Memory questions.....

[Fish Chris]

I have been told numerous times, that having more RAM, makes a big difference. I also know their are a lot of variables from one stick to the next. (MHz, latency times, heat disipation, etc).

My MBO uses DDR2, and has 4 slots, for a max of 16gigs.... But I have yet to find individual 4 gig sticks, at any price. So, I went with 4 x 2gigs, for an 8gig setup.

Yet I read over and over, of these hard core gamers, that have setups that are probably badder than mine in every way > But they are only running 4gigs of memory ? WHY ? In most of these setups, its obvious that they were not too restricted by $$$.... So why not another $100 or $150 to double their RAM ? What am I missing here ?

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And about my memory, please take a peek, and let me know what you think;

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memo...ge_blade_series

My research showed it to be pretty great stuff.... But now I'm wondering if I should have went with the 1200MHz style of the same memory. I thought it would be a LOT more expensive... but I was wrong again. Anyway.

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Finally, with all 4 of my mem slots full, I'm a little concerned about heat.... Although I've read that my low voltage style memory stays pretty darn cool + my setup uses an Antec 9002 tower, with fans all over the darn thing, 5 in total.

Will their be a way I can monitor the temps of my memory during use ? .....or for that matter, how about monitoring the temps of my CPU, or graphics card ?

I think my whole setup will include 7 fans as it is... Hope it doesn't sound like a helicopter at lift off

Thanks again,

Fish

[Soulman07]

I have been told numerous times, that having more RAM, makes a big difference. I also know their are a lot of variables from one stick to the next. (MHz, latency times, heat disipation, etc).

My MBO uses DDR2, and has 4 slots, for a max of 16gigs.... But I have yet to find individual 4 gig sticks, at any price. So, I went with 4 x 2gigs, for an 8gig setup.

Yet I read over and over, of these hard core gamers, that have setups that are probably badder than mine in every way > But they are only running 4gigs of memory ? WHY ? In most of these setups, its obvious that they were not too restricted by $$$.... So why not another $100 or $150 to double their RAM ? What am I missing here ?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And about my memory, please take a peek, and let me know what you think;

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memo...ge_blade_series

My research showed it to be pretty great stuff.... But now I'm wondering if I should have went with the 1200MHz style of the same memory. I thought it would be a LOT more expensive... but I was wrong again. Anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, with all 4 of my mem slots full, I'm a little concerned about heat.... Although I've read that my low voltage style memory stays pretty darn cool + my setup uses an Antec 9002 tower, with fans all over the darn thing, 5 in total.

Will their be a way I can monitor the temps of my memory during use ? .....or for that matter, how about monitoring the temps of my CPU, or graphics card ?

I think my whole setup will include 7 fans as it is... Hope it doesn't sound like a helicopter at lift off

Thanks again,

Fish

I doubt you'll ever use more than 3 gigs of the total memory you have even with most of the newer games. That's with all your messengers, music players, a/v software and all of that good stuff open in the background. Adding ram will increase the amount of programs you can have open or running in the background with the amount of it and no noticeable delay or lag. But unless you are running a server or have milllions of startup programs. 8 gigs is still overkill from my experience, even being on vista ultimate myself. Processing power is a bit different and realistically you can max out a quad/8 core system if needed while doing serveral other things at the same time. So I have no arguments there, the differences between the speed of all the memory isn't very noticable unless you are benchmarking. So It won't matter by much.

There's no way to monitor the temperatures of the memory but there are stress testing tools that you can use to make sure it's stable during normal operation.

Outside of that I don't really think you have much to worry about. At the cost of 100.00 per 8 gigs of DDR2 memory... You aren't losing anything, Compared to the 800 dollars I spent on memory for my 8 core server a few years ago to only have 16gigs of memory.... You can't really lose either way.

Memtest is the name of a commonly used program to stress test your ram. If you can make it 8 hours with no errors or windows not BSOD'ing, you'll be fine. If it still concerns you that much. They make coolers to go over the memory banks now. So you can purchase one for it, there's also some water cooled heatsinks for ram too.

[-Hobby-]

The gamers are getting what they want from their GPU's. The memory is not as crucial to them as the frame rates the video cards they are using are. Thats why you will see video cards filling up every hard core gaming system. I dont think the average Joe would ever be able to tell the difference between a system running 4 gigs or 16 gigs of memory. Maybe if your doing some major CAD or video rendering you would want to fill them to the max.

[Fish Chris]

Thanks guys.

Damn.... I'd sure like to hope I will be able to use at least 4.2 gigs of my 8 gigs on occasion

Not really worried about stressing my memory. Heck, I'm guessing (if I'm not wrong again) that with 8gigs available, instead of 4, the load to any 1 stick will be cut basically in half... no ?

Oh and Soulman, mine was a bit more expensive than $100 for 8gigs... more like $160. But then again, I guess OCZ is a pretty reputable memory producer, and this is their top of the line stuff, for DDR2.

In any case, if I were to do this all over again, I guess I'd have went with 4gigs, and a Q9650 3.0GHz 12MB L2 Cache CPU.

Oh well.

Still pretty excited / anxious to get this thing together, and fired up

Peace,

Fish

[newls1]

Fish, to learn a huge amount, check this place out ( www.xtremesystems.org ) That is the best PC forum on the net, hands down, and just a bunch of (mostly) older folks, helping out. You can learn a huge amount over there in a short time. TO help answer your 8GB vs 4GB question: First, the person who said people use there GPU's for there frame buffer is mostly correct. A gaming system, is typically "JUST" a gaming system (with of course internet usage and light other work, but for the most part, the person who builds a gaming PC, (or atleast in my builds) uses high end parts and for memory THE LOWEST TIMINGS POSSIBLE. With a PC that is using 8GBs (4 2gb sticks) first and for-most, stablity *might* be an issue #1 (tweaking a bios for 8gb's timing CAS/RAS/TRFC/ETC..... really must be dialed in exactly for the givin MHz of operating speed. Some motherboard DO NOT like populating all 4 dimm slots, and if you do, the OC potential (not that you will be OCing) is severely limited (unless cooling is optimal, and you can pump some very needed voltage to NB,RAM,etc....) Is this making sense? To sum it up, a TRUE gaming PC (on the aging 775 platform) would typically be 4gb ram @ DDR1200+ (600MHz actual speed) a SLI/X-Fire setup with 1-2+GB frame buffer, per GPU, very fast HDD (either it be SSD, or 10k rpm raptor, 15K SAS, etc...) then a seperate HDD for games ONLY (This I would only use a SSD like a OCZ Vertex 120gb) XF-i titanium sound card PCIe interface, etc...................... Does this help

[Fish Chris]

Hey Seth, well yes, this helps a lot..... but not neccessarily in a comforting way. Now I just really wish I'd had saved $75 on the memory, and spent $30 more on a better processor.

I was thinking it was the 3.0HGz..... but this one is 2.83GHz and still has the increased 12MB of cache....

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...u=CP1-DUO-Q9550

That would be better, huh ?

Fish

Fish, to learn a huge amount, check this place out ( www.xtremesystems.org ) That is the best PC forum on the net, hands down, and just a bunch of (mostly) older folks, helping out. You can learn a huge amount over there in a short time. TO help answer your 8GB vs 4GB question: First, the person who said people use there GPU's for there frame buffer is mostly correct. A gaming system, is typically "JUST" a gaming system (with of course internet usage and light other work, but for the most part, the person who builds a gaming PC, (or atleast in my builds) uses high end parts and for memory THE LOWEST TIMINGS POSSIBLE. With a PC that is using 8GBs (4 2gb sticks) first and for-most, stablity *might* be an issue #1 (tweaking a bios for 8gb's timing CAS/RAS/TRFC/ETC..... really must be dialed in exactly for the givin MHz of operating speed. Some motherboard DO NOT like populating all 4 dimm slots, and if you do, the OC potential (not that you will be OCing) is severely limited (unless cooling is optimal, and you can pump some very needed voltage to NB,RAM,etc....) Is this making sense? To sum it up, a TRUE gaming PC (on the aging 775 platform) would typically be 4gb ram @ DDR1200+ (600MHz actual speed) a SLI/X-Fire setup with 1-2+GB frame buffer, per GPU, very fast HDD (either it be SSD, or 10k rpm raptor, 15K SAS, etc...) then a seperate HDD for games ONLY (This I would only use a SSD like a OCZ Vertex 120gb) XF-i titanium sound card PCIe interface, etc...................... Does this help

[newls1]

Fish, Dont get pissed when I say this, or dont take it personally, but I feel like im on repeat! When we spoke on the phone, I pretty sure I touched base on all this stuff. Dont take this the wrong way, you know im here to help ya, not a problem. For what your wanting "YOUR" PC to do, You would GREATLY benefit from a CPU that has the most cache mem in its family, and t hat would be 12mb. See the thing about cache mem, is that it operates at the same speed as the CPU cores, so having 12mb of cache operating at 2.83GHz, and a latency of 0.002NS (something like that) Would make your editing programs largely faster then 6/4mb cache. Stop throwing money into this build, and just keep what you got (if you already paid for it) and just concentrate on the learning process of building

**EDIT** Anyone else notice the memory prices are going WAY UP? WTF, did something hit Taipei, like a hurricane,tsunami , etc......?

Edited September 4, 2009 by newls1

[newls1]

you'll be fine with your 8gb setup, dont stress over it. Really the only thing im hoping for, is that the motherboard plays nice with the 8gb. If it doesn't, you know how to get ahold of me.

[Fish Chris]

Hey Seth, me get pissed ? On the contrary. I appreciate your paitience with such a PC dummy as myself ....but hey, slowly but surely, I'm learning

My buddy made a good point earlier about that whole 6MB cache, vs. 12MB cache thing though. He said, if I had already had a setup with 12MB cache, then went to one with 6MB's, I "might" (in certain, heavy system requirement situations) notice a slight difference.... or should I say, slightly lesser performance. But from what I am going from, to what I'm going to, its going to seem SOOO incredibly much faster, that it will probably be hard for me to believe it could be any better.

Sounds logical to me.

Hey and I think I mentioned, in at least one (reasonable sounding) review I read, A guy was using my exact MBO, with 8gigs of my exact memory, and had no problems whatsoever + it ran quite cool. But I know.... lots of other variables, right ? Crossing my fingers, but I'm hoping that if I do happen to have any glitches / instability, that we can get it worked out without too aweful much grief.

Peace,

Fish

you'll be fine with your 8gb setup, dont stress over it. Really the only thing im hoping for, is that the motherboard plays nice with the 8gb. If it doesn't, you know how to get ahold of me.