16GB or 8GB?

[Trash Man]

I'm mulling over a new build in time for Diablo 3. I've been away from PC gaming for quite some time. Last time I bought RAM it was over £200 for 4GB.

Now I see I can get 16GB for £70

Is there any benefit in having 16GB over 8GB? I noticed you always get 4 x 4GB or 2 x 4GB.

Does have 4 sticks degrade performance in anyway?

[jim]

I know having 4 sticks can sometimes be a hindrance to overclocking.

I've managed to fill 8GB of RAM gaming, but most of that has been cache (which can be deleted on the fly to make more RAM available for use). I'd go for 8GB now, and wait for 2x8GB if you fancy getting 16GB later on for any particular reason.

[MSIC]

I have 16GB. Does me no good whatsoever!
If i were to hazzard a guess I'd suppose that only 'extreme' useage apps such as very large multi-layer RAW photoshop scenarios might benefit.
For gaming, no difference between 4GB and 8GB yet, but you could certainly get 8GB given how cheap it is just for future-proofing.

[Yellowbeard]

Actually, Crossfire users in BF3 for example, are getting a great benefit from having more than 4GB of RAM. I expect that more games will come out that will follow this trend.

[CivilDrone]

8gb ram is more than enough, for day to day and gaming. 16 if you are into heavy duty stuff, even then you wont hit the 10gb mark

[Zak33]

Trash... I have 16 gb

4x 4 gig sticks.

8 gig is in the PC.. 8 gig is in my spares box mate... I took it back out to see if I could see the diff... and it's still there....

[Lee H]

I have 8 (2x4) GB of RAM and when playing the D3 beta, the memory graph on my keyboard never goes above 60%.

I hope this helps

[abaxas]

If 8 gig is 35 and 16 gig is 70...


Providing the 16 gig is in two dimms, just do it. No point playing about for the sake for 35 quid might as well just do the upgrade.

[Zak33]

except it's £35 you could spend on a much much better cooler.. if he adds his previous cooler budget to £35 he could consider this bad boy
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...66-am2-and-am3

or buying a much better PSU, somethnig you'll always use in future PC builds (Corsair again)

Or put it towards a pair of exceptionally good fans,,, Noctua for example
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120mm...n-sso-bearings

£35 is often worth spending on SOMETHING... but not on something that won't get touched.

[Trash Man]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'll just get the 8GB then

No doubt I'll be posting more threads over the next couple of weeks asking all sorts about build options and advice

Zak, that cooler looks mental. Never seen anything like it before. I was thinking of getting a Scan overclocked bundle and saw these coolers in the options, never knew what they were though.

[andy572]

For what it's worth, I'm another that considers that a good decision, Trash Man.

Though RAM has maintained its low price for some time, it's also perhaps the easiest thing to change when you find out that you need it - and to repeat the shared thought that I had earlier, that's money that could go elsewhere.

There's 8-gig in this system and between the usual stuff of Web browsing, games, image and video work, a great deal of it remains free whatever I do. Games and more complex image processing would take the most RAM, but even they usually have a few gigs of headroom. Away from, for example, large databases, 3-D rendering or tasks with really large images and multiple layers, more memory isn't something that most of us would really notice. I use VirtualBox a fair bit and even that's okay for a general user like myself, as there's enough capacity to increase RAM for the guest system if need be and still have both that and the host running nicely.

So now it's the fancy cooler or shiny fans 'problem', eh?!

[Trash Man]

So now it's the fancy cooler or shiny fans 'problem', eh?!

I've read far to many bad things about the pumps packing up on these coolers to consider getting one now. I've plumped for the Be Quiet Dark Rock PRO BK016 CPU Cooler. So far it's only that and the RAM I am decided on :/

[Hoonigan]

I'd suggest just getting 8GB tbh. I'm umming and arring over getting another 8GB, given how cheap it is, but I've only ever reached 5GB usage with BF3 running and a good few other programs running in the background.

[Boomstick777]

Now I see I can get 16GB for £70

Managed to grab 16GB DDR3 2133Mhz for £85, stupidly fast, recommend it!!!

[Bhavv]

Hi, this might be relevant for anyone wondering about ram and vram usage and requirements:

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/8308/19999524.png

Its only one game tested so far, I also wanted to test modified skyrim but afterburner wont work with it.

Having extra ram for Caching is very important, also I know that Dungeons and Dragons online withh push the physical memory usage up to 4.5 Gb because I also play this game, and so does BF3, on which I've seen other people using up to 4.9 Gb.

On top of the amount of ram used by the game, its very important to have enough left over for caching as otherwise you can get lag spikes. Contrary to popular belief, more Vram is less effective to eliminating lag spikes to more system ram, you should always add more system ram if you have any lag issues before considering more Vram.

I believe that 8 Gb is now a minimum for gaming, and this has been confirmed by a lot of people who have been able to eliminate lag by upgrading from 4 Gb to 8 Gb.

More than that really isnt necessary for gaming, but at current ram prices theres nothing wrong with buying as much as your system can take.

I personally tried 24 Gb ram too, but the modules were a lot slower than my 6x2 Gb modules and I noticed lower results in a few gaming benchmarks so I went back to and am sticking to 12 Gb of faster 2 Gb modules, which will still be enough for the life of my X58 system.

[JJackson]

I would go for 8GB of ram and try to find Ram that can run at low latency settings. I run a X58 Sabertooth with 12GB of OCZ. If I drop to 6GB I can get far tighter latency than by running with all the slots populated. The real world difference in WOW, Diablo 3, or Starcraft II, is zero, with either setup.