How many....X2 with 1gb RAM

[Smokey21]

I agree with the guy who said that you don't need 2gb.
Its like graphics cards; a 256mb card by no means its faster than the same card with 128mb. Applications just don't use it. It wasn't that long ago when 128mb was the standard.

You can only use so much RAM and 1gb is more than enough.

I put it to you upgraders that you will get negligable performance increase with 2gb installed.

LOL, you think so.

Run D3 or Far cry at 1600x1200 will aa and af, and watch it crawl on a 128mb card. if a 7800GTX had 128mb it would be much worse.

[Dougal]

On the topic of RAM.

Does anyone know about High Density and which 939 boards support it?

[StormPC]

No, read your own post.



More demand for RAM = rising prices. This is about as basic an economic principle as you can get. TBH making you look daft is starting to lose it's appeal for me now, you just make it too easy.

Only if supply is low, which it is not. It's supply AND demand, not OR!

All S939 supports the same memory. The CPU is the important thing with A64's cause that's where the mem controller is.

[nichomach]

Well, the best that one can say is that if supply is equal to or greater than demand then prices won't rise and may fall. Should demand increase the likelihood of supply equalling or exceeding demand is correspondingly reduced. At best, increased demand for RAM may trigger manufacturers into producing more, but even then, that won't reduce necessarily reduce prices, since the manufacturers will only be trying to produce as much as they can sell, they will have a fixed unit cost for production and distribution to start with, and they will want to be avoiding glutting the market as happened a couple of years ago, when they were desperately shifting RAM at a loss to clear inventory. At worst, increased demand will soak up the market's supply and cause prices to rise. People buying RAM doesn't reduce its price. Efficiency in production and distribution may, but increased demand will be either price-neutral at best or inflationary at worst. The location of the memory controller on your given platform is irrelevant to pricing for the memory that it takes; you can stick DDR in a P4 - I don't see a memory controller on its die, do you?

[blueprint]

LOL, you think so.

Run D3 or Far cry at 1600x1200 will aa and af, and watch it crawl on a 128mb card. if a 7800GTX had 128mb it would be much worse.

Sorry I actually meant 512mb is no better than 512mb in terms of graphics cards.

Wheather you still stand by your arguemt, I don't know.

[nichomach]

Sorry I actually meant 512mb is no better than 512mb in terms of graphics cards.

Well, you'd have thought it wouldn't be really...

[SilentDeath]

Try runing around qeynos harbor in eq2 when its busy with only 1gb of ram and a 256mb card with everything on max. I prove my point.

AND more to the point, if you can afford an X2, why not get enough ram?

[StormPC]

Try runing around qeynos harbor in eq2 when its busy with only 1gb of ram and a 256mb card with everything on max. I prove my point.

AND more to the point, if you can afford an X2, why not get enough ram?

The discussion has to do with the definition of "enough". Most people don't seem to know what that is.

The multi-taskers can make the argument that 1GB is not enough in rare cases, but gamers to this point can not IMO.

nichomach,

My second point was in regards to what Dougal asked, not supply and demand.

[iMc]

The thread starter wants an X2 so you have to consider that he is looking at multitasking. After all that is what dual core processers are for until games are released to specifically take advantage of them.

2GB compliments an X2 perfectly due to the nature of work the cpu is intended for. It also means that he could play a game and keep other background tasks (DVD Writing, Video/Audio Converting) going on at the same time with less performance hit.

[StormPC]

The thread starter wants an X2 so you have to consider that he is looking at multitasking. After all that is what dual core processers are for until games are released to specifically take advantage of them.

2GB compliments an X2 perfectly due to the nature of work the cpu is intended for. It also means that he could play a game and keep other background tasks (DVD Writing, Video/Audio Converting) going on at the same time with less performance hit.

People who are worried about performance don't rip CD's while they play Doom3 or bench. Doesn't take a smart person to know this, it's pretty obvious to most.

Even when multitasking 1GB is more than enough to run all applications at full speed and adding a GB of RAM will do nothing in almost all cases. This is not what I've read, it's the results of many benchmarks and weeks of testing.

In answer to the poster's question (remember that?) I think he can guess I'm running 1GB. What about you other X2 users? What? You don't have an X2? Then why did you reply to this thread?

[Rys]

Even when multitasking 1GB is more than enough to run all applications at full speed and adding a GB of RAM will do nothing in almost all cases. This is not what I've read, it's the results of many benchmarks and weeks of testing.

It really isn't enough for some people, as has been proven more than a few times in this thread. It's come back around to "my testing proves I'm right" with you again.

Surely that tells you something? 1GB is right for you, and that's really great, but it's not enough for some others. What's so hard to comprehend about that?

Different people have different computing needs and different ways of using a computer.

If you look at the list of apps I use and what I said about them (they're either all needed for work, so they need to be open while I'm working, or they're utils that sit in my systray doing a minor job, which are the ones mostly paged out to disk), you'll have seen that.

Yes (and I'm bolding to try and make you understand what you seem too blind to see), I need those bigger apps open at the same time! My workflow dictates that. Write in Homesite, checking in Word, pulling images from Photoshop and previewing in Firefox. Those are the biggest memory consumers I have, and they do need to be open at the same time, otherwise I'd be forever opening and closing apps more than I was getting any pissing work done!

I'm getting really tired of reading your posts where you're so blinkered as to what people need out of a PC that you're handing out bad advice to the forum goers.

Consider other uses of a PC before you put fingers to keys, or at least let other people put those other uses and scenarios and attached advice across without having a go at them because your testing and benchmarking says they are wrong.

[arthurleung]

2gb while being more, isn't always better. For a start 2gb is crap for overclocking, so in that retrospect you might want to stick with 1. My two main rigs (one listed in sig, the other P4 3.4ghz, 2gigs RAM, 500gb HDD, 9800Pro etc.) have the difference of 1gb RAM. Granted the system specs are different, but I don't notice the 3.4ghz to be faster in the slightest. The 2gb RAM is simply there because I use that computer for office work, and it handles Access Databases and the like a lot. However this rig (see sig) is here for internet browsing, IRC, MSN, Boinc and gaming.

So really it depends what you are doing with your system. I'd still follow the idea that if you don't desperately need 2gb at the time why bother with it?

Yes you need 2GB ram, but do you need 2GB for gaming, or you need 2GB for non-urgent jobs?

The discussion has to do with the definition of "enough". Most people don't seem to know what that is.

The multi-taskers can make the argument that 1GB is not enough in rare cases, but gamers to this point can not IMO.

nichomach,

My second point was in regards to what Dougal asked, not supply and demand.

If you really want to multi-task, get a few rigs. I'm tired of running a single rig. With my server/static service rig mounted with 2GB (Stock speed, high latency), gaming rick mounted with 1GB (overclocked to DDR600+), gaming ultra-smooth, while other services and my encodings are not affected. You effectively getting 3GB ram too.

[nichomach]

What about you other X2 users? What? You don't have an X2? Then why did you reply to this thread?

Well, in MY case to correct certain of your less reality-based assumptions about memory consumption and the effect of increased demand on RAM prices. I'm really happy that 1GB is enough for you; for a lot of my users 512MB more than suffices, but you can't assume that the same holds good for everybody, or that people just run one game or one benchmark suite. As I've noted, my machine consumes about 800MB before I kick off a single user app; but you haven't inquired once how Randell Floyd intends to use the machine. That's a little odd when in another thread he listed his uses as:

Surf and listen to music and d/l.
BF2
Video Editing
DVD Ripping
DVD Encoding
Photo Editing
Listen in order of most use

To which you quite sensibly and correctly replied:

If it's your only computer and you do a lot of things as much as gaming (multi-tasking, video editing, etc...) then the X2 is a very powerful and sensible platform.

We know that BF2 is demanding, memory wise, and we also know that video editing and encoding can be hugely memory intensive, and we can take for granted that with that workload Randell WILL be multitasking, and will probably be running multithreaded apps (assuming a decent video editing package). In those circumstances and given that usage, more IS better, yet you persist in trying to ridicule anyone who suggests that 2GB might be a wise investment.

Randell is buying a CPU that was born to multitask, and his listed uses indicate that he may be doing a lot of just that very thing, yet you're advising him to place constrictions on that ability by reducing the one other essential component that enables that.

[StormPC]

Some might consider telling a guy he needs two to four times as much memory as he actually does "bad advice".

It should be noted that I build and sell high-end systems. 99% of my customers don't even need 512MB of RAM for their applications. 99.9% do just fine on 1GB, and a very small percentage require 2GB-8GB or more. It is actually the same percentage that requires more than an X2. Get it? If you need 2GB of RAM or more then you also need a real workstation. X2's are very nice but they are not a replacement for a true workstation because they don't handle the RAM required for such a system.

[nichomach]

According to your assumptions as to what he needs which seem to suppose that he'll either run one game with evrything else turned off or one other single threaded app with everything else turned off. According to his listed uses elsewhere, and as noted, that assumption may well be in error. "two to four times"? You're being ridiculous.

Fine; you build systems. There's rather a lot here who can do that, you know. I don't doubt that you build very nice systems. But extrapolating from the 99% of your customers whose workload must be very different from that which Randell outlined and applying their requirements to his system appears unwise to say the least.

As for a "true workstation", the only difference in the memory that they can handle is the fact that the X2s can use unregistered non-ECC memory; now ECC is nice, I've been grateful for it before now, but generally such memory has poorer timings anyway. Not everyone can afford an Opteron 275; and when you're trying to buy a flexible, high performing system that will do a lot of the same things (maybe not so well, but a lot of them), then an X2 looks like a good option, as does stuffing 2GB of good quality memory into it.

[StormPC]

According to your assumptions

Your post is rediculous. I have run 30 games on a system with 10MB of RAM (my Amiga 3000) all running at the same time. Of course Amigas have several processors in addition to the CPU and a much more advanced architecture than the PC. Also, back then programmers needed to know how to actually code. Now they don't because everybody has a gig+ and very fast CPUs. Now anybody can code programs.

It is you who seem to be assuming that you need 1GB per game. You are incorrect sir, not even on a PC.

I am not going on assumptions. I am going on his posts. This may be the first post you have read by the starter of this thread but he has actually posted in others.

Also, if you guys would acually read my posts you would have read that I never said that nobody ever needs more than 1GB of RAM. I only said that most people who believe they do are mistaken.



Feeling better now?