Comments on Ultimate office based machine?

[this_is_gav]

You're probably right regarding 12GB being faster than 6GB, but there's a big difference between 8GB and 4GB, as I had a direct comparison between my old home PC and my old work PC. Very similar specs other than the RAM, and other than occasional gaming at home, similar usage.

I agree that with decent SSDs the advantage of SuperFetch is nullified.

[arthurleung]

You're probably right regarding 12GB being faster than 6GB, but there's a big difference between 8GB and 4GB, as I had a direct comparison between my old home PC and my old work PC. Very similar specs other than the RAM, and other than occasional gaming at home, similar usage.

I agree that with decent SSDs the advantage of SuperFetch is nullified.

4GB vs 8GB will depends heavily on if you're on AMD or Intel.
With AMD's IMC (or Intel i7), putting 4(6) sticks have no performance impact compared to 2 sticks.

I tried sticking 8GB in my C2Q on a 965 board, which caused my max overclock to drop by 10% and memory bandwidth took a nosedive. Overall system performance dropped by about 20% (measured by x264 encoder).

Will do some testing with 8GB on my "new" X38 board when I have time, exam is coming up :S.

[this_is_gav]

4GB vs 8GB will depends heavily on if you're on AMD or Intel.
With AMD's IMC (or Intel i7), putting 4(6) sticks have no performance impact compared to 2 sticks.

I was still talking about SuperFetch, not overclocking potential. I thought you were too? :\

[arthurleung]

I was still talking about SuperFetch, not overclocking potential. I thought you were too? :\

Well, you was talking about 4G vs 8G ram (Certainly not a configuration related to i7) and hence I take into account of overall system performance change due to 4G->8G, and SuperFetch won't help in that regards.

[this_is_gav]

Well, you was talking about 4G vs 8G ram (Certainly not a configuration related to i7) and hence I take into account of overall system performance change due to 4G->8G, and SuperFetch won't help in that regards.

It could have been i7 quite easily - I was on dual-channel for a while waiting for a RAM RMA, but nope, that was Q6600 systems based on X38. How won't 4GB to 8GB yield more performance? It won't make an encode any quicker, but many things loading will be doing so faster. My own Q6600 at home wouldn't go above 3.0GHz, regardless of how many sticks or channels were being used.

[Badbonji]

It could have been i7 quite easily - I was on dual-channel for a while waiting for a RAM RMA, but nope, that was Q6600 systems based on X38. How won't 4GB to 8GB yield more performance? It won't make an encode any quicker, but many things loading will be doing so faster. My own Q6600 at home wouldn't go above 3.0GHz, regardless of how many sticks or channels were being used.

It all depends how much memory you use. It doesn't increase bandwitdh whatsoever, and can make overclocks unstable, putting more stress on the memory controller.

[this_is_gav]

You didn't read all of that post, did you?

[Badbonji]

You didn't read all of that post, did you?

Well it doesn't make anything load faster unless the page file needs to be used, and if you do not use all of 6Gb then the page file will be barely touched. Opening a programme is nearly always limited by the access time of the hard drive, and how fast it is.

[this_is_gav]

Well it doesn't make anything load faster unless the page file needs to be used.

Wrong way around. It is only slower when things need moved out to the page file. I think you're getting SuperFetch and ReadyBoost mixed up.

Things like Photoshop open about 5-10 times faster if the majority of its components are prefetched rather than loaded directly from the hard drive on demand. Not as quick as if it were all in the memory, but a damn sight faster than if none of it was.

[arthurleung]

Wrong way around. It is only slower when things need moved out to the page file. I think you're getting SuperFetch and ReadyBoost mixed up.

Things like Photoshop open about 5-10 times faster if the majority of its components are prefetched rather than loaded directly from the hard drive on demand. Not as quick as if it were all in the memory, but a damn sight faster than if none of it was.

Perhaps if you have that amount of memory, you would be smart enough to have photoshop loaded on startup hence saving you the trouble of even opening it. Taking "pre-fetching" to a new level

[Badbonji]

Wrong way around. It is only slower when things need moved out to the page file. I think you're getting SuperFetch and ReadyBoost mixed up.

Things like Photoshop open about 5-10 times faster if the majority of its components are prefetched rather than loaded directly from the hard drive on demand. Not as quick as if it were all in the memory, but a damn sight faster than if none of it was.

I meant that there is little difference between 4gb and 8gb unless the page file is used when opening large applications with 4gb memory.