any reason to get 16GB RAM?

[DeadOfKnight]

I like to have Netflix or Youtube going on my second monitor while I'm playing WoW

lol wut

[Krogoth]

The problem is that there's no killer app that needs more than 2-4GB and the vast majority of mainstream applications are still coded in 32-bit which means that can only use up to 2-4GB (depending on OS and how the program is flagged).

You go too far. There are killer apps, just none that he uses.

I should clarify that a bit, I meant to say that there's no killer app in the mainstream market. How many average joe and hardcore PC gamers run VMs, massive content creation projects, hosting hundreds of clients and number crunching on a daily basis? Far few and in-between. The only applications where the demand for more memory is constant clearly fall into domain of the professional arena. It is also where you probably want to get ECC modules since data integrity and stability are #1 here.

[MadManOriginal]

The problem is that there's no killer app that needs more than 2-4GB and the vast majority of mainstream applications are still coded in 32-bit which means that can only use up to 2-4GB (depending on OS and how the program is flagged).

You go too far. There are killer apps, just none that he uses.

I should clarify that a bit, I meant to say that there's no killer app in the mainstream market.* How many average joe and hardcore PC gamers run VMs, massive content creation projects, hosting hundreds of clients and number crunching on a daily basis? Far few and in-between. The only applications where the demand for more memory is constant clearly fall into domain of the professional arena. It is also where you probably want to get ECC modules since data integrity and stability are #1 here. *until I, Krogoth, get 16GB RAM, then it will be recommended

FTFY! (I kid out of love )

So I figured I'd snag a G Skill 16GB DDR3-1866 CAS10 kit Newegg had a promo code for $75. I'll see if the XMP profile can make this board run at 1866, if not I expect it will do DDR3-1600 CAS9 at least. I couldn't resist, I guess I'm weak, but I also figure that if I keep this for 2+ years or more (my last system base was used for 2.5 years, and I may repurpose this one at that point) it can't hurt. My only hesitation is that the *only* memory kit I've ever had go bad was a G Skill DDR2 kit, it worked great but then wouldn't pass Memtest after about 6 months; RMA was easy at least. This kit has very few 'failed memory' reviews.

[auxy]

There is another reason, of course, to get 16GB of RAM that I didn't see mentioned here...
^{Disclaimer: She didn't read the thread}
Because 8GB DIMMs are the largest they're going to make for DDR3 (unbuffered, anyway), and thus, you save yourself from running into the annoying situation of wanting to upgrade your RAM but having extra RAM laying around because you had to take some out to put in higher-density modules.

[just brew it!]

Unless I am trying to max the motherboard out I typically go with whatever is cheapest per GB. If I need to swap them out later they don't go to waste since they eventually get re-used in a "hand me down" system.

[elmopuddy]

I upgraded to 32GB, why? Because I went to buy 16GB and on Cyber Monday, the 32GB kit was $99CDN.. Win8 is insanely fast, and I can run VM's, heck basically do anything I want with the machine.

[Firestarter]

well there wasn't any reason not to, and I doubt that that has changed since I bought mine

[The Jedi]

I would say 3 or 4 Gigs is good and for using a virtual machine 8GB is noticably better. 8GB is probably a sweet spot today and 16 Gigs is more like overkill. However if you have the extra money you can get 16GB and use it as a RAM drive and install programs to that drive. http://radeonramdisk.com/ is a free RAM drive program. I think this would work really good with programs like Photoshop that take a while to load. The full program is $18.99 for full flexibility vs. the free one that can create RAM drives of 4GB or 6GB. I personally haven't bothered with this and have "only" 8GB, but that could be a nice scenario to try, and it should outperform an SSD alone.

[uni-mitation]

What I would love to see is the curve of the graph as incrementally more ram is allocated for use. There comes a point of diminishing returns. Now, if your pockets are very deep, then the curve is meaningless.

[Waco]

More RAM == larger I/O cache. That's never a bad thing.

[auxy]

I would say 3 or 4 Gigs is good and for using a virtual machine 8GB is noticably better. 8GB is probably a sweet spot today and 16 Gigs is more like overkill. However if you have the extra money you can get 16GB and use it as a RAM drive and install programs to that drive. http://radeonramdisk.com/ is a free RAM drive program. I think this would work really good with programs like Photoshop that take a while to load. The full program is $18.99 for full flexibility vs. the free one that can create RAM drives of 4GB or 6GB. I personally haven't bothered with this and have "only" 8GB, but that could be a nice scenario to try, and it should outperform an SSD alone.

Radeon Ramdisk is based on the DataRAM RAMDISK software -- or, well, it's literally the same thing. There are other, faster RAMDisk softwares out there, notably QSOFT RAMDISK Enterprise (free, sort of), and Bond Disc, also free.

That said, unless you have a quad-core, don't bother; RAMDISK software in Windows seems to impart huge CPU utilization anytime the disk is being heavily accessed.

[puppetworx]

If you play any poorly optimized or disk intensive games (ArmA 2, DayZ mod for example) you can sometimes benefit from loading the games into a RAMdisk and running them from there. Probably more useful for those who don't have an SSD though.

[My Johnson]

I think a more important question is: Do I buy 16GB's or DRAM instead of 8GB's and use the money I saved on booze since I don't use my computer for production purposes? 'Cause my calculations say that you can pick up 5 sixpacks of premium brew by only going with 8.

[JustAnEngineer]

Isn't the beer budget set before you decide how much you've got left for hardware upgrades?

I'm in the camp that couldn't find a good reason not to get 2x8 GiB when I assembled my living room PC. I did not have to give up a case of beer to afford the larger DIMMs.

[Luminair]

there is a lot of guessing in this thread. just use task manager to measure your memory usage over time. each version of windows measures this differently, so you'll have to look it up or do some work to figure it out. then acquire, as ram, the amount used. the end

the shorter answer is: yes, a lot of people who post on computer forums will have the ability to use more than 8gb or ram

[just brew it!]

More RAM == larger I/O cache. That's never a bad thing.

Bingo. Modern OSes are designed to take advantage of any leftover RAM by using it to cache recently accessed files, and by anticipating (based on past usage patterns) which files you may be needing in the near future. For many use cases this can actually be better than a RAMdisk, since a RAMdisk doesn't automatically adapt to what files you're using (you need to explicitly decide which files you're going to be using frequently, and copy them into the RAMdisk).

The only potential downsides I can think of (aside from cost, but RAM is so cheap these days...) are:

1. You probably won't be able to run your memory timings as tight with all of the slots filled.

2. Windows will allocate larger swap and hibernate files to accommodate the larger amount of RAM. If you have a SSD this can be a problem since it chews up precious SSD space. If you have a secondary mechanical HDD for storage you can move the swap file to it; or you can manually set the size of the swap file smaller. AFAIK the only way to prevent the hibernate file from being allocated on your system drive is to disable hibernation though.

[mdk77777]

I upgraded to 32GB, why? Because I went to buy 16GB and on Cyber Monday, the 32GB kit was $99CDN.. Win8 is insanely fast, and I can run VM's, heck basically do anything I want with the machine.

I even managed to get 32GB GSKILL 1600 cas 10 laptop memory for that $100.

Runs great in my Lenovo W530.

Do I use it all....no. But heck...for an extra $50 it was worth the future proofing.

Re: Ramdisk. I notice that overall performance really maxes out at 4GB and using TEMP directory (some risks from stability point of view)

Using a larger ramdisk cache only is important if you have a program that needs it. (photoshop, VM programs ect.)

So, more is better, but spend some time optimizing your system to use the right amount....a little left unused never hurt anything.

[Ryu Connor]

2. Windows will allocate larger swap and hibernate files to accommodate the larger amount of RAM. If you have a SSD this can be a problem since it chews up precious SSD space. If you have a secondary mechanical HDD for storage you can move the swap file to it; or you can manually set the size of the swap file smaller. AFAIK the only way to prevent the hibernate file from being allocated on your system drive is to disable hibernation though.

True, the hiberfil.sys can't be moved due to the limited logic available during boot. It on the other hand can be shrunk from 75% of total RAM size down to 50% of total RAM size.

The pagefile can be made smaller by leveraging the formula of worst case commit limit minus RAM. A negative value means create a small fixed pagefile. A positive value means you need a pagefile matching the positive value. Windows 7 and older will require the above. Windows 8 has a built in task that will automatically resize the pagefile as it gains more commit usage metrics over time.

[Techgoudy]

In all honesty the individual user needs to assess whether or not 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, etc. RAM is useful to them. 16GB of RAM is a pretty decent chunk of RAM for any system for todays standards.

In the next few years it may be higher. I'm not saying that you won't use it, and RAM is so cheap you might as well, but at the end of the day only you can assess how much of it you will use. The people who post before me have very valid points. Some lean to buying it because it is so cheap it's kinda like "why not"? However, just because it's cheap doesn't mean you should buy it, espcially if you can't afford it. You will see system speed ups by increasing the amount of RAM in the machine because of disk caching, however you could also buy an SSD and pop that in as a main drive and use it instead of more RAM.

Overall, the need to use 16GB or more is user-defined. In actuallity, we should hope that developers will use best coding practices and optimization to use less resources efficiently.

[Forge]

You will see system speed ups by increasing the amount of RAM in the machine because of disk caching, however you could also buy an SSD and pop that in as a main drive and use it instead of more RAM.

Or, you know, both. My ram is faster than my ssd by several orders of magnitude, but in latency and throughput. I agree with your main point, no one should cut corners to go to 16GB or more, but it's a very easy upgrade to make, financially. There are few other places where another 50$ can make such a difference. That's all I was saying.

[auxy]

There are few other places where another 50$ can make such a difference. That's all I was saying.

While I agree with you, allow me to play Devil's Advocate and remark that $50 could take you from a Core i5 to a Xeon E3, which, if one is doing "wide" tasks that need many threads, could make much, much more difference. ;)

[CaptTomato]

Guys how does one decide on which ram to buy?
Lets say I go for 16gig, do I do 2x8, and if so what speed etc etc?

I'm just a lowly gamer, so for example would this ram be okay{with i3570}

http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_li ... sid=100315

[End User]

To the OP: With no VMs running I'm using 9.5GB out of 16GB. My core apps are always running and I sleep the system when it is not in use. Bottom line is I don't have to worry about a lack of memory anymore and I have eliminated the boot and app load process for the most part.

[GrimDanfango]

Guys how does one decide on which ram to buy?
Lets say I go for 16gig, do I do 2x8, and if so what speed etc etc?

I'm just a lowly gamer, so for example would this ram be okay{with i3570}

http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_li ... sid=100315

2x8GB is probably the best route to take - you won't generally have to pay any more than 4x4GB from the same range, and you leave slots open for a future boost to 32GB if you eventually need it.

On a standard level, I'd say what you linked to was overkill unless you're intending to overclock. Each generation of Intel chips are rated to run with a particular base-speed of RAM, and if you install anything above that, you have to go into the BIOS and start fiddling with settings and timings to even enable the extra speed.

It's sometimes a little patchy where to work out what the default is for any particular generation of Intel chips, but at the moment, any current ivy-bridge based i3/i5/i7 is typically rated to run with 1600MHz RAM. I wouldn't bother going any higher.
All the big fancy looking heat-spreaders and inflated MHz are a bit of a marketing gimmick I find. You can end up throwing good money away for very little real speed increase, and that type of RAM will be the first to disappear from the market, so a year or two down the line, when you decide you want to find a matching pair and boost up to 32GB, you'll have a hard time tracking any down. The standard stuff sticks around a lot longer.

That's not advising you to go for cheap-no-brand RAM... stay well clear of that rubbish. Stick with solid established brands like Corsair, just go for their regular lines, and don't bother with anything that looks like Judge Dredd uses it to comb his hair.


Edit: Huh, that said, there doesn't appear to be any 1600MHz RAM selling cheaper on the website you linked to. It's probably fine then

[MadManOriginal]

To add to what Grim said but with some tweaks - buy what's best on the price:speed curve. For example, when I bought mine a month ago, there was little to no price difference (base price - not counting the promo code I used) between DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1866 so I got DDR3-1866. The next step up to DDR3-2133 was pretty big percentage-wise although not in absolute terms, like 30% and $30 higher.

[GrimDanfango]

To add to what Grim said but with some tweaks - buy what's best on the price:speed curve. For example, when I bought mine a month ago, there was little to no price difference (base price - not counting the promo code I used) between DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1866 so I got DDR3-1866. The next step up to DDR3-2133 was pretty big percentage-wise although not in absolute terms, like 30% and $30 higher.

I suppose going for 1866 now would at least give some potential future-proofing if you end up reusing the same ram on a future motherboard with a generation of chips that support a 1866 base.
Yeah, as MMO says, just don't bother paying any more than the sweet spot.

[CaptTomato]

thx Grim....2x8 at 1600 sounds like the ticket.

[nerdrage]

I think it would be more worthwhile to spend the money elsewhere. For your uses, more than 8GB is really only going to give you warm and fuzzies and not much else that's actually noticeable.

Instead, use the money towards something that you'll actually notice and appreciate on a daily basis. If you're a gamer, get a faster video card or buy more games. Get an SSD, or a bigger one. Get a bigger, better monitor (or a second monitor). Upgrade your peripherals - get a nicer mouse, keyboard, speakers, headphones, whatever...

Or just buy more beer

[derFunkenstein]

DDR3 is going to be with us for a while yet. I say get it while prices are still close to the bottom, because eventually you'll have a system that can use it. Haswell will have DDR3 and I expect its successor to at least support it, as well as AMD sticking with DDR3 for a bit (outside of embedded solutions).

[CaptTomato]

I think it would be more worthwhile to spend the money elsewhere. )

I suppose I could move from 7870 to 79fiddy!!!!
I don't drink btw, lol.