Vista Tutorial - Is More Memory Better?

Author: Richard Swinburne
Published: 8th July 2008


Consumers have enjoyed record low memory prices for over nine months now in DDR2 memory. Over the past six months, even latest 4GB and 8GB kits have been finding new lows. We've seen a continued demand for DDR2, even with all of the DDR3 support that's been cropping up.

Many Nvidia nForce and all AMD processors are still limited to DDR2 and even the new Intel P45 chipset still supports it, so it doesn't look like it will be going away any time soon. In fact, the P45 chipset only supports 8GB of DDR3 memory, while DDR2 gets 16GB!

But with the increased availability and decreased price, enthusiasts are faced with a new question: is a 4GB kit or even an 8GB kit worth the cash splash over a basic 2GB? What scenarios warrant the extra memory?

With the help of memory giant Corsair (who kindly provided us with a few 2GB and 4GB PC2-6400 C5 DHX memory kits), we decided to take a range of typical, sometimes intensive real world scenarios to see what makes the difference, and where the common memory footprint now lies.

Despite the P45's ridiculous 16GB support, 4GB DDR2 DIMMs are still very, very expensive...so we've limited our scope to four sticks of 2GB (totaling 8GB) at most.



As you may or may not know, 32-bit operating systems are limited to addressing a maximum memory size of 4,294,967,296 bytes, or "4GB" in more normal terms. However, this 4GB is shared between all MMIO (Memory-Mapped Input Output) devices - this includes graphics cards. Therefore, that nice, shiny new 512MB graphics card you've just bought limits your entire system memory use to just 3.5GB. What about the newest Nvidia GeForce 280 GTX with 1GB of GDDR3? That'll reduce your system memory to just 3GB.


See source for full story:
bit-tech.net | Review - Is More Memory Better?

I run 4.0GB of memory., 2 x 2GB of DDR 2 800Mhz.

It's Aria's very own label, seems to run okay.

I thought the problem with Vista stealing some of your memory usage had been addressed.

I use 4g as my sig shows. I do a bit of photo editing so will upgrade to 8gb when I can be bothered/con the wife.
Anything over this and I think it is mainly video and sound editors that will see the benifit.
For every day to day use of computers and the resources required for the normal person 4gb should be fine.
As to ddr3 over ddr2, is the speed increase worth the money?

Right now, the sweet spot seems to be DDR2800. DDR3 has great speed but low latencies.

I use Corsair XMS DDR2800. Just 3 gigs but my system only uses 40% of the RAM.

Until the price stars to drop on DDR3 I'm sticking with DDR2.

I run 8GB's of ram, and I can tell you Vista 64 actually performs better with 8GB's of ram.

I will say this though, all most users need is 4GB's of ram.

Same here - I went withPC2-8500 (DDR2-1000) and am quite happy - with 4 GB I am rarely tapping all of it and my system is smooth.

yup.. I run 4GB of 100.. downclocked to 800 with tighter timings. and it seems to run perfectly fine. I never get above 40%.. right now I'm at 26%.

I don't think I'll be getting 8GB anytime soon. just not needed for me.

Nice read tho.

I have 16GB. Photoshop CS2 uses 6GB. I can run Sony Vegas Movie Studio and CS2 at the same time. CS4 will use 8-16GB of RAM. 8GB is a decent amount to have for a normal user. 16GB cost me $700. When I am hitting my workstation hard, it is worth having 16GB.

Indeed - since RAM is roughly 1000 times faster than a HD, the more RAM you have means the less stuff gets pages which means much faster response times and such.

i run 4gb... its blisteringly fast

any app can be run ''happily'' with 4gb
photo editing, video recoding & CAD ...i still believe 8gb is overkill but as shawn says its so cheap ...why not grab it