how much ram is enough ram?

kamikaze77

kamikaze77

New Member
i just bought a motherboard today (MSI 770-C45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130228

any my next step is to buy some ram. it takes ddr3 ram. i was curious to know how much would be a good amount (i always have the option to add more) im going to be doing some gaming on it. mostly wow for now, but planning on starting on some fps

i dont have tons of money. i still need ram, a hard drive and a video card

any suggestions?
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
If you don't have enough money,but you want to play modern games,to be honest...even 512 MB of RAM DDR1 is enough if you know how to configure ALL properly. ;) I play all modern games with just 512 MB of RAM DDR1 and everything works like charm.Of course that all depends how you configure the settings in the game,the settings in the OS and the settings in the drivers of your graphic card.
But since you probably don't know all that,I recommend you to buy AT LEAST 2 GB of RAM DDR3.




Cheers!
 
Fatback

Fatback

VIP Member
2GB is the minimum I would recommend for todays gaming computer. Usually 4GB is more then enough. If you can go ahead and get 4GB if not get 2gb and and another 2gb later.
 
ScottALot

ScottALot

Active Member
2GB is a minimum, but before it was below the minimum because of Vista. Still 4GB is the standard and it will get you more than by. The 6GB set is great, of course, for the triple channel support. Finally (talking about common memory setups) 8GB is a massive amount of memory usually used for video rendering, editing if I'm correct.
 
poke349

poke349

New Member
I would actually say 4GB as the absolute minimum if you want to future-proof yourself.
Programs are getting more and more bloated at an ever increasing rate...

For me at least, Firefox will leak 1GB of ram every 8 hours...
iTunes will leak 1GB every week or so.
I've had IE8 spill over 3GB of usage from opening a bunch of XML documents...

6GB would be for the triple channel i7 systems.
> 8GB would be for video rendering, heavy photoshop... etc...

And if you use ram drives, then there's no such thing as too much ram.


(I'm a fan of ram drives, but that's not the purpose of my ram.)
 
linkin

linkin

VIP Member
I'd say 2GB is the absolute minimum. remember there is no such thing as future proof. all you can do is delay upgrading :)
 
Gareth

Gareth

Active Member
I find 8GB is very comfortable on Windows 7. Right now, im typing this message, with only 11% memory used.

4GB is great for most users but there is definitely a speed increase between 4 and 6/8GB of RAM.
 
kamikaze77

kamikaze77

New Member
any brands that arent super expensive but still good? i think im going to start with 6gb (3 at 2gb each) any thing i should stay way from?
 
Fatback

Fatback

VIP Member
kamikaze77 said:
any brands that arent super expensive but still good? i think im going to start with 6gb (3 at 2gb each) any thing i should stay way from?
Click to expand...

Using 6GB with an AMD motherboard is pretty much stupid. With AMD it's either 2,4,8,16gb. This is because AMD used dual channel DDR3 not triple channel DDR3 if you use 3 stick of 2gb then each stick will run in single channel. 4GB of RAM running in dual channel will easily perform better then 6GB running in single channel. So if you wont 6GB you need to start looking into an i7 build because at the moment X58 motherboards are the only ones that support triple channel DDR3.

AS for brand anything from something like Corsair, OCZ, G-Skill, Patriot, Crucial, Wintec, Kingston, Mushkin, Geil, A-Data, Super talent. Should be ok but just do some research on the model. Even though Corsair and Crucial and these other brands make awesome RAM sometimes certain models are just crap.
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

Moderator
Staff member
kamikaze77 said:
any brands that arent super expensive but still good? i think im going to start with 6gb (3 at 2gb each) any thing i should stay way from?
Click to expand...

kamikaze77 said:
has anyone heard anything from the brand patriot?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...399&cm_re=patriot_ddr3-_-20-220-399-_-Product
Click to expand...

Thats not a triple channel board. Get either 2 or 4 sticks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231303
or, if your worried about them/shields hitting the CPU cooler if you have a big aftermarket CPU cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193
 
PohTayToez

PohTayToez

Active Member
I would say that it depends on what you plan on doing. If you only have so much money to spend, then decide on whether you want quality or quantity. For example, for gaming 2GB of high quality RAM would probably be better than 4GB of the cheapest, slowest RAM. But for everyday use you'd probably be better off going with 4GB of the cheap stuff. Of course, if you can afford 4GB or more of good RAM, go for it.
 
O

oscaryu1

VIP Member
Also depends on your operating system. With 2GB and Vista Home Premium 32 bit, 50% of my memory was gone just sitting at the desktop.

Brand does not matter, Corsair (in the past), produced I think it was a certain type of terrific DDR2-800, and then secretly swapped the actual memory chips on it to a lower quality type... result... major reliablity problems and many DOA's.

You can never have enough RAM. You can have a lack of it, however ;)
 
PunterCam

PunterCam

Active Member
Gareth said:
I find 8GB is very comfortable on Windows 7. Right now, im typing this message, with only 11% memory used.
Click to expand...

Just under a gig to type a message - couldn't I do that at pretty much the same speed 7 years ago with the entire system using 256mb ram? Progress indeed...

4Gb is the correct amount, and it hardly costs the earth.
 
P

PerKr

New Member
PunterCam said:
Just under a gig to type a message - couldn't I do that at pretty much the same speed 7 years ago with the entire system using 256mb ram? Progress indeed...

4Gb is the correct amount, and it hardly costs the earth.
Click to expand...

Interesting... I only have 256MB of RAM in the laptop I'm writing this on... Guess I'm not moving away from XP in a while :D
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
4gigs is the absolute most you'll need as a gamer and average computer user. If you get into rendering, video, audio, physics, and other types of high end computing then more RAM is needed.

My servers are work all have 4gigs of RAM and run dual Xeons and they are put to more usage than 99% of most people's home computers. Sure they run different things so the comparison is not a good one, but as a resource comparison, really in all honesty if your system is needing to use more than 4gigs of RAM then either the developers of your software can't write code to save their lives or you have a crazy configuration going.

Sure, there are memory leaks but I game on my PC and run the newest games at the max or near highest settings and I only have 4gigs of RAM. I always have Firefox and steam running, and well as A/V and a few other processos (star dock, etc) and I never use over 3gigs of RAM total even while gaming. I also run a pretty crappy OS, Vista 64 Ulitmate. Going to upgrade to win7 professional once I can get a hold of my account sales for the school system I work for, since a license should only cost me $20-$30 for the full version via edu discount.
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
oscaryu1 said:
Also depends on your operating system. With 2GB and Vista Home Premium 32 bit, 50% of my memory was gone just sitting at the desktop.
Click to expand...

Holy crap man:D!!If this really happened to you then your OS wasn't configured properly.I ran Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition on only 512 MB of RAM DDR1 and it worked like charm.Even while playing games everything was working perfect with no lags at all.

If to you people Windows Vista or ANY other newer or older Windows OS lags on 2 GB of RAM then you haven't configured your OS correctly.I tryed Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition on only 512 MB of RAM DDR1 and everything was working just perfect even while playing modern games.Also I was running more then 24 background programs in the same time and I had no lags at all.So its perfectly possible to run any Windows OS on just 512 MB of RAM with no lags at all.It all depends on your knowledge and how you configure the OS settings,game settings,settings in your programs and settings in your drivers...ALL THOSE SETTINGS aren't there for nothing lol.Remember that:D
 
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