2Gb vs 4gb

[Unklmo]

i'm all for bigger is better and more is faster, but do you really see a huge difference when playing with 4gb of mem over 2gb?
i mean there's support for up to 8 gb on the 680i mobo (i see only 4 banks, not 8 so i'm missing something there).
and even if you do install 4x 1 gb ram, is at all being used, or is there a "plateau" that you hit?

[b1lk1]

Anything more than 2GB is a waste of money unless you use programs that can actually use that much ram and have an OS that can allocate more than 2GB to a single process. You need a 64-bit OS for that. For gaming, 2GB is plenty and will be for some time to come.

[cujo]

not true. i routinely pass 2gb just playing css. most other games take up over a gig now and with vista taking up 800-900mb on startup that doesn't leave much left. i'm using 4gb right now with business 32bit and i have a total of 3326mb available.

[Moneyless]

Originally Posted by cujo

not true. i routinely pass 2gb just playing css. most other games take up over a gig now and with vista taking up 800-900mb on startup that doesn't leave much left. i'm using 4gb right now with business 32bit and i have a total of 3326mb available.

That's with Vista. Vista's just different.

With XP you wont see much of a difference from 2GB to 4GB. We will need 4GB of RAM at some point, but now isn't the time.

[Eldonko]

As long as you use 64bit OS 4gb will be better for mem intensive programs.

[lowfat]

With 4GB on Vista 64-bit, I frequently see over 2GB used, and that is just doing basic tasks, I've yet to even try a game to see how it much is used.

[zaqu]

yeah vista eats alot of memory but i think vista actually has the programming to utilize 4gigs but xp users only need 2gigs , I myself was looking at boosting myself up to 4 and then i thought for the extra 80$ i was only going to get a boost in load times instead of waiting 20 seconds i would wait 15 or even 12 but thats not worth 80$(im talking gaming i dont do productive things on my comp)

[Babrbarossa]

Vista 32 bit does address 4 GB, but that is for the entire system, so if you have an 8800GTS with 640 MB, that will use up that much of your total 4GB of available memory address.

[cujo]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

Vista 32 bit does address 4 GB, but that is for the entire system, so if you have an 8800GTS with 640 MB, that will use up that much of your total 4GB of available memory address.

now see i've heard that before but i stopped believing it when i got my 768mb card. my system is currently accessing 4094mb of ram. that's not including cpu cache either.

windows shows me having 3326mb system ram available.

[Babrbarossa]

Yeah- the max isn't really 4000 even, I think it's actually 4096. If you have the memory- certainly use em if you got 'em, and at the current rock bottom prices it won't kill you to get four, but you don't see any world records broken with four.