games and such, then keep at around 4gb to save money.
     
  17. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    As stated above I'm using Parallels on my hackintoch for windows 7 and I noticed almost all of my ram being used. That's why I asked about more ram.
    and also if going with DDR2 1066 would make any difference in games on windows or parallels on the mac.
     
  18. p3ps1c0la

    p3ps1c0la Guest

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    For me while playing GTA 4 with 4gb o ram and Vista 64 ult' using 1.25gb I get the ram lag when exiting the game while the OS is freeing up ram. So I suggest 6gigs. Or just make it 8 and match all the sticks which is what I'd do. Other than that game though I've had no ram issues with 4gigs. So if you want to avoid that tiny annoyance go with 6-8 if you don't care than 4 should be fine.

    Edit: And to ur last post if you're almost always using up all ur ram then yeh you should install more. That's a given.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2009
  19. vbetts

    vbetts Don Vincenzo Staff Member

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    6gb really hasn't really even peaked for most games. The most I've seen from a game is about 3.25gb.

    But from ddr2-800 to drr2-1066, only difference you'll really see is the amount of memory you have. When I had my ddr2 1200 and went to ddr2 800, I really didn't notice a huge difference. Not enough to make me want to go crazy or anything like that.
     
  20. LordAboveAll

    LordAboveAll Guest

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    3.25gb? Which game was that?
    I figured for almost all games 4 gb was enough. thought so on the speed as well alright just wanted to make sure I was right on the subject matter.....alright thanks vbetts.


    :banana:YAY to me 700 posts!:banana:
    I'd like to thank the academy and most of all God for how awesome he is.
     

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