Just just bought a radeon 7950 and an ssd drive . I have 4 gigs of ram and was going to upgrade to 8 but didn'. Should I have and do games really use 8 gigs?
What is your OS? If you are using a 32-bit OS - you can only use actually 3.2 GB of memory. 64 bit OS can use more - 8 GB is a good amount for a 64 bit system.
If you have a 64bit OS, 8 gigs of ram is very beneficial and highly recommended. That is what I have. It frees up a lot of ram. Though most games just use 2 or 4, especially if they are made for consoles and ported to PC. I still recommend 8gigs though.
You won't find any use for 8gig ram on a 32bit OS, as that is only limited to 4 gigs and anything else is wasted.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
With the price of RAM, I think 8 is a better way to go, It really depends on what you're doing, I am always suffing or watching movies obn a 2nd monitor so having 8GB works really well for me.
General rule of thumb: Having more RAM allows you to do more things at once.
What do you do while gaming? If you run only 1 game and do nothing or little else while gaming, 4gigs is more than enough, as no one program can address more than 2gigs itself (32 bit limitation). Yes the OS may be 64bit, but essentially none of your programs, and certainly no games are 64bit, they are all 32 bit.
Originally posted by levin70 What do you do while gaming? If you run only 1 game and do nothing or little else while gaming, 4gigs is more than enough, as no one program can address more than 2gigs itself (32 bit limitation). Yes the OS may be 64bit, but essentially none of your programs, and certainly no games are 64bit, they are all 32 bit.
WoW has a 64-bit client. I know there are a number of non-MMO games that have 64-bit clients as well. It's not strictly needed, since I've never seen a single game take up that much RAM, but it's possible.
Anyway, there are a lot of programs that run in the background so even if a single game isn't using all the RAM, it's nice to be able to have a second monitor up with stuff open or movies playing or even just stuff in the background to alt-tab to when you need it.
Originally posted by levin70 What do you do while gaming? If you run only 1 game and do nothing or little else while gaming, 4gigs is more than enough, as no one program can address more than 2gigs itself (32 bit limitation). Yes the OS may be 64bit, but essentially none of your programs, and certainly no games are 64bit, they are all 32 bit.
So so untrue...WoW for example has a 64bit client and there are a bunch of newer single/multi player games that also have 64 bit clients.
OP, the upgrade to 8 gig is well worth it with these cheap memory prices today.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
A 64-bit OS is capable of using more than 4G of RAM. But it probably won't. Unless your running multiple copies of video games at the same time, you probably will never exceed 4G of actual used RAM. Windows uses around 1.5-2G for the system. A 32-bit app can't use more than 2G in the first place. Yes, there are a handful of 64-bit video game clients (extremely few: WoW if you enable it, HL2 if you enable it, that's about all I can think of) - but even then keep in mind they support 32-bit clients that have to run inside of 2G of RAM; just turning on 64-bit won't magically make it take up a huge amount more memory (yes a little bit, because the memory addresses are larger, but not double/triple).
Of course, if you find some cheap, I wouldn't turn it down, but I wouldn't sweat it too much either. But I would not invest heavily in DDR2 RAM at this time.
When you upgrade your motherboard and get DDR3 - then sure, get however much you can afford. DDR3 RAM is pretty damn cheap. DDR2, a good deal more expensive and you can't really transfer it between builds or use it for much of anything else.
That new SSD is going to make any rare virtual memory hits feel a lot less impactful anyway.
My thinking on this is that it can be more cost efficient to max the motherboard and be done with it, rather than do multiple memory upgrades. That is of course if you're planning on keeping the machine in service for a few years and the cost of memory isn't an issue.
All the MS 64 bit OS's love memory for system caching. Not a big deal in your case with the SSD, but I don't think it's possible to have too much memory.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Just go for 8, I have 8 right now but one of the sticks got fried so I was using 4 for awhile and to be honest I never really noticed the cut. You could tell things were slower when I would alt-tab out of a game and the browser would be slower to do things but in terms of regular use, not any difference.
For 4g DDR2 you are looking at $ 50-60 bucks or so.
I would personally grab it and go with 8g, all depends on if its worth the cost for you. You wont see a huge jump in performance or anything, but it will make a diiference in some situations.
Comments
If you have a 64bit OS, 8 gigs of ram is very beneficial and highly recommended. That is what I have. It frees up a lot of ram. Though most games just use 2 or 4, especially if they are made for consoles and ported to PC. I still recommend 8gigs though.
You won't find any use for 8gig ram on a 32bit OS, as that is only limited to 4 gigs and anything else is wasted.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
4 gig will probably choke your performance a bit with those components, especially if your running an untweaked windows OS.
RAM is really quite cheap, an upgrade from 4 to 8 should give noticable improvements.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
With the price of RAM, I think 8 is a better way to go, It really depends on what you're doing, I am always suffing or watching movies obn a 2nd monitor so having 8GB works really well for me.
General rule of thumb: Having more RAM allows you to do more things at once.
You make me like charity
WoW has a 64-bit client. I know there are a number of non-MMO games that have 64-bit clients as well. It's not strictly needed, since I've never seen a single game take up that much RAM, but it's possible.
Anyway, there are a lot of programs that run in the background so even if a single game isn't using all the RAM, it's nice to be able to have a second monitor up with stuff open or movies playing or even just stuff in the background to alt-tab to when you need it.
You make me like charity
So so untrue...WoW for example has a 64bit client and there are a bunch of newer single/multi player games that also have 64 bit clients.
OP, the upgrade to 8 gig is well worth it with these cheap memory prices today.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Your on DDR2 memory iirc:
I wouldn't bother.
A 64-bit OS is capable of using more than 4G of RAM. But it probably won't. Unless your running multiple copies of video games at the same time, you probably will never exceed 4G of actual used RAM. Windows uses around 1.5-2G for the system. A 32-bit app can't use more than 2G in the first place. Yes, there are a handful of 64-bit video game clients (extremely few: WoW if you enable it, HL2 if you enable it, that's about all I can think of) - but even then keep in mind they support 32-bit clients that have to run inside of 2G of RAM; just turning on 64-bit won't magically make it take up a huge amount more memory (yes a little bit, because the memory addresses are larger, but not double/triple).
Of course, if you find some cheap, I wouldn't turn it down, but I wouldn't sweat it too much either. But I would not invest heavily in DDR2 RAM at this time.
When you upgrade your motherboard and get DDR3 - then sure, get however much you can afford. DDR3 RAM is pretty damn cheap. DDR2, a good deal more expensive and you can't really transfer it between builds or use it for much of anything else.
That new SSD is going to make any rare virtual memory hits feel a lot less impactful anyway.
My thinking on this is that it can be more cost efficient to max the motherboard and be done with it, rather than do multiple memory upgrades. That is of course if you're planning on keeping the machine in service for a few years and the cost of memory isn't an issue.
All the MS 64 bit OS's love memory for system caching. Not a big deal in your case with the SSD, but I don't think it's possible to have too much memory.
For 4g DDR2 you are looking at $ 50-60 bucks or so.
I would personally grab it and go with 8g, all depends on if its worth the cost for you. You wont see a huge jump in performance or anything, but it will make a diiference in some situations.