RAM, is there such thing as too much?

DragonD said:
RAM is sooo cheap today compared to what it once was. Well, all things tech related are sooo cheap. (yes, yes, I know, "cheap" is relative).

For your average user/gamer TODAY, 4G of ram is enough. The Rig I built back in 2006 had 4G of ram, it was fine and dandy. I just replaced that with a new rig I built back in May. I have 8G in there. Why? Cause RAM is freaking cheap.

Do I use all 8G? Never. Not even close. However, I think that's going to change. Here is my reasoning.

Prior to windows 7, if you wanted to take advantage of a 64bit system, you had to use the 64bit version of vista (or xp). As we all know, vista took a PR beating when it came out, and never really caught on.

This meant, by and large, MOST people ran the 32bit version of windows XP. It's what the average user has installed. That's a fact (go look it up). This has put a cap on system resources. A program running in Windows XP Pro 32bit can access up to 2GB of RAM. That's it.

That changes with the 64bit version of windows 7. Each application (process) can actually handle up to 4TB of memory. (yes, yes, way beyond what technology can do).

Now, what does this mean? Computers built now a days, are all 64 bit. (Do they even make 32bit systems anymore??) It's been like that for awhile. We just didn't have the OS to support it. As more and more people start running a true 64bit platform, software developers will start to go past that 2G limit.

I can see, not to far off, where you will HAVE to have a 64bit system to effectively run a game. Before to long, those games are going to be needing to grab 3 and 4G of RAM. I really don't think that is very far away.
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Thank you, you're quite correct. Although they still do make 32bit versions of Windows 7.

This discussion reminds me of the early days of video cards. Anyone remember when you didn't need a video card to run even the latest and greatest games? Anyone throwing Wing Commander on their old PC probably does.

As time went by, the practical limit on what was possible for a video game to make use of increased drastically. Once video cards were available for purchase, games started to make use of them. Some games of the period didn't require one, some could be played without one (but there was a marked increase in performance with one), and some absolutely required a video card.

Games of that period could have absolutely all required a video card to play and could have looked better then they did by trimming the requirements down. However, there wasn't a large enough user base to justify that as a business decision.

The same thing happens in MMOs. The common phrase for an MMO release (notable exception being Age of Conan) is that it's "designed to run on as many computers as possible."

Check the statement about sys reqs for the upcoming Star Wars mmo, it's a perfect example.

Selling computers as I do, I know how far behind "the times" people are when it comes to hardware. I see people on a daily basis who have less than 1gb of ram. People keep computers for a long time.

As people start to upgrade (and from what I've been seeing, Windows 7 release is causing a LOT of people that have been holding back to purchase new machines), the sys reqs of programs will increase to match.

Saying that you'll only ever need 4gb of ram is foolhardy. I understand the sentiment, but it's simply not true. A great many users should theoretically be able to stick it out at 4gb, but as programs and Operating Systems self update, or people by new versions of the programs they've been using, they're going to need to upgrade their hardware.

Even if you're just using the Office Suite. Try running Office 2007 on a ten to fifteen year old machine and see how it goes.

No matter what you're doing, the application you're doing it with will eventually be upgraded to the point that you need to upgrade your hardware.

If they application isn't being upgraded, eventually your hardware will fail on you (fact of life) and the application will suffer such software rot that you'll be forced to find a new application to do the same thing...one that's going to require you to upgrade your hardware.

You will upgrade. Resistance is futile.
 
im sorry, but all of you guys saying that i'll need more than 4 gb of ram is simply not true. like i said to begin with, sure there are people that do need more (whether they use it or not) i will not...and the majority of computer owners will not either. we're talking about everybody that isn't above average in their computer usage, as in professional aps or whatever else...average and below are not going to utilize even the full 4 gb of ram for probably 2-3 more years.
will i be willing to upgrade then? sure, i'll probably be buying ddr3/4 at that time...so why not bump it to 6 gb if i really need to.
am i going to shell out another 150 bucks for something i won't need for a few years?? not when money is an aspect....be realistic here
hell most of even the people in our gaming community are playing on outdated computers like 7600 vid cards and athlon 4200+ or whatever else. you cannot tell me they'll never need 6+ gb ram because it isn't true.

hate to bring it up again, but the same goes for the dual vs quad argument
 
JunK said:
im sorry, but all of you guys saying that i'll need more than 4 gb of ram is simply not true. like i said to begin with, sure there are people that do need more (whether they use it or not) i will not...and the majority of computer owners will not either. we're talking about everybody that isn't above average in their computer usage, as in professional aps or whatever else...average and below are not going to utilize even the full 4 gb of ram for probably 2-3 more years.
will i be willing to upgrade then? sure, i'll probably be buying ddr3/4 at that time...so why not bump it to 6 gb if i really need to.
am i going to shell out another 150 bucks for something i won't need for a few years?? not when money is an aspect....be realistic here
hell most of even the people in our gaming community are playing on outdated computers like 7600 vid cards and athlon 4200+ or whatever else. you cannot tell me they'll never need 6+ gb ram because it isn't true.

hate to bring it up again, but the same goes for the dual vs quad argument
Click to expand...

You're right, of course.

Average users won't need to upgrade beyond four soon.

I'm talking in terms of eventualities.
 
really? i use 16gb's of ram out work and 8 on my home computers i come very close within megs of using it all pretty often and that's excluding file caches.

and just think of how fast things advanced back in in the early linux and win95 days 32mb ram was pretty average and people said there would never be a need more than 64mb well let me see we now count ram in gb not mb and it is common practice for a recording studio or video editing studio to have between 16gb and 32gb
 
bulletsinthefire said:
it is common practice for a recording studio or video editing studio to have between 16gb and 32gb
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my point is proven again

and i ask what exactly you do to utilize so much ram? game? browse the web? hell no - read the posts - ppl need to stop posting this crap saying i use all 128 gb of ram by running 100x windows of auto cad video editing and video encoding....it isn't what this post is about and its pointless to post it
 
I picked up 4x2G of DDR2 800 for ~$80, ~$130 for 4x2G DDR2 1100, and $300 for 2x4G sticks for my laptop. Prices have gone up some since then, but if you buy RAM that matches the timing you plan to run at... RAM is still pretty darn cheap.

I gave the benchmark results a quick gander. Did they test this with a 32-bit OS? Sure looks that way. If so, Windows would only really have about 3.something gig of RAM to use regardless. If someone is running a 32-bit OS, it makes sense to plug in 4G and not worry about the half gig or so of RAM the OS cannot work with. Anything after 4 is a waste. The rules change on the 64-bit side of the fence, however. An extra $40 or so is one of the better upgrades to your box, if you take the time to put that memory to use.

I use my machines for gaming and work. It is not uncommon for me to have an IDE, app server, database, Office, a VM image, and other bits running when I fire up a game. Easy for each app to chew up a gig or two of RAM each. No worries.

But... why, if you are not running commercial apps? First off, no need for a paging file. Everything stays in RAM. Second - RAM drive. When I'm after serious speed, I'll load whatever I'm hitting serious IO on a RAM drive. This can make for phenomenal load times (with a bit more load time up front as the disk image gets copied to memory). You can change access times by an order of magnitude if you have 3-4G of RAM that you 'never use'.

(Windows XP-64, Server 2003-64, and 64-bit Centos on my machines, btw)
 
yeah i dont think there is to much ram, but what ever you buy is all up to your budget i think. im running on 8gb atm, i heard of people having 32gb thats to insane for me
 
JunK said:
my point is proven again

and i ask what exactly you do to utilize so much ram? game? browse the web? hell no - read the posts - ppl need to stop posting this crap saying i use all 128 gb of ram by running 100x windows of auto cad video editing and video encoding....it isn't what this post is about and its pointless to post it
Click to expand...

my point is that it is all how you use your computer at work i would be have issues with anything under 8gb and would be slowing things down with less than 16gb while working on bigger projects but it all depends on how it is used of course it is overkill for web browsing but there are still tons of uses for large amounts of ram.

not everyone uses there computers the same way and for the same reason heck im sure smaller studios who recored @ 16bit 44.1 hertz vs 32bit(float) 96 hertz could get away with less.
 
This is random but Junk Ive seen the video for that gif of yours thousands of times and it is still funnneh as hell.
 
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