RAM!

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:45 pm

Hey guys,
Am going to get some money to spend, and I thought about getting some more RAM.

Now I thought about getting this 4GB stick,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611%20600006067&IsNodeId=1&name=4GB

But, I don't know whether if I should go with dual channel for better performance.

Or what do you guys think?

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:18 pm

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture)

Quote:

Dual-channel architecture describes a technology that theoretically doubles data throughput from the memory to the memory controller. Dual-channel-enabled memory controllers utilize two 64-bit data channels.

...

Dual-channel architecture requires a dual-channel-capable motherboard and two or more DDR, DDR2 SDRAM, or DDR3 SDRAM memory modules.

Reading that, as long as you have a mobo compatible with dual channel, dual channel memory should work faster for you than single-channel. That being the case, cost is probably the only other consideration.

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:31 pm

I would still advise you get 2 sticks of DDR3 in a Matched set of 2 Gigs.
I believe your mainboard supports DDR3 and has only two slots for Ram. I can't see you having to use more than 4 Gigs of Ram unless you are to use some kind of CAD program.

I think you should be satisfied with the performance of these :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148262

I like these :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220537

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:38 pm

a.steidl wrote:

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture)

Quote:

Dual-channel architecture describes a technology that theoretically doubles data throughput from the memory to the memory controller. Dual-channel-enabled memory controllers utilize two 64-bit data channels.

...

Dual-channel architecture requires a dual-channel-capable motherboard and two or more DDR, DDR2 SDRAM, or DDR3 SDRAM memory modules.

Reading that, as long as you have a mobo compatible with dual channel, dual channel memory should work faster for you than single-channel. That being the case, cost is probably the only other consideration.

My mobo supports only two DIMMS.
It also supports up to 1600 DDR3.
I will have about $180 bucks that I can spend, but at the same time I would like to save as much money as I can.

Athlonite wrote:

I would still advise you get 2 sticks of DDR3 in a Matched set of 2 Gigs.
I believe your mainboard supports DDR3 and has only two slots for Ram. I can't see you having to use more than 4 Gigs of Ram unless you are to use some kind of CAD program.

I won't be using any software of that type.
Except for Photoshop, and Sony Vegas.
That will be pretty much it.

I've seen Vegas eat up about 200MB of RAM while rendering a 3GB file.

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:44 pm

OK, 200M of Ram out of how much Ram installed. Window 7 is very stingy when configured correctly and even out of the box. What you Really need when playing games or rendering / converting video is CPU power.

I can convert and burn 10 episodes of any TV series with convertX on a Double Layer DVD and won't use more than 25% of my Quad. Practically no memory to speak of and this thing has 8 Gigs of DDR3 @1333 installed.

I'm sure you will be making a mistake if you go with a single stick of Ram.

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:51 pm

My quad is amazing Very Happy

It handles everything without a hitch.

I only noticed lag when I task switch while playing a game.
I believe that is because of the 2GB of RAM still being eaten up by the game.

Well, am thinking about a pair of these then.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231313

I think.. Confused

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:13 pm

From my perspective , you'd be doing yourself a favor buying the ones you indicate in your last post. They have a bit of a heat spreader which should help some.

Actually, I don't think you can go wrong with either GSkill, Patriot, Kingston or Corsair. The only possible draw back is getting one of the set that comes DOA. That happens and sometimes to be expected as this is hardware. Also, it seems that Newegg's delivery is a bit slow if I go by the remarks on their boards.

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:16 pm

Wrong link!
Those are really overpriced lol.

Maybe these.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277

Newegg is okay,
I like their service, and you would be surprised how awesome is the shipping.
Shipping always takes 3 days. (For me)

I think getting a DOA is like kinda winning a lottery.
I've never gotten any DOA items.

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:22 pm

I should've looked closer as you linked to a one stick of 4 Gig. Yes, these should do nicely. Are you thinking of OCing those? I didn't look closely enough to notice if they could be but, I think it could be easily done.

maybe check the BIOS if you are really getting 1600 after you install. Just in case.

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:04 am

i havent used this idea in a long time since drive speeds nowadays are pretty high but i used to migrate my disk cache for windows into a RAMDRIVE structure, so the disk cache was being accessed at ram speed.
if you had 8Gb of ram then its possible to do this, and have lots of space left, but havent thought about it in a while, looking about it seems all you have to do is turn off your pagefile and windows will automatically use RAM for a swap instead of drive space. but i havent done this myself (there were issues with development of windows that made a disk pagefile necessary)
BTW i believe dual channeling your ram needs 2 ram modules not one, and they should be twins of each other or you get a performance penalty at the CPU. and this is baesd on the memory controller having two channels being polled by the CPU, but if your CPU and MOBO speed is high to begin with you may not even notice, its just a matter of how strict you want to be with your own machine

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:12 pm

Athlonite wrote:

I should've looked closer as you linked to a one stick of 4 Gig. Yes, these should do nicely. Are you thinking of OCing those? I didn't look closely enough to notice if they could be but, I think it could be easily done.

maybe check the BIOS if you are really getting 1600 after you install. Just in case.

I'll think about OC'ing when I get bored some day and have nothing else to do lol.
Other than that, I won't be OC'ing any time soon.
(I haven't even OC'ed my CPU yet)

LORD! GARTH! wrote:

i havent used this idea in a long time since drive speeds nowadays are pretty high but i used to migrate my disk cache for windows into a RAMDRIVE structure, so the disk cache was being accessed at ram speed.
if you had 8Gb of ram then its possible to do this, and have lots of space left, but havent thought about it in a while, looking about it seems all you have to do is turn off your pagefile and windows will automatically use RAM for a swap instead of drive space. but i havent done this myself (there were issues with development of windows that made a disk pagefile necessary)
BTW i believe dual channeling your ram needs 2 ram modules not one, and they should be twins of each other or you get a performance penalty at the CPU. and this is baesd on the memory controller having two channels being polled by the CPU, but if your CPU and MOBO speed is high to begin with you may not even notice, its just a matter of how strict you want to be with your own machine

Man, I kinda want to future proof it for now.
I would like to go with the 8GB but money is always going to be a issue for me.
I just keep thinking about going with one stick of 4GB for now, and then when I have the money, get another stick of the same stick.

Don't get me wrong,
2GB of RAM is pretty awesome for the simples tasks that I currently do.
It's kinda hard to imagine what I can with double that amount. Very Happy

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:37 pm

way back when windows was first developed it was running on a workstation that had 4Gb of ram, but the general public didnt have that back in the 80s and 90s so microsloath made a swapfile to run on a harddrive.
if you have 4Gb or more than you have all that a win OS could hope for and you can run the swapfile in RAM
.
and to get back to the original topic, when you buy your first stick make sure you can get a second stick later on that is identical and you will have the advantage of Interleaved Dual Channel memory access available to you.
if the RAM sticks are different then you likely will get your CPU choking up and dropping down to single channel memory mode
CHEERS man!

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:05 pm

Vista and W7 lets you change the swapfile's location like on a separate partition. I've tried it and didn't notice any difference in speed. Although, having 8 Gigs of ram already, I most likely won't as the page file wouldn't get used much anyways. You can also re-size the pagefile to your specific needs in case of low ram.

@Daft.
Like I've been advising so far, you would be much better off with 2 matched sticks. Let latter be latter. For now, if you want the best out of that config. I would get a matched set.

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:19 pm

Athlonite wrote:

@Daft.
Like I've been advising so far, you would be much better off with 2 matched sticks. Let latter be latter. For now, if you want the best out of that config. I would get a matched set.

agree 100%, 1 stick basically means 1/2 speed, not just half as much Wink

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:14 pm

Okay, I will go for the 2x2GB Kit.
Should I go for the 1600 kit?
Or?