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Memory

NoahFence

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NoahFence
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Mar 17, 2011
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So I'm on the cusp of a major overhaul of my computer.

My current specs:

4 GB DDR 3 RAM
Athlon XP 64X2 Dual Core Processor
NVidia 550 Ti Graphics Card

-------------

I'm thinking for the upgrade (600 bucks budget)

New AM3+ Motherboard
8-Core CPU

RAM!

DDR3 1333MHz
DDR3 1066MHz
DDR3 1600MHz
DDR3 1866MHz

Now, the question is, Is getting say, 12GB of 1333MHz RAM better, worse, or same as say, 8GB of 1600MHz ram?
 
Depends on if you need more memory capacity or more speed.

I guess the OS is 64-bit, so it can use all that memory.

I hope you need all of this. We mere mortals game with devices designed for that purpose -- XBOX and such. The computer of us mere mortals is XP, 2 GHz, 2 GB... so last decade, but serves its purpose perfectly.
 
JJM 777 said:
Depends on if you need more memory capacity or more speed.

I guess the OS is 64-bit, so it can use all that memory.

I hope you need all of this. We mere mortals game with devices designed for that purpose -- XBOX and such. The computer of us mere mortals is XP, 2 GHz, 2 GB... so last decade, but serves its purpose perfectly.
Click to expand...

I'm in it for the speed. Don't need the ultra-high graphics, I just want games to load quicker, and my Photoshop to work faster. Plus the thing is making silly noises. Its just the fans, but don't tell my wife that!
 
NoahFence said:
I'm in it for the speed. Don't need the ultra-high graphics, I just want games to load quicker, and my Photoshop to work faster. Plus the thing is making silly noises. Its just the fans, but don't tell my wife that!
Click to expand...

Then get a SSDD. That will do more for that than anything else.
 
Personally, and for the budget, I'd probably get the speed that got me a good brand (Crucial or Corsair) and about 8GB. Wait till the market progresses if you don't think it's enough or want faster

(As I understand it loading games and photoshop would probably be more dependant on volume of memory rather than speed)
 
If it's faster load times that you want then I agree about the SSDD. A standard Hard Drive is almost always the reason for slow load times. More memory can help but unless the software is specifically made for a 64 bit system 4 GB is all that you need. Spend the money on some new fans, maybe up the RAM to 8 GB (not a crucial thing if you can't do that with your current MoBo) and a SSDD if you want the most bang for your buck. Keep your regular (mechanical) hard drive for data files like music, video and documents. Those are small enough to be almost unperceptible in their slower load times in most cases and aren't usually worth the extra cost of a larger SSDD to store them. Use the SSDD for software (the OS and the stuff you use most often) only.
 
NoahFence said:
I'm in it for the speed. Don't need the ultra-high graphics, I just want games to load quicker, and my Photoshop to work faster. Plus the thing is making silly noises. Its just the fans, but don't tell my wife that!
Click to expand...

Yeah, go with 8GB for now (you can always add more later, but it's doubtful you'll need more than 8GB for gaming in the forseeable future), and invest in an SSD. Right now your bottleneck is getting the data off the HD and into RAM, not how much you can actually fit in RAM. SSD's load way, way quicker than standard drives, but are more expensive per GB and don't yet have the massive storage capacity that Standard drives do.
 
Mongrel said:
Personally, and for the budget, I'd probably get the speed that got me a good brand (Crucial or Corsair) and about 8GB. Wait till the market progresses if you don't think it's enough or want faster
Click to expand...

Definitely this. Take Skyrim, for example. On release, it wasn't capable of using more than 2GB of RAM. That's since been patched, for those who hadn't already modded it, so it can now use 4GB. That's one of the newest games around with pretty much cutting edge graphics, and it's still not going to be using close to all of your RAM.

In fact, other than maybe video editing there really aren't any programs a normal user will have that can make use of that much RAM. The only way you're going to get close is by having a lot of programs open at the same time, and even that is pretty tricky. The majority of PCs could easily get away with no more than 4GB, although it's cheap enough that it's worth having a bit more just to give yourself a bit of a margin.
 
NoahFence said:
No, I'm not really into the whole overclocking thing.
Click to expand...
Then best to shop around for some quality 1600mhz ram as that's pretty much standard now and only a few beer tokens more than 1333mhz. Prices are very competitive at the moment.
 
I third the motion to spend the money on a SSHD.

As far as the memory goes, I say spend the money on the best quality name brand and the best specs possible now. Even if that meant just getting 2GB!! The reason being, you can always get more to match it later. The 2GB a month plan. :D
 
Sunstealer said:
Then best to shop around for some quality 1600mhz ram as that's pretty much standard now and only a few beer tokens more than 1333mhz. Prices are very competitive at the moment.
Click to expand...

I just paid $90 for 16GB of DDR3 RAM.
 
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