12GB RAM Too Much?

[Cosaides]

I'm building a new PC, and I plan to use 64-bit Windows 7, so I can utilize more than 3GB of RAM. Looking at people's recommendations, I can see the favored amount is 6GB of RAM. I wanted to future-proof my RAM needs however, so I was looking at getting 8GB of RAM. Then I found out that DDR3's performance advantage over DDR2, only happens when you have RAM installed, in multiples of 3. So to get more than 6, and get the benefits of DDR3, I would need 12GB of RAM. Is this too much? Is there any advantage to 12GB? Would this be a disadvantage, somehow? Thanks for any info

[md1198p]

I'm building a new PC, and I plan to use 64-bit Windows 7, so I can utilize more than 3GB of RAM. Looking at people's recommendations, I can see the favored amount is 6GB of RAM. I wanted to future-proof my RAM needs however, so I was looking at getting 8GB of RAM. Then I found out that DDR3's performance advantage over DDR2, only happens when you have RAM installed, in multiples of 3. So to get more than 6, and get the benefits of DDR3, I would need 12GB of RAM. Is this too much? Is there any advantage to 12GB? Would this be a disadvantage, somehow? Thanks for any info

I have 12 on Vista 64. Ram is not very expensive, so if your going for the gusto, get it. If you are trying to save some money get 6. My MB has 6 slots, if your does also, get 6 now, and get another 6 later if you think you need it.

[ua549]

I have 16GB of memory and am considering adding another 16GB. My system can handle 64GB.

The amount you need depends entirely on what you are doing.
Are you running out of memory?
Is your page file being used excessively? (Some use is normal.)
The only drawback to having too much memory is that you've wasted money.

[Timman_24]

I have 16GB of memory and am considering adding another 16GB. My system can handle 64GB.

The amount you need depends entirely on what you are doing.
Are you running out of memory?
Is your page file being used excessively? (Some use is normal.)
The only drawback to having too much memory is that you've wasted money.

What do you do that uses that much memory? I only have 4 gigs and I never run out of room even playing the new games.

[Geforce255]

What do you do that uses that much memory? I only have 4 gigs and I never run out of room even playing the new games.

Both Shogun and Empire Total War will flat out crap out on 4gb RAM. I've seen Shogun consume 8 gigs with large armies in use. Since it is a PC exclusive, the developers wrote it to take advantage of large amounts of RAM and to use multithreading. Granted that most XBox ports will only use 2 gigs.

[Spank_Me_Hard]

Isn't DDR3 pretty cheap these days?

If so, I'd be tempted to go with 12GB.

Way back in the days of EDO RAM, I remember waiting for it to get constantly cheaper. Then an earthquake hit Taiwan and the prices jumped sharply... never to come down for that RAM again.

The lesson to me was to jump if you had any question while it was relatively cheap.

[Steve R Jones]

I look in Task Manager and see that I have 1.5 gigs of ram and that I'm not using HALF of it..Adding more ram for me would be a waste of hard earned cash cause there would be NO benefit to adding it...

As far as future-proof -> odds are my computing habits won't change anytime soon.

[SE_Saga]

I look in Task Manager and see that I have 1.5 gigs of ram and that I'm not using HALF of it..Adding more ram for me would be a waste of hard earned cash cause there would be NO benefit to adding it...

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Windows RAM usage varies according to how much you have. If you have more, it will use more.

Come to think of it, it needs to do that, otherwise it would crash easily for lack or memory everytime you opened Notepad and your RAM was already maxed out.

[Nater]

What do you do? If you're just playing games and ripping DVDs, 12GB of ram is a waste of money. If you're doing bracketed HDR exposures in CS4 then it's worth the cost.

I don't see why you're leaning towards an X58 system either, the P55 platform is a better value. The only advantage X58 has is Gulftown support, unless you do professional level video work or HD encodes for a torrent group you're not going to use the 6-cores and 12-threads of a Gulftown enough to warrant the $999 price tag.

[gkline]

For the Intel MBs and the I core 7s multiples of 3 for triple channel memory ( 6 gigs or 12). The I 750 is dual channel so 4 or 8 gigs. I have an AMD 965BE on my MSI 790FX-GD70 with 8 gigs and it is very smooth. It also was with 4 gigs. The comments above about wasting cash have merit. My suggestion is go with 6 gigs and snatch one of those Intel 40 gig ssd hds for your operating system. Your machine will FLY!
Here's the link to the ssd:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167025

[genwarfare]

what do SSDs do and why are they so small in size? can someone explain their purpose or how they work to me?
i see lots of great reviews and people keep mentioning them but i cant figure out why.

do they just act like a regular hard drive that you would store larger/more demanding programs on?
or is it some sort of passive device that helps speed up your system? (i really am clueless )

and what you said about the triple channel memory, using either 6GB or 12GB, does that rely entirely on weather the specs say triple or double channel? as in: putting 8gb of ram in a triple channel motherboard doesnt make any sense?

[James]

what do SSDs do and why are they so small in size? can someone explain their purpose or how they work to me?
i see lots of great reviews and people keep mentioning them but i cant figure out why.

do they just act like a regular hard drive that you would store larger/more demanding programs on?
or is it some sort of passive device that helps speed up your system? (i really am clueless )

and what you said about the triple channel memory, using either 6GB or 12GB, does that rely entirely on weather the specs say triple or double channel? as in: putting 8gb of ram in a triple channel motherboard doesnt make any sense?

If you want a really comprehensive overview of SSD technology, what it's good for, and what you should look for in an SSD, try reading the Anandtech SSD anthology.

If you just want a quick overview, SSD's are solid state storage devices. This gives them multiple benefits:
- Near zero access times compared to mechanical hard drives.
- Insanely high random access speeds compared to mechanical hdd's.
- Much higher transfer speeds than mechanical HDD's.
- Much lower power consumption than regular HDD's.
- The ability to offer more I/Ops than an entire RAID array of normal HDD's

They are best suited for any kind of data that needs lots of random access, large amounts of I/O, and large amounts of bandwidth for reading/writing. This generally defines an Operating system. The majority of people who have SSD's have their OS and primary applications on them, and then all of their data and secondary apps on a normal hdd. This majority includes myself after picking up one of the new Intel X25-M 80GB SSD's.

[Altvamp]

The above is absolute rubbish, just sales spiel to try to get you to buy it, They use the same interface then the access times are the same, you would do better to look at some of the benchmarking comparisons than the retailers sales pitch. The only way you will get that kind of performance is to use PCI-e slot drives like the revodrive.
Inidentally i bought a 30GB SSD some time ago and never used it as it was actually much slower than my Hitachi Ultrastar drives, combined with the fact that data is impossible to recover from it. I have read many people say that they fitted an SSD and their system was faster booting, and i wonder if this is because they just did a clean install of Windows rather than the fact the drive is faster, I am almost certain it will be.

[Nater]

what do SSDs do and why are they so small in size? can someone explain their purpose or how they work to me?
i see lots of great reviews and people keep mentioning them but i cant figure out why.

do they just act like a regular hard drive that you would store larger/more demanding programs on?
or is it some sort of passive device that helps speed up your system? (i really am clueless )

and what you said about the triple channel memory, using either 6GB or 12GB, does that rely entirely on weather the specs say triple or double channel? as in: putting 8gb of ram in a triple channel motherboard doesnt make any sense?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

And what do you mean 'specs say double or triple channel'? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, you either have 3/6 DIMMs (tri-channel) or you have 2/4 (dual channel).

[ua549]

And what do you mean 'specs say double or triple channel'? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, you either have 3/6 DIMMs (tri-channel) or you have 2/4 (dual channel).

The specs make the difference, not the number of memory slots because there are boards with more than 6 slots. My desktop board has 8 memory slots and my server board has 18 memory slots. I've owned boards with 2, 4, 12 and 16 memory slots.

IMO one should not make a generalization based on the number of memory slots since there are boards with 1, 2, 3 and 4 memory channels.