12GB RAM Too Much?

[Nater]

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.

There are not any boards that any of us would be buying with four memory channels. FB-DIMM could do a pseudo four channel, but not really. The northbound and southbound bus widths were asymmetrical. We're not talking about 2S/4S boards here, that's not what the guy is looking at. Not that FB-DIMM really matters for any new system anymore, the technology is dead. intel has decided it better to go back to standard registered DIMMs on two socket servers and motherboard bound memory buffers for Beckton.

'xxx channel' isn't a memory spec either, it's a northbridge and/or CPU specification. Not to mention I wasn't referring to the number of DIMM slots, but the number of DIMMs in a kit. A triple channel kit is going to have three or six DIMMs, a dual channel kit will have two or four.

Using the memory slot number to determine dual/triple channel would also apply with nearly every consumer motherboard manufactured over the past five years excluding early build low-end X58 motherboards and Gigabyte's P55 UD6 with six memory slots.

[Altvamp]

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 )

Hi,
SSD stands for Solid State Device, basically it is flash memory, it does not have any mechanical parts like a conventional hard drive.
There was a lot of excitement and talk of how much faster they are than mechanical hard drives when they were first released into the general market but in reality they are unlikely to be any faster than there mechanical counterparts. Tests i have seen done on Laptop drives proved that most mechanical drives were faster overall, and the high spec mechanical drives out perform the SSD types easily.
They would be faster if they were not limited by the SATA interface, but due to the way they operate and latency they perform about the same overall as a standard cheap hard drive, many of them are also not performing up to the manufacturers spec with many falling below average of an equivalent mechanical drive, so if you are thinking of spending money on these for improved performance forget it!
There however pro's and cons, the ones I'm aware of and important ones are:
Pros:
1. They use less power (saving on energy)
2. They don't get very hot like mechanical drives (Because they use less power and have no moving parts)
3. They are not easily damaged by shock.
4. They don't make any noise
5. They are small and light

Cons:
1. It is practically impossible to perform successful data recovery on them due to the way data is written on them, So although there is much less chance of data loss with SSD, should data loss or corruption occur it's unlikely you will be able to recover it.

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?

Yes, putting 8GB in a three slot triple board does not make any sense, but as far as i understand it if you do this then 3 of your Dimms will work as triple channel and the other will be used as single channel if the other three are full - but this may depend on your board/processor, in some cases it may stop the triple channel feature from being used at all.

[slupry]

12GB of ram costs too much.

[gkline]

Cosaides: To stay on your point, if your MB has 6 memory slots get 6 gigs of quality ddr3 ram (use of 3 lots in triple channel) and with the $$$ you saved on the additional 6 gigs ram(@$150-175) buy the Intel X25 V ssd for $129
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167025

You'll have enough room to install your operating system and perhaps an app you use alot. Then add a large mechanical HD for storage etc. Best bang for the buck. You can always add the ram later.

[fluffmonster]

Different cpus/mobos have different numbers of memory channels, with the vast majority being dual channel and 1366/x58 being triple channel. The best performance occurs when you have identical sticks for each channel, though the margin of "best" here can be very thin. Much as it pains me to defend Nater, consumer boards which are probably what is relevant here do usually come with two dimm slots per channel, hence 4 or 6 dimm slots. Intel LGA 1156 or 775 systems and any AMD system less than 5 years old are all dual channel and so you would want either 2 or 4 ram sticks. If a stickis 2GB, then you want either 4 or 8 GB ram total. LGA 1366 systems have 3 memory channels and most x58 boards have 6 dimm slots, so best performance comes from 3 or 6 sticks (though they perform damn near as well with just 2 ram sticks), so for 2 GB sticks you're talking 6GB or 12GB total.

To answer the question though, 12GB of ram is greatly excessive. 6GB should be plenty, and you can always pick up more if really necessary. However, if you do not have an x58/1366 system, then you should not be buying either...get either 4GB pack or 8GB. Note that this has nothing to do with whether the ram is ddr2 or ddr3 in particular, though x58 boards require ddr3 and so you will only see 3-stick packs of ram in ddr3. 2-stick ram packs come in both ddr2 and ddr3 flavors.

[ua549]

I have multiple virtual machines running server applications - CentOS, FreeBSd, Windows Vista for surfing the internet plus Windows 7 to qualify patches and applications before deploying.

On the underlying Windows 7 OS I run an FTP server, web server, mail server and do high res satellite image manipulation.

My PC can have 64GB memory and my server can handle 128GB memory. These are older systems without the newer expanded memory capacities.

I was looking at replacing my notebook. The new I7 notebooks can handle 16GB memory and 2 SSD drives.

[Soul Assassin]

It wouldn't crash from lack of memory it would just swap out to the hard drive.

[SE_Saga]

It wouldn't crash from lack of memory it would just swap out to the hard drive.

Well, I don't use a page file, but good point. Still, when I did, I've had computers freeze when the virtual memory just didn't like certain programs (Photoshop comes to mind).

My last PC (which died this month) had 2gb running Windows XP SP3, and was doing just fine, but in my new PC I've chosen 8gb and I plan to run Windows 7 and, in theory, it should do me well for a few years, given the use I give it.

[ua549]

Well, I don't use a page file, but good point. Still, when I did, I've had computers freeze when the virtual memory just didn't like certain programs (Photoshop comes to mind).

My last PC (which died this month) had 2gb running Windows XP SP3, and was doing just fine, but in my new PC I've chosen 8gb and I plan to run Windows 7 and, in theory, it should do me well for a few years, given the use I give it.

The OS can't run without a page file so a temporary page file is created if there isn't one present.

[SE_Saga]

That's weird. The reason I stopped using a page file was because Opera would freeze if I had too many tabs open, idling for a while (when minimized, for instance). Ever since I turned it off, Opera never hanged again, so I'm pretty sure it did something.

Would that temporary page file be created only for Windows applications?

[ua549]

I'm not sure. It may be restricted to self use by the OS.

[rimmerchant]

unless you NEED the extra gobs of ram, don't get extra just for the hell of it. save your money.

if you do need it in the future then get it. by that time memory will be alot cheaper.

[kujoe2002]

I like where I am now at 16GB. With my old system I ran 8GB of RAM and I definitely notice an improvement in performance since I did the upgrade to 16GB. If I was using Win 7 ultimate I might get another 16GB and max out my mobo. And with the locks removed, where my games use more than the defaulted 1.5GB of RAM it's pretty nice. Less lag. But I can't imagine having 64GB of RAM. Then again I never thought I'd feel a difference in performace going from 8 to 16GB of RAM.

[PCVSNotebook]

I like where I am now at 16GB. With my old system I ran 8GB of RAM and I definitely notice an improvement in performance since I did the upgrade to 16GB. If I was using Win 7 ultimate I might get another 16GB and max out my mobo. And with the locks removed, where my games use more than the defaulted 1.5GB of RAM it's pretty nice. Less lag. But I can't imagine having 64GB of RAM. Then again I never thought I'd feel a difference in performace going from 8 to 16GB of RAM.

Actually you CAN use the extra unused RAM even 64G .. how ? easy , have you seen the msata in mobos that is used to cache the harddisks ?

The same software that caches the harddisk can choose any RAM disk you make ... so you can make like 16G or 24G or 32G RAM disk , and use that drive for harddisk caching .. will work also with SSD , in 64G machines , it is Quad channel memory .. this is 51.2 GB/s read-Write speed ... and CRAZY IOPs .. no SSD can come near that

[vertices]

I use 32GB in my work system. It really helps out with having many VMs running.