How far will 4GB of RAM take me?

[SlyMaelstrom]

I'm looking to make a home office PC for someone and I can get a good deal on RAM. So, I'm considering upping the RAM from 2GB to 4GB since people say Vista (I'm getting the 64-bit version, by the way) is pretty RAM intensive... but the question is... how far will 4GB of RAM take me? Basically saying, how long do you think it will be before standard applications start asking for more than 4GB (assuming you have several open)?

I personally think a home office PC should be able to go 5-6 years without needed a RAM upgrade with the 4GB I'm getting for it, but what do you all think?

[theteamaqua]

i gotta say though i dont notice much difference between 2GB vs 4GB at the same speed .. thats for firefox , STALKER ... etc

of course its going to be faster .. with 4GB

but RAM price r falling nowadays , DDR2 that is .. that XMS2 PC6400 C4 , C5 prolly costs somewhere in the low $100 zone now .. if u have that money to spare .. i say go for it

from my experience i dont notice much difference, again thats with firefox , STALKER , Lost Planet DX10 demo , ... just saying dont expect anything dramatic.. also dont forget to enable memory remap feature in bios:)

[syne_24]

I also didn't felt any drastic improvement from daily surfing the net, office word, etc..But FWIW Vista seems to respond better since I switched to 64bit to utilize all my 4GB. The desktop loads much faster than it did before and I even play games while crunching at the same time without any problems. For the most part if you can get another 2GB then go for it, it'll help vista one way or another.

[tommyshango]

I noticed video encoding is MUCH faster with 4 gb of ram. I encoded a movie while playing a game and burning 2 dvds. Normally this would slow me down quite a bit but I noticed no slow downs in the game at all. Before I would get moments where the screen might pause.. nothing so far...

[tiro_uspsss]

check this out: http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=3

[Andrew LB]

I'm switching over from 32bit vista to 64bit vista this weekend since the 32bit version only addresses 2.6gb of my ram even though the bios and cpu-z see the 4gb.

Microsoft is being kind enough to refund my entire purchase price of my 32bit version because of the issue with it not being able to address 4gb even though they advertise it can "handle 4gb".... sounds like shady marketing to me.

[bug850-4300]

Be sure to check the rating. I would, myself, buy 2gb of the really good stuff, and then, later, when the price drops, buy two more. Volume isn't everything, remember.

[RealTelstar]

Today u can get 4x1GB excellent ddr for about $500. It's worth it?
Yes, if you use vista x64 and memory hogs like some videogames, photoshop, premiere etc.
Otherwise 2gig will let u choose whatever OS u want.

[strange|ife]

i'm running 4gb right now, its great. lol xp only sees 3.2gb, but thats fine for now. I had x64 for a few months, but i was hitting major walls in overclocking on the OS, so i went back to 32bit xp for now.

still waiting on vista to get all the kinks out

having 3gb avaible to xp though is an awesome feeling to say the least

[adamsleath]

when does ram usage go over 2gb even running vista?

with vista taking around 1 gig (or less) i'm thinking a game like bf2 would exceed 2 gb (just)....but i doubt whether many/any apps most people use will go past 3 gb total use.

anyone got any info regarding apps and ram usage data?

anyway 4gb isnt even mainstream yet...if you want future proof then get 2x2gb kit, which allows you to expand to 8gb in the future :rolleyes:

2 shticks are better than 4...i had 4x512 in my last rig and 1 of the shticks was a bit of a dud. less chance of getting a bad stick with 2.

[tommyshango]

well... i use up my ram all 4gb all the time quite easily.. encode a dvd while burning 2 dvds and playing a video game at the same time.. bound to use up whatever memory you have.. maybe thats not mainstream pc usage but its how I like to get moneys worth.. and the memory that cost 450 dollars for a 2gb set is about 160 right now ocz 8500 nvidia sli.. you would be nuts not to get more if you can afford it. I dont see going to 8gb of ram by the time you need that we will all be using ddr3... or at least I will be.

[safan80]

I'm using vista x64 right now and my memory usage is at 1.1GB out of 2GB I'm thinking I need 2 more GBs.

[synergy]

Hmm well I've been running an X2-4400 + 3GB in Vista 64
as well as under LINUX for a while now.

I think the OP is correct in speculating that it'll be 5-6 years
before most mainstream OS & applications will 'need'
anything up to or beyond 4GB memory.

There are no mainstream 'general' applications that need
4GB to work well, and I don't see that changing for the next
couple of years. For mainstream applications the benefit
of 4GB memory is basically enhanced disk cache memory
and avoiding paging/swapping in the very rare cases where
you do have programs that repetitively access gigabytes
of memory. The bigger memory functioning as disk cache
can help responsiveness for things like loading frequently
used programs and frequently used files for those programs.

Specialized applications like the following
etc. will show major benefits for 4GB+ right now
(however if you're not doing these kinds of things there
are few conceivable mainstream applications that need
more than 1GB memory for themselves individually to work)
high res. complex video editing of long videos
super high resolution 2D graphic / photo editing (like high
res scanned pages or doing color profiled pre-press artwork
for poster/billboard sizes at high resolution),
certain kinds of CAD/CAM work with high res 3D modeling
and FEM analysis,
transcoding movies (somewhat),
heavy database server work,
heavy file / email server work,
etc.

I'd get the 4GB now if you get a really bargain basement
price on it (I just got some from the Fry's $119/2x2GB kit
deal), and it'll certainly serve you well for 5-6 years
assuming you're not compromising much on the key
other areas of the system specs.

On the other hand, if it's just general "future proofing"
and nothing NEEDED for the coming 1-2 years, I'd be
very sure I had a good spare backup USB hard disk or
RAID redundant backup, and enough reserve cash to
replace a failed monitor / disk drive, etc. before I spent
to get 4GB or more memory when 2GB would probably
work fine for most things.