2GB of DDR2 800 and Vista

[Drowz]

So Im putting this new rig together and I got to thinking. "Will 2GB of Crucial Ballistix Tracer be enough for Vista home premium or should I get 1 more gig?"

So I thought I'd let you guys help me decide. Ive gone over budget building this new PC so Im not sure if 2GB will be sufficient. I will be OCing an AMD 5000+ Black edition processor on this system to about 3.0ghz if that helps.

[Obby]

3GB would be better, but really, I'd try to stay away from numbers that aren't powers of 2. 4 will run better than 3 for the most part, but you can only get the full 4GB if you have 64 bit Vista.

[oakae]

Yup, get up to 3 gigs. The more the better, Vista can be very memory hungry.

[8igdave]

Like they said. Although if you are going for 3gb, just get vista 64bit and get 4gb. Runs alot smoother and is faster.

Also, why crucial tracer ram? its just prity normal balstics ram. Their ram also has a high fatality rate when overclocked, even though they overcklock to like 1250mhz. And why are you getting amd if you want to overclock? Intels overclock wayyyyy better then the amd equivilant and are faster clock for clock.

Id get 4x1gb of ocz ram for £70 and a E2180 to overclock to 3-3.5ghz with its 10x multiplyer or a E8400 to overclock to 4ghz+ or even a Q9450 which overclock well i beleive.

[Drowz]

i went with AMD because of the budget. I will take your advice on the ram. the only thing about tracers is that they are pretty.

[zer]

Make sure you get a batch number of 16FDx and not 8FEx. The latter is high density non micron D9Gxx ICs and have poor o.cing results. The 16FDx batches have the 512Mbit D9Gxx IC and overclock like woa!!! -- 1008 4-4-4-12 @ 2.11-2.13vDIMM // 1120 5-4-4-9 @2.13-2.15vDIMM and 1200 5-5-5-15 @ 2.15-2.17vDIMM (You can tell I have a set)

That being Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066 PC2 8500 // 16FD5 -- D9GMH

P.S I payed $120 for the ram:) 2048Mb kit!

The high failure rates are mostly due to enthusiasts running the ram over 2.2volts and with alot of extremists getting 600Mhz "1200 effective" Cas 4 or even 700Mhz "1400 effective" Cas 5 @ 2.55-2.6+ volts!!!

There is the odd regularity of dying D9s under "recommended" volts (any kit using D9GMH ICs)... Its the nature of their conception; live fast die hard and fast!!!

[Drowz]

i ended up going with 4gb of ddr2 800 for my system, should get here today at about 1:00pm. :)

[PeterPan]

2GB is fine for pretty much all games, I don't think any need 4GB at this point.

[mongoose]

Since this seems like a good place to ask........

We know that under XP, Windows cant recognize the full 4 gigs but what exactly is the amount of 'wasted' ram? Ive heard numbers ranging as low as 2.2 to as high as 3.3 gigs (thats what it will recognize mind you)

So is there any way to know for sure what the exact waste for a particular system is?

[PeterPan]

The max a 32 bit OS can recognize is 3GB, so anything over 3GB would be wasted.

[Zîm]

in germany a 4gb-ram DDR2/800 package from "Geil" costs u about 80 euros (~100$).

atm i think the minimal system requirements for WAR are 2gb ram.
don't try to save money on the important stuff. take 3gb, especially with vista.

[zer]

The max a 32 bit OS can recognize is 3GB, so anything over 3GB would be wasted.

Incorrect, its not that the O.S cant reconigze the amount of RAM, is just that its unadressable due to the fact that the segment of memory was overwritten by the PCI configuration space which has a maximum of a 4Gigs on a 32bit O.S. So depending on your components, you might have more or less "usable" RAM. Typically one should see about 3.2Gigs.

[Skaejek]

I thought that if you got 4GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS, it would only show 3.25GB. This is the main reason I'm leaning towards getting Vista 64-bit over XP, so I can unlock this extra memory.

[Obby]

We know that under XP, Windows cant recognize the full 4 gigs but what exactly is the amount of 'wasted' ram? Ive heard numbers ranging as low as 2.2 to as high as 3.3 gigs (thats what it will recognize mind you)

It's already been said, but I feel it's worth mentioning, that it's not just XP, it's any 32-bit OS.

[8igdave]

Incorrect, its not that the O.S cant reconigze the amount of RAM, is just that its unadressable due to the fact that the segment of memory was overwritten by the PCI configuration space which has a maximum of a 4Gigs on a 32bit O.S. So depending on your components, you might have more or less "usable" RAM. Typically one should see about 3.2Gigs.

You beat me grrr :p

I thought that if you got 4GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS, it would only show 3.25GB. This is the main reason I'm leaning towards getting Vista 64-bit over XP, so I can unlock this extra memory.

64bit is also faster. The reason it uses more memory then 32bit is that the packet sizes it deals with are bigger then that of the 32bit. It runs faster at the reduction of ram. 32bit uses 650mb and 64bit uses 750-800mb for Vista. But with 4gb you will have enough and it will run very nicely indeed. Most games run i 32bit though, the few which run in 64bit (like supremecomander) give alot better performance when doing so. Im sure more games will start usign 64bit however, its inevitable as was 32bit over 16bit.

2GB is fine for pretty much all games, I don't think any need 4GB at this point.

Already games are requiring more tghen 2gb memory. Supreme comander on 64bit mode even eats up 4gb of ram.

The responce of a pc is greatly increased by additional ram. if your pc runs out of ram it uses the ahrd drive instead and this is alot slower! Vista 64bit (and xp 64bit i presume) feels so much nicer with the extra 2gb in

[Krigare]

Is there a reason to not use vista 64bit over the 32bit? Right now I only have 2gb ram but if there are no major cons to using 64bit over 32bit right now I might as well load vista 64bit so I can throw in 2gb more in the future without changing the OS. The only thing I can think of would be drivers, but most every vista driver I've seen was for both versions.

I gotta decide today, doing a clean install once my new vid card shows up :/

[8igdave]

Is there a reason to not use vista 64bit over the 32bit? Right now I only have 2gb ram but if there are no major cons to using 64bit over 32bit right now I might as well load vista 64bit so I can throw in 2gb more in the future without changing the OS. The only thing I can think of would be drivers, but most every vista driver I've seen was for both versions.

I gotta decide today, doing a clean install once my new vid card shows up :/

There are very few drivers support problems now. Ive found a few overclocking utilities to not work on 64bit though but thats hardly a big reason not to, especialy if not overclocking in the first place.

TV cards still have grey areas but if you search around and find out if there are anny issues then youll know for sure if the tv card you awnt is good with vista 64bit. Id say about 70% of tv cards have good working drivers for vsita 64bit. A few however claim 64bit compatibility but have terrible problems like not working if you habe 4gb of ram in your pc :confused: the E700 u have works fine.

If running 64bit get 4gb. Running 64bit onn only 2gb is not really a good idea as its chewign up more ram for the extra speed boost but you may find your self runnign ouit of ram and therefore suffering an even bigger speed boost. Some games are already starting to max out 2gb in pcs. Especialy in vista, if you added the 64bit ontop then your gona come up short on ram.