Reply to topic  [ 34 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next
The 8gb question 
Author Message
Doesn't have much of a life
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:30 pm
Posts: 1757
Location: Cardiff, Wales
Reply with quote
Has anyone upgraded to 8gb yet? Was there much of an improvement over 4gb? See, you can buy 2x2gb DDR2's for around £50 now, doubling my RAM...just wondering whether it is worth it...?

_________________
G.


Sat May 09, 2009 3:33 pm
Profile WWW
Doesn't have much of a life
User avatar

Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:12 pm
Posts: 1171
Reply with quote
I have 8gb and whether it's worth it depends on how you use your pc.

When I turn my Vista on it uses 1.5gb from the start with no other programs opened (except essentials like AV, firewall, im messenger, torrents etc.). When I use my pc I have many applications opened so normally I use 2.0 - 3.5gb of ram. I also use VMware so sometimes I push 4.5gb. I want to know that if I want to start another program I won't have to think whether to switch something off or not. Is good to know that I can do what I want, when I want without slowing my PC down.

I also hate from the bottom of my heart those tiny little delays when you switch windows. That never happens with 8gb, switches are seamless, no delays ever. But that makes my life hell when I use my laptop or work pc, nothing is fast enough anymore except my own rig.

Also Prefetch in Vista works very well with 8gb (takes age to fill though). So if you like super responsive pc or you normally use more than 3gb then get the extra 4gb. If you never push 3gb than there is no point. But for £50 I think it is worth it, for me anyway...

_________________
Image
Free Sim with £5 credit


Sat May 09, 2009 5:39 pm
Profile
I haven't seen my friends in so long
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 3:29 pm
Posts: 7173
Reply with quote
Agree with koli, with 8GB Vista is very responsive - AFTER it has loaded everything it wants to into RAM, the PC is is a b**** to use whilst it's still pre-fetching though.

_________________
timark_uk wrote:
That's your problem. You need Linux. That'll fix all your problems.
Mark


Sat May 09, 2009 5:53 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:11 pm
Posts: 134
Reply with quote
I have had 8GB since last year, along with a fast quad core. It's definitely worth having when you have several memory intensive apps running, like VM machines for example. I've never gone over about 5.5GB myself, but I built one of my work collegue's computers at work, as he does a lot of dev and design work, and he's used up to about 7GB of his machine's 8GB. I think he needs a new machine, to be honest, as he's starting to push the machine more and more towards it's limits; I'm thinking 12GB Core i7 for him next if we get the go ahead for it.


Sat May 09, 2009 8:22 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:31 pm
Posts: 176
Reply with quote
It depends if your motherboard tolerates having all slots filled (ooo er missus) and if you overclock, not all boards like to have all slots filled whilst doing to, LGA775 anyway. I have an Asus P5Q- WS and its ok with all slots filled and running an overclocked Quad. I use OCZ memory, when I tried 8GB of Kingston, 1066 rather than 800 it crashed all the time so its a bit of a lucky dip.

Tom's Hardware did quite a good article regarding 8gb, just google, 'Toms Hardware 8gb ram' should bring it up. It seems on Vista 64 that you can only turn off the page file when you have (at least) 8gb of ram and avoid any associated problems and I can vouch for that. Right now all I have on my second hard drive is temporary files and a backup of storage on my main disk. The system is noticeably snappier running no swap...the only thing I notice is that I can hear the second drive coming out of sleep occasionaly to write temp file, particularly when using MSN/Live Messenger.

Its a good idea to turn off Superfectch in Vista too, I found that not only does it blunt startup and cause disk thrashing but if you use a variety of progs and you have lots of ram you don't need/want it. What it is meant to do is predict which progs you use, but its flawed in its implementation.


Sat May 09, 2009 9:33 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:31 pm
Posts: 176
Reply with quote
Linux_User wrote:
Agree with koli, with 8GB Vista is very responsive - AFTER it has loaded everything it wants to into RAM, the PC is is a b**** to use whilst it's still pre-fetching though.



Turn off Superfetch.


Sat May 09, 2009 9:38 pm
Profile
Doesn't have much of a life
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:30 pm
Posts: 1757
Location: Cardiff, Wales
Reply with quote
Well, quite possibly GTA4 has made my mind up. Just had a quick gaming session before I wake the missus from her slumber and found my G15 display reporting 90% RAM use and I was only really driving around. I'll have to see how much it uses when things are exploding! Think another 4gb will give me some breathing room!

From what I've managed to google up, my motherboard will have to run the RAM at 667mhz rather than 800. I don't bother overclocking anymore, I don't see the benefit, so no problem there.

_________________
G.


Sun May 10, 2009 7:38 am
Profile WWW
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:53 pm
Posts: 8603
Location: location, location
Reply with quote
I've had 8GB RAM since Vista was released and it's great.
I can have all my VM's and folding clients running and still have a fast enough system to use.

_________________
Support X404, use our Amazon link
Get your X404 tat here
jonlumb wrote:
I've only ever done it with a chicken so far, but if required I wouldn't have any problems doing it with other animals at all.


Mon May 11, 2009 9:30 am
Profile WWW
Doesn't have much of a life
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:30 pm
Posts: 1757
Location: Cardiff, Wales
Reply with quote
The RAM is in and so far so good! Predictably 25% of it is being gobbled up by the OS and Prefetch, but the added responsiveness is noticeable.

It's also running at it's full 800mhz, which I'm surprised at. Thought it would drop to 667 with 4 slots filled. Love our new local Novatech! I can buy stuff cheap without having to get it mail-order!

Right, time to try a few games!

_________________
G.


Mon May 11, 2009 3:53 pm
Profile WWW
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:11 pm
Posts: 134
Reply with quote
saspro wrote:
I've had 8GB RAM since Vista was released and it's great.
I can have all my VM's and folding clients running and still have a fast enough system to use.


Yeah, it's great, but I'm getting greedy and coveting 32GB RAM and two quad shanghai Opterons. You can get that kind of kit for not a bad price these days.


Mon May 11, 2009 11:06 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 1:47 am
Posts: 114
Reply with quote
Hi monkeyphonix

Is it any benefit to turn off superfetch on Ultimate with only 4gb memory?

_________________
Sometimes a little thick mostly completely thick


Tue May 12, 2009 2:08 am
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:31 pm
Posts: 176
Reply with quote
curiousclive wrote:
Hi monkeyphonix

Is it any benefit to turn off superfetch on Ultimate with only 4gb memory?


I think so. Basically when you have some free memory after you say shut down an application, for example Photoshop, SuperFetch requires the Memory Manager to fetch data and code that was recently evicted. This is done at a quite slow rate of a few pages per second with a quite Low priority I/Os so that the preloading does not impact the user or other active applications, that's the theory anyway.

In practice the actual CPU usage is low but hard drive 'thrashing' can occur. In an ideal world the hard drive would not 'thrash' but there are other things going on which may conflict.

Superfetch also looks at which programs are used most regularly and precaches for faster launch times on startup or on resume from hibernation.

The obvious downside is reduced disk life, increased disk noise, increased disk temps, more power usage and the fetching isn't foolproof it often doesn't help launch times but hinders them. Many people on the Internet are saying leave Superfetch on as in the long runs its a help. Well I left it on for a month, and with it off, Photoshop and Office load up in HALF the time. Office then just mucks about connecting to my exchange server which I can't do much about.


Tue May 12, 2009 4:57 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 1:47 am
Posts: 114
Reply with quote
Hi monkeyphonix

Thanks very much for your info. Have now disabled superfetch and will see if any benefit occurs.
Thanks again for your input.

_________________
Sometimes a little thick mostly completely thick


Tue May 12, 2009 5:05 pm
Profile
Occasionally has a life

Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:31 pm
Posts: 176
Reply with quote
curiousclive wrote:
Hi monkeyphonix

Thanks very much for your info. Have now disabled superfetch and will see if any benefit occurs.
Thanks again for your input.


If you are looking for a speed boost, locating your page file on a separate disk and also a small partition for temporary files is a good move too. If you want to monitor disk activity and suchlike, Sysinternals have several useful programmes for free.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 45046.aspx

Whilst Superfetch has benefits, I think they are negligable when compared to the downsides, but its personal preference.

Also this makes good reading on one guys experiments with Superfetch.

http://tiredblogger.wordpress.com/2007/ ... or-gaming/


Tue May 12, 2009 5:15 pm
Profile
Doesn't have much of a life
User avatar

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:30 pm
Posts: 1757
Location: Cardiff, Wales
Reply with quote
I've left superfetch running, but did clear it out so that it could start from scratch - the jury seems to still be out on whether to turn it off or not, some say it is a benefit to leave it on if you have a lot of RAM. Regardless, the added smoothness is impressive and I thoroughly recommend 8gb RAM to anyone with a 64bit Vista. 64bit Ubuntu is also running extra smooth which is a definite bonus. 64bit Crysis is a joy too now, although it's RAM use is nowhere near as bad as GTA4.

_________________
G.


Wed May 13, 2009 12:40 pm
Profile WWW
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Reply to topic   [ 34 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Designed by ST Software.