# Do I need to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB of RAM?



## testudo (Jul 22, 2015)

Hello,

I currently have 8GB of 1866 MHz in my rig. I was wondering if I should maybe look into upgrading it to 16GB. I mostly use my rig for gaming. I do not really use it for work anymore. Is it worth upgrading or is 8 GB still enough for gaming? I mean, I am running games fine now, but I guess it is more of a future thing.

Thanks in advance for your response!


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## v12dock (Jul 22, 2015)

Are you running out of memory now?


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## testudo (Jul 22, 2015)

v12dock said:


> Are you running out of memory now?



No, I don't think so. I was just wondering because I have been using 8GB of RAM since I built it in 2012. I am just looking to upgrade stuff and RAM is the last thing on my list, but now I am thinking that I don't really need it. I guess I just wanted a second opinion lol.


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## peche (Jul 22, 2015)

It's not necessary, also 16GB won't make any notable difference on gaming, but at this moment DDR3 is pretty cheap so you can make the upgrade if you want, get decent 1600mhz DDR3, beyond that frequency is a waste of money, 

PD: for working, tasks and other jobs memory its pretty important,


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## Pill Monster (Jul 22, 2015)

testudo said:


> Hello,
> 
> I currently have 8GB of 1866 MHz in my rig. I was wondering if I should maybe look into upgrading it to 16GB. I mostly use my rig for gaming. I do not really use it for work anymore. Is it worth upgrading or is 8 GB still enough for gaming? I mean, I am running games fine now, but I guess it is more of a future thing.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your response!


Up to you....lol  If you're happy atm  why upgrade?  

You'll need to eventually tho, 8GB isn't going to cut it with a 4GB GPU, some of the RAM is reserved for paging in DX11/12. 

So yeah I would go 16GB if u have the cash.   I need more myself, I got 8GB and for the first time in years I had to turn my pagefile back on, GTAV was eating 6GB of RAM. That was just the game .exe Total memory use was over 8GB...


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## Dbiggs9 (Jul 22, 2015)

When I play GTA V I use about 11GB.


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## testudo (Jul 22, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> Up to you....lol  If you're happy atm  why upgrade?    But you'll need to eventually, 8GB isn't going to cut it with a 4GB GPU, some of the RAM is reserved for paging in DX11/12.
> 
> So yeah I would go 16GB if u have the cash.   I need more myself, I got 8GB and for the first time in years I had to turn my pagefile back on, GTAV was eating 6GB of RAM. That was just the game .exe Total memory use was over 8GB...



I have a 6GB G1 980 ti on the way. Will that make a difference?


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 22, 2015)

More and more games are using 8GB of RAM or more.  Dbiggs9 said 11GB for GTA V.  I've see Dragon Age Iquisition easily use 7.  The 6GB VRAM frame buffer on the 980Ti you are getting will mostly make use of texture memory.  Some of these games have alot more than textures to load up, containing mammoth amounts of data in the RAM.
We are almost at the end of the "8GB is enough" days.

EDIT: I've said this several times in the last few months, and I think it's time for all of us to stop advising people that 8GB is all they need.  We're a tech site, and it should be obvious which direction games are going, so we should be adapting as well.


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## GhostRyder (Jul 22, 2015)

testudo said:


> Hello,
> 
> I currently have 8GB of 1866 MHz in my rig. I was wondering if I should maybe look into upgrading it to 16GB. I mostly use my rig for gaming. I do not really use it for work anymore. Is it worth upgrading or is 8 GB still enough for gaming? I mean, I am running games fine now, but I guess it is more of a future thing.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your response!


Well in my experience 8gb for gaming will hold just about any game out there without a difference.  For me having 16gb on my system is a bit overkill for the gaming aspect (not for some of the work I end up doing) compared to when I had 8gb on my previous system.  I tried an 8gb kit on my old system then a 16gb kit and it really made no difference in games at all that I could see.  My current system will sometime exceed 9gb usage during gaming but even that is pretty rare.

Is it worth it, no I doubt you would see any difference.  However if you want to just future proof that system and keep it for a very long time, you can get a kit for pretty cheap as far as ram goes.


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## micropage7 (Jul 22, 2015)

just no. it might be cool has 16 gig ram but if wont affect much
better save it  for something else


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## Ruyki (Jul 22, 2015)

Generally 8GB is enough for games.

But you can monitor your memory usage from the task manager. Then you should be able to figure out if you need an upgrade by yourself.


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## AloadovBallacks (Jul 22, 2015)

To be fair there isn't many games out ar the moment that require more than 4gb, but I recently upgraded from 8 to 16gb and I haven't noticed any difference at all


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## peche (Jul 22, 2015)

Ruyki said:


> Generally 8GB is enough for games.


pretty much .... im seeing here some posts about GTA V, in dont play and like those games, but i have a friend that plays 24/7 that game, with a single GTX 760 and 8GB ram on a core i5 without problems...


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## Disparia (Jul 22, 2015)

It's on the line, what would make the difference is everyone's personal situation. I could make do with 8GB, but it's a lot nicer experience when I alt-tab out of a game to do something and it didn't have load that 'something' back into memory. With 16GB I'm up around 11-12GB usage and things are pretty fluid.


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## lZKoce (Jul 22, 2015)

I wouldn't bother. Life goes fast, I'd spend the money somewhere else.


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## peche (Jul 22, 2015)

lZKoce said:


> I wouldn't bother. Life goes fast, I'd spend the money somewhere else.


b*tches?


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## Devon68 (Jul 22, 2015)

I don't think you need 16 gb.


> I wouldn't bother. Life goes fast, I'd spend the money somewhere else.


Potatoes right?


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## lZKoce (Jul 22, 2015)

peche said:


> b*tches?





Devon68 said:


> I don't think you need 16 gb.
> 
> Potatoes right?



Ahahaha , alright alright I spoke too soon )) Nothing goes under the radar on TPU


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## Pill Monster (Jul 22, 2015)

testudo said:


> I have a 6GB G1 980 ti on the way. Will that make a difference?


Yeah it will, but are u upgrading to W10?

Atm when you run DX11 in 8.1 the driver looks at your available vram then tells WDM (OS) that's how much RAM is needed for GPU paging (aka Tiled Resources etc).
Windows then allocates that RAM to the GPU and it cannot be used for anything else.  Whether the allocated amount is actually used or even needed makes no difference, lol.

So if you got 16GB of RAM and 8GB  VRAM, 8GB of RAM is sliced of before you start the game, leaving you with....yep, 8GB.   It's take it or leave it and a huge waste of resources
Partly why  8.1 users with 16GB RAM ran out of memory or had stutter/lag issues in DX11 games after upgrading to 4GB GPU's or better.   


Anyway this is one of the things WDDM 2.0/DX12 is meant to address. Memory management will be handled by the game, atm in W10 it's the drivers since there are no DX12 apps.
Features like dynamic resource allocation, memory reclaim and residency will mean any VRAM/RAM space tagged by the game or drivers for textures or whatever must be in use.
If not then that space has to be given up to the OS for other resources.  Basically just means the game can't sit on 8GB of RAM (or VRAM) and not use it.


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## testudo (Jul 22, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> Yeah it will, but are u upgrading to W10?
> 
> Atm when you run DX11 in 8.1 the driver looks at your available vram then tells WDM (OS) that's how much RAM is needed for GPU paging (aka Tiled Resources etc).
> Windows then allocates that RAM to the GPU and it cannot be used for anything else.  Whether the allocated amount is actually used or even needed makes no difference, lol.
> ...



Thanks!

Yes, I will be updating to Windows 10.


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## FireFox (Jul 22, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> I've said this several times in the last few months, and I think it's time for all of us to stop advising people that 8GB is all they need. We're a tech site, and it should be obvious which direction games are going, so we should be adapting as well.


Wise words
It's the end of 8GB are Overkill.


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## Toothless (Jul 22, 2015)

Iunno about you guys, but the reason I had to go with 16GB is because I was filling up on 8GB, and sometimes I still hit 11-12GB usages. It all depends on what you do really. 

Then again my laptop has 8GB and it barely touches 4GB usage. Silly me.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Jul 22, 2015)

Well I am thinking of moving up from 16gb to 32gb as the last upgrade for my main rig.


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## FireFox (Jul 22, 2015)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> Well I am thinking of moving up from 16gb to 32gb as the last upgrade for my main rig.


Nice move
When I built my Machine around one year and a few months ago I did installed 32GB.

Note: I have thought that what was overkill at that time it wasn't going to be in a future.


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## EarthDog (Jul 22, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> EDIT: I've said this several times in the last few months, and I think it's time for all of us to stop advising people that 8GB is all they need. We're a tech site, and it should be obvious which direction games are going, so we should be adapting as well.


Sure.. I won't call 8GB overkill. I will call it standard. 16GB is overkill for most users. 8GB is 'all *most* need'. And until a specific use is mentioned that would put that 8GB limit in jeopardy, it is what I will continue to recommend.

Like was said earlier, it all depends on the OP's use. If he is pusing 6-7GB use at times, then I would say go for it. If the OP is under 6-7GB, save your money. There isn't a point to add ram if you are not going to use it (for the most part).


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## GreiverBlade (Jul 22, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> More and more games are using 8GB of RAM or more.  Dbiggs9 said 11GB for GTA V.  I've see Dragon Age Iquisition easily use 7.  The 6GB VRAM frame buffer on the 980Ti you are getting will mostly make use of texture memory.  Some of these games have alot more than textures to load up, containing mammoth amounts of data in the RAM.
> We are almost at the end of the "8GB is enough" days.
> 
> EDIT: I've said this several times in the last few months, and I think it's time for all of us to stop advising people that 8GB is all they need.  We're a tech site, and it should be obvious which direction games are going, so we should be adapting as well.


totally agreed, i went from 8gb 2133 (CL9 ) to 16gb 2400 (well ... 10-12-12-31) i notice some difference since i mostly have Chrome and a bazillion tabs open + some game depending on what i play (Ark: Survival Evolved is also a good example ) but nothing really "huge" tho with the price of 2x8gb DDR3 it's kinda a good option 

the only comp where 8gb is the max for me is my laptop ... and i directly upgraded from 4gb single channel 1600 11-11-11-31 to 8gb 1600 9-9-9-28

if you have the mean to go 16gb and find a good deal/offer on it : go for it, it's what i did with my main rig


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 22, 2015)

If youre a power user then 16GB is a must if not 32GB.


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## EarthDog (Jul 22, 2015)

Depends on what a 'power user' is and what they are actually doing. 

I suggest people to not focus on subjective titles like that but to actually see if users are close to using what they have.


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## Countryside (Jul 22, 2015)

Hmm it was like yesterday when 512mb of ram was a enough and now 8 or 16gb  time flies fast  ohh don't mind me just feeling nostalgic.


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## Toothless (Jul 22, 2015)

Countryside said:


> Hmm it was like yesterday when 512mb of ram was a enough and now 8 or 16gb  time flies fast  ohh don't mind me just feeling nostalgic.


I did a lot with my 256mb at one point, given L4D2 was a very slow slideshow.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 22, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Depends on what a 'power user' is and what they are actually doing.
> 
> I suggest people to not focus on subjective titles like that but to actually see if users are close to using what they have.



Personally -  I have two web browsers - both with loads of tabs open, Skype, steam, Vuze and guildwars 2 running and i sit at about 10gig ram usage.


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## jboydgolfer (Jul 22, 2015)

buy the extra..Its cheap as hell, and it wont Decrease performance...I was Glad I bought 16Gb when i built a 2nd PC a while ago, and didn't want to buy RAM...I just took 8Gb's outta My main PC...then when I HAD the $$ for the New machines RAM, i put it back in the machine it was  originally in.it cant hurt to have more than is needed everyday.


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## Bo$$ (Jul 22, 2015)

if you are still using Windows 7 like me, 16GB is very likely going to help you, i've seen most games break the 8gb limit and some reach almost 12gb. FPS wise i'd doubt it makes too much difference but you do feel the difference when you have lots of stuff open.


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## tabascosauz (Jul 22, 2015)

I've always stuck with 8GB, including in GTA V, which fit comfortably in what RAM I had. I always felt pretty safe with it. That is, until yesterday, when FC4 crashed because I had 3 chrome tabs open and 8GB wasn't enough to share between a horribly optimised game and Chrome the Memory Hog.

But then again, is upgrading really worth it? The problem with ITX is that I can't just add 4GB to cobble together a Flex mem config of 12GB or add another identical 8GB kit; I'd have to buy a new 16GB kit.


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## FireFox (Jul 22, 2015)

tabascosauz said:


> when FC4 crashed, But then again, is upgrading really worth it?


Well if you're okay with Games crashing then upgrading it's not worth.


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## peche (Jul 22, 2015)

well i have 16GB of ram on both i7's.... work rig and personal gaming rig, on work rig that ram helps me a lot, because i restart my computer every 5 or 6 days, several chrome tabs open, some other programs and apps, so 16Gb is not a overkill on this computer, on the gaming rig is extra ram thats it,

so the OP can add a identical 2x4GB kit to his system or sell the current 2X4GB kit and get a 2X8GB kit, i rather 2x8Gb kits over 4x4GB kits... personally!

Regards,


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## Easy Rhino (Jul 22, 2015)

Yes.


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## FireFox (Jul 23, 2015)

Easy Rhino said:


> Yes.


Very specific Response


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

One foolproof way to find out is  to disable the PF then fire up the most intensive game you have.   

If u need more RAM, you'll soon know.


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## AsRock (Jul 23, 2015)

tabascosauz said:


> I've always stuck with 8GB, including in GTA V, which fit comfortably in what RAM I had. I always felt pretty safe with it. That is, until yesterday, when FC4 crashed because I had 3 chrome tabs open and 8GB wasn't enough to share between a horribly optimised game and Chrome the Memory Hog.
> 
> But then again, is upgrading really worth it? The problem with ITX is that I can't just add 4GB to cobble together a Flex mem config of 12GB or add another identical 8GB kit; I'd have to buy a new 16GB kit.



FC3 is fairly well optimized and sounds more like Cromes is a lot less optimized than the game.

I went 16Gb long time ago due to running out of memory with the odd game or getting close.


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## RealNeil (Jul 23, 2015)

I use 16GB on all of my PCs, but recently bought 8GB of 2400MHz DDR3 to see if it was much better than the 2133MHz I had. 
It's not much quicker, but I just got another 8GB to match it and installed it on the i7-4790K box.

The PC seemed to game the same with 8GB instead of 16GB.


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## Aquinus (Jul 23, 2015)

With the page file turned off, I use between 7.5gb and 9gb of memory and ED isn't exactly the most memory consuming game. I've seen my machine using up to 11.5GB on a much more regular basis than I used to as before I was barely going over 8GB in some more rare occasions a couple years ago but, it's most definitely true that software (not just games, but browsers too,) are using more memory than they have in the past. If you don't plan on upgrading the platform too soon, 16GB isn't a bad longevity upgrade. It's kind of like that 8GB on the 390(x), there may not be any games that really use that much now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were in a year or two. For example, chrome has 4 tabs open and it's eating 0.5GB when 2 years ago it would have been 200-300MB. Just saying, it might not help performance, but it will when you need more memory which could be sooner than you realize.


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## Atomic77 (Jul 23, 2015)

I was told when getting a computer get one that has the most ram you can possibly afford. Ram is the easiest thing you can do to help a computer. my computer im currently using has 12gb ram and that was it came with when I bought it.


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

Atomic77 said:


> I was told when getting a computer get one that has the most ram you can possibly afford. Ram is the easiest thing you can do to help a computer. my computer im currently using has 12gb ram and that was it came with when I bought it.


Sounds like something a salesman would say...  

More RAM does help -  when you don't have enough of it, but adding ram for the sake of adding ram is a waste of money.

The only real reason to do it is if your system runs out of physical and starts paging to disk (for those 27 die-hards still using a pagefile ).


Comparison would be parking your car in a 4 car garage instead of the 2 car garage beside it.


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## Jetster (Jul 23, 2015)

FreedomEclipse said:


> If youre a power user then 16GB is a must if not 32GB.



What the hell does that mean?



Really you wont even tell the difference. If your swap file is on your SSD then it will just use that if it goes over. Or just get the 16 Gb


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## rooivalk (Jul 23, 2015)

16GB would be an improvement but I think it's rather miniscule. If you have plan to upgrade to Skylake, better stay with 8GB for a while.
I don't really believe RAM usage reading. It seems like apps/games will allocate RAM as much as they can not as they need.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 23, 2015)

Jetster said:


> What the hell does that mean?
> 
> 
> 
> Really you wont even tell the difference. If your swap file is on your SSD then it will just use that if it goes over. Or just get the 16 Gb



https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power_user


Also. forcing your PC to the point where using pagefile is critical when it comes to an SSD can really have a detrimental effect on the SSD as all the writes that pagefile makes from file swapping will eat away at the NAND.

Why do you run 16GB on Delta when you can run 4GB and just make use of page/swap file? Its a silly question is it not?


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

rooivalk said:


> 16GB would be an improvement but I think it's rather miniscule. If you have plan to upgrade to Skylake, better stay with 8GB for a while.
> I don't really believe RAM usage reading. It seems like apps/games will allocate RAM as much as they can not as they need.


That's because Task Manager only tells half the story.  In  W7 it shows working set;  WS is data currently being processed by the CPU.  It's a small portion of the total in use.
W8.1 and 10 at least display Committed Amount which is a step up, but to see the real picture you need an app like Process Explorer and have some idea what you're looking at.



Far Cry 4 in W8.1 with a GTX980 SLI  will hit 16GB easily.
On systems with 16GB *i*nstalled and no PF the game will CTD from low memory.  Same applies to GTAV, Watchdogs and plenty of others.

This topic used to come up frequently at Guru3D.
Seemed every time an OS was released. or new GPU with a crapton of VRAM, or DX11 game, or API, threads would appear claiming xxx game had "Massive Memory Leak causing CTD", or similar. 

A lot of them run with no pagefile so yeah that didn't help either...



I did post quite a lot of in-game screenshots with Process Explorer, Task Manger, and GPU-z etc along with (very badly drawn) diagrams attempting to break things down.
have screenshots if anyone wants to see, but I think they're hosted on an old PB account. I can prob Google them tho..



I'm waiting to see how W10 pans out to see if the memory footprint is going to be a bit smaller. The main culprit in W8 was no control over how much RAM was mapped into GPU address space.
MS had planned to fix this  in 8.1 with WDDM 1.3 but didn't, and it became part of the WDDM 2.0 package.  That's the dynamic resources part of W10.


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## Jetster (Jul 23, 2015)

Okay yea get 16


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## micropage7 (Jul 23, 2015)

Atomic77 said:


> my computer im currently using has 12gb ram and that was it came with when I bought it.


amazing


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

FreedomEclipse said:


> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power_user
> 
> 
> Also. forcing your PC to the point where using pagefile is critical when it comes to an SSD can really have a detrimental effect on the SSD as all the writes that pagefile makes from file swapping will eat away at the NAND.
> ...


worrying about writes on modern ssd? Move on... no issue there.


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## Aquinus (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> worrying about writes on modern ssd? Move on... no issue there.


I'm not sure. Toothless got an SSD not too long ago and he's already written terabytes to it in a month. It depends on how hard you hit the SSD. Also swapping out from an SSD does stills impact performance, just not as bad as if it were a spinning disk. There is no proper replacement for more memory than getting more memory.


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

We can all search and find exceptions if you want to split hairs/be pedantic about it, but come on... modern SSD's are good for well over 100TBW, and most are rated for 10's of GB /day writes. With that in mind, seems like even toothless is good through the drive's likely 3 year warranty. 

+1 on the PF still being slow on an SSD. Let's think about it... while it will be better, you are still in the area of, 500MB/s (for large files). Ram is 19/20K MB/s... not even close. So while it is better than 150MB/s from a spinner, the SSD still isn't close


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

Thanks for all of the replies!

This is what I have now:
G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)

I am looking at this:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Here is my mobo:
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H LGA 1155 Intel Z77

Would the G.SKILL be okay? Is it compatible with my mobo? If I decide to bump it up to 16 GB, should I go for 1600 or higher?

EDIT: I forgot to add that I have 2x4GB now and only 2 RAM slots.


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## Aquinus (Jul 23, 2015)

Why not just get another 2x4GB sticks of the same kind you have now? It is bound to be cheaper than going 2x8GB and if you ever really needed 32GB, I bet you would already be considering upgrading the platform at that point. Also memory above 1600 doesn't tend to have any tangible benefits on modern X86 cores unless you're feeding a ton of them. Honestly, I don't even think my tower has the XMP profile loaded for 2133Mhz and is running JEDEC 1600Mhz timings and I honestly notice zero difference in usability.


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Why not just get another 2x4GB sticks of the same kind you have now? It is bound to be cheaper than going 2x8GB and if you ever really needed 32GB, I bet you would already be considering upgrading the platform at that point.



Oh, I forgot to add that I have 2 x 4GB in now and I only have 2 slots for RAM.


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## Aquinus (Jul 23, 2015)

testudo said:


> Oh, I forgot to add that I have 2 x 4GB in now and I only have 2 slots for RAM.


Could you tell us exactly what motherboard you have? Searching what is in your specs is only giving me pictures of motherboards with 4 DIMM slots.

If you have have 2 slots in total, then 2x8GB is your only real option.


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Could you tell us exactly what motherboard you have? Searching what is in your specs is only giving me pictures of motherboards with 4 DIMM slots.
> 
> If you have have 2 slots in total, then 2x8GB is your only real option.



Here is my mobo:
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H LGA 1155 Intel Z77


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## GreiverBlade (Jul 23, 2015)

you have 4 slot and you have already 2x4gb then either sell those 2x4gb and get 2x8gb (what i did) or just grab a 2x4gb kit of the same brand model speed and timing. ie: 2x4 gb ARES 1866 (C9 or 11 i presume) do not mix brand or model.

2nd ie: for me it would be 2x8gb G.Skill Trident X 2400 C10

@Aquinus it was just a misunderstanding because he meant "i have only 2 slot on 4 left open"


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

Thanks! Like with the new GPU I ordered, I said screw it and I just ordered 2x4GB of the RAM I have now. Why not, right lol?


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

testudo said:


> Why not, right lol?


Why not? Its the American way!!!


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Why not? Its the American way!!!


It was that or just buy 5 super-sized "value" meals lol.


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

Also the American way...


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Also the American way...


...That is why I thought it would be funny to post. Personally, I don't touch the stuff.


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## peche (Jul 23, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> With the page file turned off,


i do never use that crap.....



Pill Monster said:


> Sounds like something a salesman would say...


correct ... not a valid argument i guess....



Pill Monster said:


> The only real reason to do it is if your system runs out of physical and starts paging to disk (for those 27 die-hards still using a pagefile ).


there is people that will defend that file ....dot want to argue with them and i bet you neither...



rooivalk said:


> 16GB would be an improvement but I think it's rather miniscule. If you have plan to upgrade to Skylake, better stay with 8GB for a while.
> I don't really believe RAM usage reading. It seems like apps/games will allocate RAM as much as they can not as they need.


yeah right .... spend minimum $500 or a try out on a new system when $89 at amazon can get you a decent 16GB kit for all your problems... invalid argument... OP have a pretty decent system...




testudo said:


> Thanks for all of the replies!
> 
> This is what I have now:
> G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
> ...


nice kit, i preffer kingston ... hyperX fury is pretty cheap now days
your motherboard have 4 memory dimm slots fella...



Aquinus said:


> Why not just get another 2x4GB sticks of the same kind you have now? It is bound to be cheaper than going 2x8GB and if you ever really needed 32GB, I bet you would already be considering upgrading the platform at that point. Also memory above 1600 doesn't tend to have any tangible benefits on modern X86 cores unless you're feeding a ton of them. Honestly, I don't even think my tower has the XMP profile loaded for 2133Mhz and is running JEDEC 1600Mhz timings and I honestly notice zero difference in usability.


agreed!


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

peche said:


> there is people that will defend that file ....dot want to argue with them and i bet you neither...


LOL, some people need it, so I never recommend getting rid of it. If your system works without one and you are more than an email/internet (read: basic) user of a PC, consider yourself lucky you are not getting errors. The performance difference is really negligible anyway when you have the proper amount of ram, so, why take the chance for nearly no returns?


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## peche (Jul 23, 2015)

i have never gotten a problem.... avoiding that file ... 
also on my work / cruncher computers i don't have that crap ... no problems so far, 


Regards,


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

peche said:


> i do never use that crap.....
> 
> 
> correct ... not a valid argument i guess....
> ...


 If you're referring to Russunovich I couldn't care less what he says. He says whatever MS tells him to say.

The reason MS even hung onto the pagefile was because their IA32 processors didn't support over 4GB of RAM.  AMD64 have never ever needed a pagefile, never.

That's also the same reason why PAE is not required on AMD chipsets, only Intel32. You won't find that documented in Winternals either.

And if you're referring to someone else I'll still be happy to debate the point. I work as a systems engineer so bring it on. 


** Actually on second thoughts don't bring it on....I've been in that discussion so many times I'm sick of talking about it.   

Let and let live....


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## GreiverBlade (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Why not? Its the American way!!!


oh god .... i follow the american way? .... nope it's the SWISS WAY! (too ... ) nah .... just a earthlings way ... NO COUNTRY! FREEDOM FOR ALL! UTOPIAAAA... wait ... time to get my pills

and for those who answered after me ... WHY RECOMMEND HIM ANOTHER BRAND OF RAM as he already have 2x4gb of one brand model and timing!!! logic PLEASE!

unless he can sell the already owned kit for near the retail price taking a 2x8 is not really a option  (unlike what i did ... heck i got the 2x8gb, i actually use, for free and gave the 2x4 to a friend )

and waiting for Sky/ohmygod10%faster/lake and DD/notreallyanimprovement/R4 is also not quite the recommendation  (wait he has a Sandy or a Ivy? oh who care both qualifie for a Skylake upgrade .... ) as even with Skylake out DDR4 will still be outrageously high priced (and i bet manufacturer will not take the opportunity to do some Z170 mobo with DDR3 support ... greedy as they are ... )

and yep DDR3 RAM is cheap enough and still in the race
i got 2x4 gb GEIL Black Dragon 1600 C11 for 40$ ... i don't use them .... i just bought them on a promo with a "why not, it might be usefull someday"


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## RealNeil (Jul 23, 2015)

Atomic77 said:


> Ram is the easiest thing you can do to help a computer



This is true, up to a point. One thing that seems to make for _more_ performance improvement is adding a good SSD.
Without a good SSD installed in your system, you don't even have a performance PC.

I find through my own trial and error that 16GB RAM is the sweet spot. It's not too costly and you don't run out of memory.
The only way that I would use 32 or 64 is if I was planning to run a Ramdisk.

Also, buying RAM that matches what you already have is always a good idea for compatibility's sake.


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## peche (Jul 23, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> If you're referring to Russunovich I couldn't care less what he says. He says whatever MS tells him to say.


ponit on that correct!



Pill Monster said:


> The reason MS even hung onto the pagefile was because their IA32 processors didn't support over 4GB of RAM. AMD64 have never ever needed a pagefile, never.
> 
> That's also the same reason why PAE is not required on AMD chipsets, only Intel32. You won't find that documented in Winternals either.


another point here...



Pill Monster said:


> And if you're referring to someone else I'll still be happy to debate the point. I work as a systems engineer so bring it on.
> 
> 
> ** Actually on second thoughts don't bring it on....I've been in that discussion so many times I'm sick of talking about it.
> ...


don get it ... 



GreiverBlade said:


> and for those who answered after me ... WHY RECOMMEND HIM ANOTHER BRAND OF RAM as he already have 2x4gb of one brand model and timing!!! logic PLEASE!


here is people that jst dont read complete posts... also i did recomended but a complete 2x8 GB kit ... no over or using the old one..!



GreiverBlade said:


> and waiting for Sky/ohmygod10%faster/lake and DD/notreallyanimprovement/R4 is also not quite the recommendation  (wait he has a Sandy or a Ivy? oh who care both qualifie for a Skylake upgrade .... ) as even with Skylake out DDR4 will still be outrageously high priced (and i bet manufacturer will not take the opportunity to do some Z170 mobo with DDR3 support ... greedy as they are ... )


that was my point too.... agreed Sandies and Ivies based systems still enough for couple of years more...



GreiverBlade said:


> and yep DDR3 RAM is cheap enough and still in the race
> i got 2x4 gb GEIL Black Dragon 1600 C11 for 40$ ... i don't use them .... i just bought them on a promo with a "why not, it might be usefull someday"


another point here!


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## phanbuey (Jul 23, 2015)

The point is ram is cheap - and in some very rare instances you may need it.  16GB is always > 8GB given that the kits are so cheap.  
Ram amount doesn't matter at all until you run out -- 95% of the time you are fine with 8GB, 99.5% of the time you will be fine with 16GB.

On my work machine I have 16 since i constantly ran out of memory using large datafiles (even some excel operations took it beyond 5GB of usage just for excel).  upgrading to 16 made a huge difference.

On a gaming rig 16 won't increase your FPS by any means, but it might allow more stuff to be loaded into memory and save you the occasional stutter here and there.

If you are building or upgrading a gaming rig today, you would be silly to build it with 8GB -- 16GB is the default.


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## testudo (Jul 23, 2015)

Sorry for the confusion about RAM slots. That was my fault. I went ahead and ordered 2x4 GB of the Ram I have installed now. It was only $53 USD. Not too bad, so I got it.


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

peche said:


> ponit on that correct!
> 
> 
> another point here...
> ...


Let and Let Live" means let people to do what they want, for the sake of argument. 


Btw nice to see we share the same opinion on Mark.


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

phanbuey said:


> If you are building or upgrading a gaming rig today, you would be silly to build it with 8GB -- 16GB is the default.


LOL, no. 

Its a waste of money for most people.


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> LOL, some people need it, so I never recommend getting rid of it. If your system works without one and you are more than an email/internet (read: basic) user of a PC, consider yourself lucky you are not getting errors. The performance difference is really negligible anyway when you have the proper amount of ram, so, why take the chance for nearly no returns?


Windows uses address translation to map virtual address space.  It's not possible to have errors from a disabled pagefile because everything is virtualized.


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## peche (Jul 23, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> Let and Let Live" means let people to do what they want, for the sake of argument.
> 
> 
> Btw nice to see we share the same opinion on Mark.





Pill Monster said:


> Windows uses address translation to map virtual address space. It's not possible to have errors from a disabled pagefile because everything is virtualized.


my all time point on this kinda topics....
agreed again !


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## EarthDog (Jul 23, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> Windows uses address translation to map virtual address space.  It's not possible to have errors from a disabled pagefile because everything is virtualized.


Tell that to version photoshop that doesn't seem to work without one...


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

EarthDog said:


> Tell that to version photoshop that doesn't seem to work without one...


The issue was with Photoshop, not the pagefile.  And it was rectified by Adobe around 5yrs ago.


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## peche (Jul 23, 2015)

Pill Monster said:


> This is why I don't like discussing it


told you many posts ago ...pointless to discuse


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## Pill Monster (Jul 23, 2015)

peche said:


> told you many posts ago ...pointless to discuse


Yep...  So, how bout that weather?


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## Tatty_One (Jul 23, 2015)

So how about, as the OP has gone and bought another 8GB of ram we close the thread so the children can go play elsewhere?


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