HUGE difference between 4GB & 8GB RAM

[Nab]

So yeah I just got my Corsair Vengeance 8GB RAM. ( Used to have 4GB ) and I was shocked by the difference. I can open more than 8 tabs now and still be using less than 40% of my RAM ( used to be around 75% usage ) it's so much faster. The biggest difference actually was in BF3, I used to be at 98% RAM usage!! while playing BF3 and now it's at 55%. Also, when I alt + tabbed out of BF3 I used to crash the game every time, it works perfectly now and much smoother. I really commend all of you guys to get 8GB and not settle on only 4.

[Cyanotical]

i didn't settle for 4 :P

its always nice to a huge improvement from a cheap upgrade

[aedistan]

if 8 is so good, imagine if you had 16!!!

[Nab]

if 8 is so good, imagine if you had 16!!!

Sadly it doesn't really work like that, If for example my RAM usage would've been at around 85%+ then yeah it would make a difference. But since my RAM usage never goes above 60% I don't really see how another 8GB could make an impact.

[vesseblah]

There was a test about year ago in TomsHardware how much amount of RAM makes difference in games. They tested bunch of mainstream games back then (before BF3 came out) and the result was 0-10% improvement varying from game to game if you go up from 4GB to 6GB, and zero gain with 8 or 12 GB.

I can open more than 8 tabs now and still be using less than 40% of my RAM ( used to be around 75% usage ) it's so much faster. The biggest difference actually was in BF3, I used to be at 98% RAM usage!!

You're probably confusing between free and available RAM, it's common mistake.

Also, when I alt + tabbed out of BF3 I used to crash the game every time, it works perfectly now and much smoother.

Alt-tab crashes are usually caused by driver problems. Adding more RAM might've postponed some memory leak bug (BF3 supposedly has few).

[Nab]

There was a test about year ago in TomsHardware how much amount of RAM makes difference in games. They tested bunch of mainstream games back then (before BF3 came out) and the result was 0-10% improvement varying from game to game if you go up from 4GB to 6GB, and zero gain with 8 or 12 GB.



You're probably confusing between free and available RAM, it's common mistake.



Alt-tab crashes are usually caused by driver problems. Adding more RAM might've postponed some memory leak bug (BF3 supposedly has few).

By improvement I mean less stuttering not an FPS gain.

[noteworthynerd]

Yeah, I've seen various posts where people said they saw a huge difference in BF3 when they upgraded from 4GB to 8GB.

[Sephiracle]

Yeah, I've seen various posts where people said they saw a huge difference in BF3 when they upgraded from 4GB to 8GB.

Well if you're out of RAM, the other hardware has to make up for it, usually in the case of the processor having to use the HD a lot more through the pagefile.

If you're running Windows 7 64bit, a lot of the programs you may have running is going to have you near 4 gigs so that's not really surprising.

[Demoness]

In my personal experience, the only time you will notice more RAM improving your performance, is if you do not have enough in the first place. 8 seems to be the new sweet spot for most people lately. I have 16, and I have disabled my pagefile. I have to literally TRY to break 8-10GB used by opening things that I wouldn't typically have running all at once. 16GB cost me $89. Small investment to never have to worry about RAM again for the life of your motherboard and processor imo.

[noteworthynerd]

Yeah, I'm using 12GB and I disabled my PageFile as well, never even come close to utilizing all of mine.

[Cyanotical]

@Nab: i would suggest your next buy be a SSD, you can swap out all the parts you want, but you will never see an overall system performance boost like getting a SSD

[Nab]

@Nab: i would suggest your next buy be a SSD, you can swap out all the parts you want, but you will never see an overall system performance boost like getting a SSD

Yeah, that's kinda my next upgrade. Which ones would you recommend that are at least 128GB? Planning on putting quite a lot of games & my OS on it.

[Cyanotical]

Yeah, that's kinda my next upgrade. Which ones would you recommend that are at least 128GB?

the top one out there is the Crucial M4, and for very good reason, its actually an enterprise drive, so it has unmatched reliability in its price range

otherwise the Mushkin Chronos deluxe, and Corsair Force seem to be good, as well as the new OCZ Indilinx if you are storing non-compressible data

[zera]

lol tripple channel memory ftw started with 6gb

[kronpas]

There was a test about year ago in TomsHardware how much amount of RAM makes difference in games. They tested bunch of mainstream games back then (before BF3 came out) and the result was 0-10% improvement varying from game to game if you go up from 4GB to 6GB, and zero gain with 8 or 12 GB.



You're probably confusing between free and available RAM, it's common mistake.



Alt-tab crashes are usually caused by driver problems. Adding more RAM might've postponed some memory leak bug (BF3 supposedly has few).

You are wrong on the bolded part. BF3 uses around 3.5 to 3.8GB after 1 hour+ playing, so when the user logs out Wndows will call for HDD swap file to use as RAM. Unfortunately, it usually is waaaay slower than true RAM, hence the crash. Upgrade to 6GB+ solves the problem completely as Windows now have free memory for desktop operation.

Why I know all of this? I bought an SSD, which is supposedly fast, and I can now alt-tab out without any crashing even though its only 4GB.

[vesseblah]

Why I know all of this? I bought an SSD, which is supposedly fast, and I can now alt-tab out without any crashing even though its only 4GB.

I really have no clue what you know, as your whole post makes no sense especially if you compare it to 2GB numbers mentioned in the post right above yours.

[Cyanotical]

I really have no clue what you know, as your whole post makes no sense especially if you compare it to 2GB numbers mentioned in the post right above yours.

the odd thing is that windows doesn't swap to an SSD, so i don't know how that would help, mine automatically set the swap location to my first HDD, (which annoyingly is one of my hotswap drives)

[kronpas]

I really have no clue what you know, as your whole post makes no sense especially if you compare it to 2GB numbers mentioned in the post right above yours.

Checked. It uses around 2GB, but as my system uses around 1.8GB when idle with all the shit (FF, steam, origin blah blah) loaded, adding ~2GB on top of it is quite taxing. All I learnt that after 1 hour mark I risked the game crashing when alt-tabbing. Everytime it s almost frozen, then crashs. Reinstalling windows doesnt help. But never again it happens after installing SSD.

You are free to remove some of your RAM slots to make it 4GB, install BF3, play on high/ultra for at least one hour, THEN try alt-tabbing to see if it crashes. Its almost guaranteed.

the odd thing is that windows doesn't swap to an SSD, so i don't know how that would help, mine automatically set the swap location to my first HDD, (which annoyingly is one of my hotswap drives)

Right click on My computer -> properties > advanced system settings > advanced > performance/settings > advanced tab > virtual memory/change > turn off automatic, then put swap file on your SSD. It should solve your alt-tabbing crash problem if you have ~4GB, provided you install the game and OS on that SSD as well. But as I see you have 32GB already, do you really need swap file?

[Janaa]

if 8 is so good, imagine if you had 16!!!

The difference between 4 and 8 is about a 50-60% performance improvement. Between 8 and 12 its 20%, and between 12 and 16 its around 8%. Thus, if you're spending sensibly, there's never really a good reason to go above 12gigs of RAM on current user desktop OSs.

[Brett Skullcrack]

The difference between 4 and 8 is about a 50-60% performance improvement. Between 8 and 12 its 20%, and between 12 and 16 its around 8%. Thus, if you're spending sensibly, there's never really a good reason to go above 12gigs of RAM on current user desktop OSs.

It doesn't work like that. With RAM the significant performance improvement comes from not having to page to disk. Where that point is depends entirely on your usage. Adding more RAM to a system that never pages will not improve performance at all, adding more RAM to a system that does page will increase performance significantly.