"...A poll by any other name would smell as sweet as DRAM..."
by Gary Key on April 9, 2009 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
Now that William Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave due to the hack job on one of his more famous quotes in Romeo and Juliet, we can proceed straight to our poll for today. The first of several DDR2/DDR3 articles arrives shortly and we would like to know your thoughts up front on a variety of subjects surrounding system memory.
We will sidestep sticky questions like what is your favorite and worst memory supplier until later on this month. For today, we would greatly appreciate a response (informed or otherwise) to our three questions. Our first question concerns the primary driving factor that determines why you select a particular memory type or supplier. Personally, I want a quality product that is stable and never once makes me wonder why that BSOD occurred right before saving my article document. I am probably in the minority on this one but it will be interesting to see what you think.
Our second question is a simple one. How much system memory do you have currently? Once again, I am probably in the minority, as I tend to run eight to twelve gigabytes in my personal systems. My family and I tend to multitask a lot - or perhaps we are just too lazy to close multiple applications. Either way, I prefer a responsive system when working or playing and additional memory does tend to help. How much it helps is a question we will answer this month.
The final question is actually very simple. With Vista 64 finally having decent driver support, memory prices near all time lows, applications consuming even greater amounts of memory, and Windows 7 shipping later this year with an emphasis on 64-bit support, do you think it is time to buy more memory. The memory manufacturers are hoping for a resounding yes to this question. I think you can never have enough memory and at today's prices that isn't too difficult to accomplish.
We look forward to your answers and any comments you might have on this subject.
{poll 129:1200}
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MrPickins - Sunday, April 12, 2009 - link
Let me introduce you to super fetch:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_tec...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_tec...
Extra ram isn't wasted with Vista.
pc007 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Superfetch is unnecessary. turn off your pagefile in XP and make sure you have enough ram so that all the programs you use are always cached after first run, and your XP PC will always be faster than Vista. XP always writes bits of programs out to virtual whether it needs to or not, so turning off the page file is necessary to make it fast.TA152H is right, memory requirements are simple math... work out what you need, install it, and unless you change your requirements, things will always run as fast as is possible.
mindless1 - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - link
The math is not so simple because as you wrote programs, files in general actually, are cached, meaning it's a question of how much to cache before the cache is flushed to cache the next job(s) you're doing, files you're reading.Someone who frequently turns off their system, like using a notebook a half hour at a time won't notice the benefit so much as a power user who seldom powers off or reboots.
TA152H - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Didn't you read this part?"The intent is to improve performance in situations where running an anti-virus scan or back-up utility would result in otherwise recently-used information being paged out to disk, or disposed from in-memory caches, resulting in lengthy delays when a user comes back to their computer after a period of non-use."
That means you don't have enough memory to avoid paging. I turn paging off, as I mentioned, so your remark is irrelevant. As I said, you should have enough memory to avoid paging, it's after that point where it becomes very questionable.
But, it sounds like whoever wrote that isn't very accurate. The paragraph seems to talk about paging, whereas this silly function preloads applications in anticipation of you using it. No thanks, I don't need that. I don't mind waiting a few seconds for something to start, rather than waste money and energy on extra memory that has no real use. It's a solution in search of a problem, particularly with Flash memory become more popular.
This type of application of memory shows just how worthless excessive memory can be. You're better off spending the money on very fast memory that you need, rather than excessive amounts of slower memory you don't need, given an equal amount of money. Or a faster processor, or a faster hard disk. There are better ways of spending money that will improve performance in a meaningful way, than excessive memory, so Vista can preload an application it thinks you're going to use. What will Microsoft think of next? Turning on my computer for me, when it anticipates I'll use it? Bring up a Send Email window for me, if I sent one at that time the day before. I really want Microsoft thinking for me, after all, we all want to be demented, slow, and defective, right?
Good grief.
mindless1 - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - link
Even if you don't want superfetching to preload apps you may or may not use, having a lot of spare memory also caches the things you ARE using. This is not unique to Vista w/superfetch by the way, same with 'nix and XP.For example, boot your system and load MS Word with a conventional HDD. Let it completely finish, then close it. Now load it again, it'll load much faster. Same for game level reloads, while it is slow to load the first time with a conventional HDD, much faster with a SSD, it is much much faster than either when ample spare memory is available to cache the prior reads.
If you run out of other uses you can always turn off a Firefox disc cache and run that entirely from memory, or allocate several hundreds of GB for rear and write caching of some P2P apps making them access the HDD less than 1/10th as often.
There is a point of diminshing return of course, but today with memory so inexpensive it makes sense to buy a bit more than needed with the expectation that whether we like it or not the use and code grows to fill the capacity available.
TA152H - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - link
I mentioned caching in my first comment, although in some cases it can actually slow a system down. That's rare though. To me, it's not worth it. If I had $40 to spend on getting more memory that wouldn't prevent swapping, I'd spend it on faster memory, or a faster processor, or a faster hard disk, etc...I don't want relatively useless things in my system sucking up power and generating heat. It's not a free ride.
We can disagree on this, and I fully expected someone would, but you'll at least see his remark is far from indisputable. You CAN get enough memory, and there's a price for getting more. If you want to talk about a fixed dollar amount, you can suffer lower performance because you had to save the money on a different component. And then, you have it sucking down power, and generating heat.
More cache, for anything, isn't always better. The larger the cache, in general, the longer it takes to find something in it, all other things being equal. In general, it helps, but, not always, and to me it's just not worth the negatives. I don't mind waiting three seconds for an application to load once a day.
Also keep in mind that hard disks have caches too. They are a lot smaller though.
With EEPROMs being used more for hard disks now, and the additional speed they provide, this cache memory becomes less useful.
ClagMaster - Saturday, April 11, 2009 - link
Price and performance are very important to me when I upgrade.So is reliablility and reputation. I stay away from high performance memory and use standard grade memory without heatsinks.
I am not interested in no-name generic memory. I want good quality. I purchase from reputable vendors (such as Mushkin or Corsair) who stand behind their products with fair warranties and solid service. I read the customer reviews at NewEgg. Any memory which has a combined poor or below-average reviews greater than 10% of the total reviews is not considered.
I am currently using 2GB of Mushkin DDR2-800 memory rated at 1.8V. This memory is fast, runs cool, and is very reliable.
ClagMaster - Saturday, April 11, 2009 - link
I want value and performance when I upgrade memory and other components. When I upgrade my PC with new memory, I follow four rules:1) There has to be a genuine/rational need for the upgrade, otherwise it is a waste of money.
I currently use Windows XP Home (32-bit system) with 2 Gb of DDR2-800 memory. This is fast memory which is plenty for the applications I use. And they work very well.
I do not understand why a 64-bit operating system would be necessary for office, internet browsing, casual gaming, and multimedia work. 2 GB is an enormous amount of memory. There seems something wrong with the programming of an operating system or application that needs over 512 MB to function for consumer applications.
I resent new operating systems and applications that need far more memory and CPU cycles yet do essentially the same thing. The memory and CPU cycles I paid for is being squandered by inefficient programming and I/O management.
2) The existing memory has to be at least 2 years in use before upgrade.
That's because I want to get my money worth with the existing memory. I expect at least 2 years of usage.
3) The memory replacement has to have double the bandwidth and double the capacity of the old memory.
4) The memory replacement has to cost the same or less than the original memory.
If I cannot realize double the performance and double the capacity for the same price as the original memory, it is not worth buying.
I do not just upgrade the memory subsystem. To realize the maximum potential of a memory upgrade (or the CPU and Video Card), other components of the PC must be upgraded too. I normally upgrade every 3 years with an entirely new motherboard/CPU/memory/graphics system.
I normally budget $150 for memory when I do such an upgrade
garydale - Thursday, April 16, 2009 - link
Good points. My OS runs fine on my notebook with only 256M. It runs better on my quad-core 6G desktop, mind you, but it's quite usable on the smaller and much older machine.I ran XP/Pro on a 512M system for years and only upgraded it to 1G when I was doing some really hefty graphics work. Even then, I could have kept it as it was if I had been more confident in reducing the image sizes to what I really needed, instead of working with outrageously large scans.
It's interesting to note that XP used to run on 128M, although 256M was better. Over the years it grew so that only a masochist would use it with 256M now. And while Vista needs at least 1G, Linux runs nicely with far less. Your video card (and driver) makes a greater difference in responsiveness than adding more memory in most cases.
Mr Alpha - Saturday, April 11, 2009 - link
With Vista x64 and RAM prices being what they are there is no reason to have any less memory than 8GB.When I upgraded from 4 to 8GB of RAM the load time for WoW went from 12 to 6 seconds, thanks to SuperFetch. That is almost the effect of an SSD upgrade for the fraction of the cost.