Does size really matter?

kn505

My computer has two 1gb ram sticks. I just bought and installed an additional 8gb (two 4gb). The computer appears to run faster. However, I have several questions.

The two 1gb sticks are installed in slots 1 and 2, and the new two 4gb are installed in slots 3 and 4. Should I install these two 4gb sticks in slots 1 and 2 instead? If yes, then why?

Should I install different size of sticks? In my case above, should I take out the two 1gb sticks?

Does one 2gb stick equal two 1gb sticks?

bobman1235

It depends on the type of memory. For DDR applications, one stick does not equal two sticks of the same size, as the motherboard is trying to access them concurrently, so having one 2GB stick would be slower (in some applications; probably not noticeable unless you're hardcore) than 2 1GB sticks.

I don't believe placement matters (as in having the "larger" sticks in the first slots). The only time "mixing" different sticks will be an issue is if they're different SPEEDS; the memory bus will always run at the speed of the slowest memory.

Systems

kn505 wrote: »

My computer has two 1gb ram sticks. I just bought and installed an additional 8gb (two 4gb). The computer appears to run faster. However, I have several questions.

The two 1gb sticks are installed in slots 1 and 2, and the new two 4gb are installed in slots 3 and 4. Should I install these two 4gb sticks in slots 1 and 2 instead? If yes, then why?

Should I install different size of sticks? In my case above, should I take out the two 1gb sticks?

Does one 2gb stick equal two 1gb sticks?

What O.S. are you running?

bigaudiofanatic

I agree what OS are you running also it is not going to make a difference if you are not already maxing out the memory you have meaning using all of it. What do you do with your computer as well?

Jstas

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

I agree what OS are you running also it is not going to make a difference if you are not already maxing out the memory you have meaning using all of it. What do you do with your computer as well?

What the hell is that supposed to say?


Maxing out your memory is a bad thing. If you are using all of your memory (i.e.: operating at 100% memory usage) you need more memory. You should have, preferably, at least a 20% overhead on your memory so that you don't run in to swapping issues. You should rarely be hitting your "virtual memory" or "swap space". If you are running at 100% memory usage then you are definitely in your memory on disk space. That's bad because even if you have a fancy new solid state drive, the IDE, SATA, SCSI and SAS buses are all considerably slower than your memory bus. If anyone told you different, they either lied to you or have no clue what they are talking about.

kn505

Thanks for all the inputs.

Lorthos wrote: »

What O.S. are you running?

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits. The rams are DDR2 PC-5300 ECC Fully Buffered.

I am planning to use the computer for some video editing. Is 10gb enough for this or how much should I need?

bigaudiofanatic

Jstas wrote: »

What the hell is that supposed to say?


Maxing out your memory is a bad thing. If you are using all of your memory (i.e.: operating at 100% memory usage) you need more memory. You should have, preferably, at least a 20% overhead on your memory so that you don't run in to swapping issues. You should rarely be hitting your "virtual memory" or "swap space". If you are running at 100% memory usage then you are definitely in your memory on disk space. That's bad because even if you have a fancy new solid state drive, the IDE, SATA, SCSI and SAS buses are all considerably slower than your memory bus. If anyone told you different, they either lied to you or have no clue what they are talking about.

UPGRADING memory is only going to benefit him as of RIGHT NOW he is maxing out his memory. That is what I was saying. If you are only using 40% of your ram at any given time that it is not going to benefit him to upgrade it.

Jstas

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

UPGRADING memory is only going to benefit him as of RIGHT NOW he is maxing out his memory. That is what I was saying. If you are only using 40% of your ram at any given time that it is not going to benefit him to upgrade it.

Actually, yes it can.

bigaudiofanatic

Not really if he is only using 40% of his memory even at playing a game or burning a dvd it is not going to speed anything up. Now if it was using say 85 or 90% of the memory that may be different. But if he is gaming he might be better off upgrading his graphics card with something that has more graphics ram on the card rather than more ram.

tcrossma

Some motherboards require dual channel memory to be in specific slots, such as 1 & 3. Just double check, and if you're does then you'll want to put the matching memory sets into the appropriate slots.

Fongolio

^^^+1^^^^ Similar memory types in similar colored slots. And I agree with Jstas on this one. You may be only using 40% ram memory on average, but demand can sometimes require a lot more. Having worked as a computer tech for over 10 years I have always felt you can never have too much ram as long as your OS supports it. I'm running 8 gigs on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and it is sufficiant but I still see my virtual memory hit now and then. Windows XP 32 bit does not support more than 4 gigs so any more is a waste

Jstas

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

Not really if he is only using 40% of his memory even at playing a game or burning a dvd it is not going to speed anything up. Now if it was using say 85 or 90% of the memory that may be different. But if he is gaming he might be better off upgrading his graphics card with something that has more graphics ram on the card rather than more ram.

If you understood how memory addressing works and how operating systems use memory and allocate memory you would have a different view. But I don't have the time nor the desire to educate you so I'll just let you think you are right and go on about my day.

Sherardp

tcrossma wrote: »

Some motherboards require dual channel memory to be in specific slots, such as 1 & 3. Just double check, and if you're does then you'll want to put the matching memory sets into the appropriate slots.

these would be my thoughts.

dorokusai

I have 6gb of computer memory and about 256k of actual memory in how to use it.

janmike

I am glad I have a computer background (although a little old by now - the 70's) and some qualified computer engineers at work to give some civilized advice. They have comp. degrees and truly understand things.

halo71

But even with a 64bit OS. Unless the OP is doing heavy video editing, gaming, multi tasking etc. Running what, 10 gigs now. Isn't it sorta a waste of money to buy that much memory. But then again its been a while since I bought memory so I would assume its even cheap now. Oh well.....just a thought.

anhchungdoan

In Texas, we do not ask such a question. It's a fact of life in Texas: bigger is better. Mama will agree wholeheartedly.

halo71

EVERYTHING bigger is better? Think about that for a minute before answering! Daddy might not always agree.

Fongolio

halo71 wrote: »

But even with a 64bit OS. Unless the OP is doing heavy video editing, gaming, multi tasking etc. Running what, 10 gigs now. Isn't it sorta a waste of money to buy that much memory. But then again its been a while since I bought memory so I would assume its even cheap now. Oh well.....just a thought.

There is a point of diminishing returns depending on usage. Grandma surfing the web, and now and then sending an email to the grand kids sure does not need quad core with 8 gigs of ram.

obieone

I'm no geek, but, when it comes to performance, I believe it requires a balanced system.
i.e. If you have 10g of ram on a board with a Pentium 3, with no graphics card, you may just be swimming in mud?
If the OP cares to list the rest of his spec's, I'm sure the ACTUAL geeks can help.

bigaudiofanatic

janmike wrote: »

I am glad I have a computer background (although a little old by now - the 70's) and some qualified computer engineers at work to give some civilized advice. They have comp. degrees and truly understand things.

Ya I agree and I have already competed two college classes and working on 3 more starting at the end of this month. Can not wait sort of a geek. :rolleyes:

bigaudiofanatic

Jstas wrote: »

If you understood how memory addressing works and how operating systems use memory and allocate memory you would have a different view. But I don't have the time nor the desire to educate you so I'll just let you think you are right and go on about my day.

You do that

Sherardp

From my understanding using more than 4 gig in a 32bit OS is a waste. You can't really take advantage of anymore than 4 gb RAM unless you have a 64 bit OS which in turn requires a processor to run it. If I'm wrong I stand corrected, however I have read this elsewhere also. See this article

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775.html

bobman1235

Sherardp wrote: »

From my understanding using more than 4 gig in a 32bit OS is a waste. You can't really take advantage of anymore than 4 gb RAM unless you have a 64 bit OS which in turn requires a processor to run it. If I'm wrong I stand corrected, however I have read this elsewhere also. See this article

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775.html

No you're right; a 32-bit OS literally cannot address more than 4 gigabytes (4 gigs is 32 bits of address space). He already said he has a 64-bit OS / processor so he should be fine.

kn505

anhchungdoan wrote: »

In Texas, we do not ask such a question. It's a fact of life in Texas: bigger is better. Mama will agree wholeheartedly.

halo71 wrote: »

EVERYTHING bigger is better? Think about that for a minute before answering! Daddy might not always agree.

Very funny. Size does matter (for better or worse). But bigger is not always better.

obieone wrote: »

I'm no geek, but, when it comes to performance, I believe it requires a balanced system.
i.e. If you have 10g of ram on a board with a Pentium 3, with no graphics card, you may just be swimming in mud?
If the OP cares to list the rest of his spec's, I'm sure the ACTUAL geeks can help.

It is a Dell Precision T7400. It has two Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5410 2.33 GHz 1333 FSB Processors. The graphic card is 512MB nVidia Quadro FX1700. It has two Seagate 160GB 7200RPM hard drives. I would like to get bigger hard drives but don’t know the maximum allowable size of the hard drive yet. Currently, I can do either RAID 0 or RAID 1. It has 2 additional hard drive slots so that I can do RAID 5 or RAID 10 with additional hardware.

I am thinking of using the computer as a server to backing up important files. I would also like to use it to learn video editing.

Jstas

obieone wrote: »

I'm no geek, but, when it comes to performance, I believe it requires a balanced system.
i.e. If you have 10g of ram on a board with a Pentium 3, with no graphics card, you may just be swimming in mud?
If the OP cares to list the rest of his spec's, I'm sure the ACTUAL geeks can help.

Well, for one thing no motherboard that accepts a P3 will be able to handle 10 GB of RAM. Most can't get much past 2 GB if they can at all. But memory is not about balance. It's about resources and access to those resources. Quantity, speed of access and availability are much more important than any balance. There is no such thing as too much RAM.

To use your example of a P3 with no graphics, graphics require memory. Everything your computer does requires memory. From simple boot up to running Photoshop to just playing Solitaire. If you have a graphics card with dedicated memory then your graphics card will use that memory before attempting to access system memory. But to run that graphics card, you have to run the PCI controller and PCI bus and those require memory too. If you have no graphics card then your system memory requirements go up because the system is handling the graphics reproduction. That takes away memory from other tasks like word processing, web browsing and email management as well as operating system operations. So honestly, a P3 with on-board graphics would require more memory to reach similar operating levels as a P3 board with a graphics card. That is a gross over simplification but you get the drift.

halo71 wrote: »

But even with a 64bit OS. Unless the OP is doing heavy video editing, gaming, multi tasking etc. Running what, 10 gigs now. Isn't it sorta a waste of money to buy that much memory. But then again its been a while since I bought memory so I would assume its even cheap now. Oh well.....just a thought.

No, it's not because you do not need to run heavy number crunching software to eat up memory. Take a look at Internet Explorer 7. It now does tabbed browsing. That's great! But, IE7 essentially turns your browser in to a virtual machine that runs a new browser for every tab you have open. Because of that, memory use by IE7 is immense. It gets away with it by hiding some of the usage in the Windows system memory allocation. But in reality, if you have several tabs open in IE7, you can eat up most of your available memory. That's just web browsing. Add system operation (Windows Vista likes about 4 gigs of memory to run reasonably well), your email client, all of you IM tools, that new video game on Facebook (runs in a Java app), Java itself, your Virus Scan software, an MP3 player like Winamp or something and all of the other agents daemons and pre-loaders that run unseen behind the scenes and memory usage skyrockets pretty quick.

The more memory you have available, the more likely it is that all that junk you have running will be able to allocate enough memory to do it's thing without having to swap and stomp on other programs unused allocated memory. And that doesn't even cover what the system uses for managing all of the physical system resources like reading and writing to drives, network connection management and PCI or SATA bus management.

Fongolio wrote: »

There is a point of diminishing returns depending on usage. Grandma surfing the web, and now and then sending an email to the grand kids sure does not need quad core with 8 gigs of ram.

But see, if Grandma has a quad core with 8 GB of RAM on her fancy new Windows Vista machine then half of that memory is going to run Windows alone. The Quad core might be overkill but overkill is also a bit of "future-proofing". Grandma will likely kick the bucket before her simple tasks would require her to purchase a new system. If peak performance 24/7 is not even a thought, let alone concern, then why not get a system that you won't have to replace for a while? That's what I did. I'm still running a 1.6 GHz processor. I have about 2GB of SDRAM and I'm only running Windows XP but I haven't done anything but buy extra drives for it. I'm going on 7 years of constant usage and just now starting to see performance issues due to newer stuff needing hotter parts. I dropped a cool $2500 on the system over the past 7 years. Not bad when all my friends, against my recommendations, have spent twice that buying new machines every 2 or 3 years.

bobman1235 wrote: »

No you're right; a 32-bit OS literally cannot address more than 4 gigabytes (4 gigs is 32 bits of address space). He already said he has a 64-bit OS / processor so he should be fine.

And that's just for your OS. That's an important distinction because most controllers are running at much higher bit rates. They can also stack controllers and have multiple channel controllers. That can lead to systems with hundreds of gigabytes of memory available.

dorokusai

Jstas wrote: »

That's what I did. I'm still running a 1.6 GHz processor. I have about 2GB of SDRAM and I'm only running Windows XP but I haven't done anything but buy extra drives for it. I'm going on 7 years of constant usage and just now starting to see performance issues due to newer stuff needing hotter parts. I dropped a cool $2500 on the system over the past 7 years. Not bad when all my friends, against my recommendations, have spent twice that buying new machines every 2 or 3 years.

Same here. I ran a 2.3 P4 for a very long time with no issues until I started to play hardcore games again. I couldn't have been happier with the 5+ years I got out of that computer. I built my current one and plan to have another long stint at the wheel.

Sherardp

Ive ran my last setup for about 4 yrs, and just recently built a new setup. Totally back at it again, just upgraded from 2.8ghz quad core to 3.4 ghz quadcore. AMD 965 is on the way and should be there by the time my trip is over. I'm hoping for a 4.0ghz overclock on air using the Xigmatek Dark Knight and Artic Silver 5.

JohnLocke88

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

UPGRADING memory is only going to benefit him as of RIGHT NOW he is maxing out his memory. That is what I was saying. If you are only using 40% of your ram at any given time that it is not going to benefit him to upgrade it.

I was under the impression that 64 bit OS 16 GB was maximum for i5 (P55/P45) boards and 24 GB for i7 boards (X58).

10 GB should be sufficient. If you want to go full balls to the walls, load up the other slots with another 8 GB for 16 GB total.

But see, if Grandma has a quad core with 8 GB of RAM on her fancy new Windows Vista machine then half of that memory is going to run Windows alone. The Quad core might be overkill but overkill is also a bit of "future-proofing". Grandma will likely kick the bucket before her simple tasks would require her to purchase a new system. If peak performance 24/7 is not even a thought, let alone concern, then why not get a system that you won't have to replace for a while? That's what I did. I'm still running a 1.6 GHz processor. I have about 2GB of SDRAM and I'm only running Windows XP but I haven't done anything but buy extra drives for it. I'm going on 7 years of constant usage and just now starting to see performance issues due to newer stuff needing hotter parts. I dropped a cool $2500 on the system over the past 7 years. Not bad when all my friends, against my recommendations, have spent twice that buying new machines every 2 or 3 years.

Right, well, had your friends spent $1,250 twice in the course of the 7 years, they'd still probably have better performing computers than you. Spending a boatload of money up front on computers is not the most intelligible thing to do.

JohnLocke88

Delete double post

tonyb

Does size really matter ?

Hold on, let me go ask the wife.