Should I upgrade to 8GB DDR2 from 4GB?

DDR2 memory is pretty expensive compare to DDR3. Almost 3x the cost due to its scarcity. It's roughly $150 for 4GBx2.

I wonder if it's worth while, in other words will price drop or go up? I use CS5 on the laptop if I'm on the road. I think DDR2 production is already ended.

 

you already have an SSD so it can be a reasonable fast 'secondary RAM' via page file. Personally, I would not pay for the price.

 

What RAM usage does Task Manager show when you are running your usual programs? Are you getting near 4GB (I assume that you are running 64 bit Windows). If you are getting near to 4GB and/or seeing slow-downs due to heavy usage of the paging file, then more RAM may help. However, there is an intermediate step between 4GB and 8GB called 6GB. This will reduce your investment. OK, the RAM won't be running in full dual channel mode but you would need to use a benchmarking program to measure the loss in performance.

John

 

Oh no no no no - that's very wrong!!!! Don't look at the "official" usage - even by 50% "in use", the other 50% might be in use for cache, which means whenever more RAM is needed, minimized programs will be cached to the pagefile on the HDD/SSD!! In my experience 4GB RAM is NOT enough for multitasking and Photoshop, although Win 7 shows only around 50-60% utilization! As I said - this information is VERY misleading!

DDR2 prices are high and will not drop. If you are willing to invest though I would first try upgrading to 6GB - this should be enough IMO. I found it just right for my needs so I am not yet upgrading any further, although the DDR3 prices are lower.

 

I'd disagree that 4GB isn't enough, even 3GB is enough for many heavy multitaskers. Only a few situations where Photoshop needs more than that too (mostly working with large renders). For the OP's situation, if he can get a single 4GB stick for $75 and he does CS5 heavily (such as for work), the investment will easily pay for itself. He may or may not notice a difference, but I don't believe $75 is that much considering he has two SSDs in his laptops.

 

You can disagree all you want 4GB is pretty much the border line for a Win7 x64 environment. 3GB and even 2GB was enough for Win XP! You are fine if you just open one browser window to check email and use skype for chatting. Anything involving harder work on the laptop and multitasking (me for example - 6-7 Firefox windows, each with 4-10 tabs with wabpages, skype and other programs running simultaneously - 4 GB is definitely NOT enough!) Facts are facts:

Here the problem: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...achi-7k500-hts725050a9a-problem-question.html

Here the solution: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...47198-ram-better-choice-makes-more-sense.html

Here analysis: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...age-under-win-7-pagefile-utilization-etc.html

Short version: 4GB under Win7 x64 allow limited use only and bottleneck the computer insanely, whenever used for multitasking or for heavier applications.

 

everyone's pattern is different.

I always opt for the simplest test, turn the page file off and use it for a week or two. Hitting OOM, you need more RAM. Otherwise, unlikely. Also, measure the frequency of such occurrence and decide if paying for more RAM worth it or just use the SSD as occasional supplement.

 

This is in fact a very good idea!! Spot on!

 

yes for win7 64bit more than 4gb is good, but to say 4gb is of limited use and is a bottleneck is wrong

 

Not entirely related but I have made a very stupid choice of running 64 bit Windows just because I don't want to 'waste' that extra 800M or so RAM.

Turned out that one of my frequently used program SQL Server Management Studio is a 32 bit only program which for some weird resaon doesn't work very well under this combination. It runs and functions normally but the search function (i.e. the standard search current document for some text, in all kind of programs like word/notepad etc.) have bad screen flicking issue and the search is slower too.

So if you really have only 4GB RAM, think if it worths for using 64 bit.

 

All documented and proven in the 3 threads mentioned above. Do chimpanzee's test and find for yourself.

 

I currently have 3GB in my Win7 64-bit system below and have everything you have open and more currently, and it's running just fine.

 

You obviously don't understand! I never said it will NOT run or crash! It however uses the pagefile in order to handle all of it and that leads to tremendous latencies!!

As suggested - try disabling pagefile and use your pc for a few days or a week and see for yourself! If you reach OOM (and you most likely will a few times a day) ----> you have insufficient RAM!

It would work " just fine" with 2GB RAM as well! But that's not what we want and expect!

 

this issue BTW is related to the design philosophy of firefox. It is a memory hog as it likes to cache everything in memory and cannot distinguish between 'fast memory' and 'slow memory'. Personally, I would say that just cache the page like IE does and things would be better. If there are lots of 'fast memory' for the OS, the reading from file(which most likely is cached) is not much different from reading from 'memory' which may happen to be just 'page file'.

I like the tools of firefox but it is the least used broswer on my machine. I used IE and Chrome and Firefox, in that order of frequency.

 

Not sure where you are getting your information but:
1. Photoshop does not require 4gb of ram for Windows 7 64 bit, I've worked with both CS4/Photoshop 7.0 and a few versions I have never ever ran into issues with ram when working with photoshop (4gb of ram, DDR2- w7 64 bit).
These works:
Include 5 to 20+ layers/masks. Multiple projects (up to 4 projects at a time).
Sources come from a Canon Rebel XSi DSLR@ 4k resolution for the pictures although I have worked with up to 9000x6000.
2. A bottle neck? -facepalm-

 

We are not talking about REQUIREMENTS! We are talking about the moment when your PC starts using HDD for cache because of lack of RAM which causes major slow-downs!!! Not everything is just white or black / works-doesn't work! Having 4GB and using your computer actively is a gray area - it works " just fine" as sgogeta4 said.... but far from good. Trust me - I had enough time (nearly an year) to experiment with 4GB and now that I have 6GB - I know the difference and it is tremendous!

 

I am not talking requirements, nor am I making presumptions about what others don't notice. Not sure why you think I am talking requirements when I stated exactly with what I was working with, which is more then what most people work with.
I am talking about personal experience, and a lot of testing. Which I'd like to think is more then adequate considering we have not had any issues to date with any of our current systems that I planned, built, and tested.

The memory monitor for Windows 7 is fairly accurate, and will easily show when you are running out of ram, as well as Windows 7's very own memory alert for when system memory is running low. Performance will EASILY tell you when the hard drive is being used to cache, and if you're like me and you run procmon, you can tell when a SSD or HDD is being used as a cache by the amount of reads/writes.
Even as you use ram, any stand by ram will be automatically freed as your resource requirements increase as you increase workload, and if it gets to critical levels Windows 7 itself will begin to disable several processes from itself to give you even more access to RAM (From my testing W7 can operate using 550~ mbs of ram~ once in a critical memory kicks in, it can vary though system to system by maybe 100 mb~ to be liberal)

Now unless you have concrete evidence that Windows 7 64 bit requires more then 4gb's, contrary to what most experts say for day to day use then perhaps you should consider your own particular case to be an isolated event, or perhaps an error caused by a program you use.

 

I think I said more than enough. the rest is in those 3 threads I linked to. If you don't feel like reading couple of pages - let that be at your cost not mine - not willing to rewrite everything here.

If you want evidence - read the threads. If not - not

Facts are facts.

P.s. WHAT "experts" say that windows 7 require 4GB RAM only??? At least you made me laugh

IS IT TIME TO ADD MORE RAM?

 

Horrible aticle link. Tom=tools.

First off in their testing:
1. They utilized 1 single stick of ram to test 4gb's (This is concluded from their test setup, no mention of 2gb modules being used), meaning the ram will run at half of it's specifications (800 mhz vs 1600). This is a major performance issue.
2. The method they tested are for more or less for true power users.
1. The 1st test had to do with a synthetic running max ram on the computer, with a bit of an unfair methodology which was run 6 cores with a maximum of 2gb per core. This of course does not make sense since 6 cores with a theoretical 2gb max on each is equal to 12 gb, which of course could be an issue on systems running less then 12gb's. To replicate this using Photoshop, you would be talking about having perhaps a dozen projects going on, in which case yes I would say perhaps 12gbs of ram is in order.
2. The 2nd test was games. As we know many games coming out are heavy on the ram usage, some requiring up to 6 gbs of ram when running w7 64 bit and not being capable of running on 32 bit safely. However the OP isn't having problems with games, it's with photoshop.
3. Was having to do with Cinebench and usage of RAM to form RAM DISK not strictly about performance from having 4gb vs 12gb. This is hardly appropriate considering all workload MUST be found on the RAM disk, which is basically ram partitioned to act as a very temporary storage device. The program with this is if you forget to transfer the data in the ram disk before you restart or shut down you will loose this information as Ram disk will be wiped once the computer restarts, or shuts down. Major hassle for anyone with work, and unthinkable to honest.

Personally I don't have to run through the articles, I know 100% what a computer is capable off with just specs, and 4gb is MORE then enough for the OP.

Anything else? Because I can easily pull up some workloads used by petaflop computing super computers and claim that's the new standard because it's extreme.

EDIT: I just saw your post where you had problems transferring large amounts of data and were having lag issues.Chimpanzee/others correctly attributed your unreasonable demands to HDD I/O overflood, meaning your hard drive CANNOT keep up with transfering massive amounts of data having it's I/O operatings push the max AND operating smoothly and you think ram would help? Sigh, go get a SSD.

 

Except when they aren't facts at all.

 

based on what I read, gracy123's work pattern is not that extreme. Well, regularly copying 10G+ things here and there may be.

Her case is rare but real.

once again, the only expert who knows how much RAM is enough is the one sitting in front of the computer.

and it really is painless to find out.

 

how do you disable the page file in windows 7x64 to test this out? I currently have 4GB and want to know if I need more memory.

How will I know if I use more then 4gb?

 

meh. I feel like I wasted time after reading her thread.

@passive one easy way to see if you need memory is to run procmon (download it), and run resource monitor while you do whatever it is that you do.
Once you are done for the way, check procmon for disk activity and check resource monitor to see how much ram was used etc.

Edit: Sorry forgot to finish.

If you notice in resource monitor that ram usage was high, at around 80%. Check Procmon and check for disk activity, and see how much read/writes occurred. If you see very large numbers of reads and writes, say for example 500mbs+ in 1-2 hours (when you haven't downloaded or installed anything) then you can have a good idea that your hard drive is being used as page file, and your ram capacity is not adequate.

This is a pretty good test to do.

 

I downloaded procmon, and it lists everything that is going on. I'm just not understanding what it is showing I guess.

 

computer -> system properties -> advance settings -> performance setting -> advance.

disable all page file and reboot. use it for a period that covers your tasks well. if you see error(or warning from Windows), you have to consider if you want to add more RAM as that is indication at times, your memory is not enough.

Of course if you are managing a server, don't use this method. There are proper trace that would generate alerts. But that is better left to the MCSEs

EDIT:
that is why I suggest the simple test, easy to understand(comparing with procmon etc. and procmon is only sampling).

On a desktop, this is so simple and you get the result without reading anything cryptic

 

Keep it running in the background, what it does is checks all processes (I mean ALL), and checks to see any activity like reads/writes.

Once your done for the day while having procmon running go to Tools-- File Summar~y, and order the column from most to least for Write Bytes.

 

To disable the page file:

1. Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties
2. Advanced System settings
3. Advanced Tab
4. Settings under Performance
5. Advanced
6. "Change" under Virtual Memory
7. Choose no paging file AND click SET (Don't forget to click SET!)
8. Press OK
9. Restart

 

As I said - you need to read it all and not just single posts.

I don't think RAM will help ---> RAM DID help big times! The difference is huge.

 

I am currently in pretty much the same situation as the OP, as I have an older computer using DDR2 ram, but only 5 GB ram (1GB stick, and a 4GB Patriot stick I recently bought). I have decided that once I set aside the "spending money" for it, that I will buy the same stick I just bought. Reasons??
Here is why:
I plan on using this computer for a LONG time, and by maxing out the ram now (while it is as cheap as it will be) I will have one less thing that I will have to hunt down and upgrade in a year or two (I would like to get one of the same sticks so it can run in "dual channel" so it will run slightly faster)
To "future proof" my computing needs now (I use Photoshop CS5 on and off right now, but I am sure I will start using it more and more heavily as time goes on; and more ram is a BIG help with heavy Photoshoping; I also run multiple OS's with ram intensive things in each, and I am also addicted to heavy multitab browsing)
OS's become more and more ram heavy with each iteration (Windows 8 will be out "out and about" in a handful of years, and it would be nice to be able to at least try it out by multi-booting with it, without worrying about ram usage)

sure 8GB of ram isn't "needed"; but 4GB of ram will go the way of 512MB of ram (as did 2GB of ram). If you plan on keeping your computer and using it in a moderately heavy multitasking way, then buy the extra 4GB of ram, you will see some benefit of it now, but it will remain quite usable for a long time to come (even as media, and websites become more and more intensive)

 

@Agent9

While I in general agree with your approach, the issue at hand is specifically DDR2. A machine using DDR2 is kind of old already. Even you can up it to 8GB today to anticipate for the future demand, there are other components that will be falling behind.

I just revitalized a Dell D410(and failed to add more ram to it) and what I found is that, the screen resolution is too low, the CPU while is ok is not good enough for multitasking situation and the HDD is PATA and the display doesn't support Aero.

So even if I can add more ram to it, the rest would still stuck there.

If I have a machine using DDR3, I think I would maximize everything along the same thinking as you. Not any machine with DDR2 especially they are outrageously expensive comparing with DDR3.

 

Well, my computer is still pretty damn new hardware wise (LV9400 C2D processor, a simply stunning BOE Hydis screen, Tablet PC functionality (basically a portable Cintiq + a laptop), 250GB 5400rpm drive (yes it is a 1.8" drive, and I know it is the main bottle neck for me), and DDR2 ram)
I am used to running on a less powerful system anyways (my desktop of some time now, is made up of a old AMD Athalon X64 processor [pre 2007 I think, coupled with an old motherboard], 4 1GB sticks of non matching DDR2 ram, though it has a kickass EVGA 9800GT graphics card, and 2 1TB drives), but it would be nice to be "ahead of the curve" regarding the amount of ram I have on my laptop

Sure I will see a larger "performance" upgrade from a SSD (I have done that in the past, and it only improves "perceived speed" of a computer, while having more ram will give you a larger cache and simply more ram at your disposal)


I guess some people see it as dumping money into an outdated system; but there is a period of only 1-2 months after something come out where it is still new, after that it is already "outdated". My point is in this ever changing world of technology, it is best to stick your money into something with good strong performance and reliability, and something you will be happy using -no need to buy other stuff because someone (usually the manufacturer) tells you to buy something else because it is better (and them telling you that you need that slight performance increase, at their asking price)

 

I will do some testing to see if this is correct, for variables I will be using a SSD for operating system, and hard drive for the transfer to drive this will push mechanical hard drive to it's limits and let me control variables in terms of small file/large file read/write speeds (mechanical hard drives+small files=bad).

Test setup:
Dell m6500
i7 740QM 1.73ghz
2x2gb DDR3 1333 mhz to take place of 4gb.
2x4gb DDR3 1333 mhz to take place of 8gb.
And 2x2gb and 2x4gb DDR3 1333 mhz to take place of 12gb.
SSD: Intel X25-M 80GB Gen2
Hard drive: Hitachi 7k500 7200 RPM 500gb 2.5"
Files:
Music For small files since it cannot be compressed and must be transfer bit by bit, as caching is just about useless iirc.
Video, same thing as music can't be compressed and must be transfered bit by bit, caching is useless.

 

Noop. that is not stressing the HDD. Unless instead of setting the page file on the SSD, you deliberately disable that then make the page file auto grow on the slow HDD.

Her case is special.

Also, one big file(rather than many small files) is more likely to show what she experienced.

 

Thats why I am testing both small/large files.

Page file is disabled on SSD. Something tells me I won't need page filing.

Great news, ProcMon will let me know how much time the transfer took, for EACH file. This will let me address problems with accurate measurements.

chimpanzee if you have any suggestion for configuring my laptop for these tests feel free to say so but as far as I know gracy disabled page filing on her computer.

 

The reason why she was so insisted about 4GB RAM is not enough is that she used to have 4GB + page file and encountered slow down(lag) when she did huge file copying. I told her to check if disable page file help and she said it helped but she hit OOM. She later increased it to 6GB(still with page file enabled) and the problem persist. Then she disabled the page file and is happy so far.

 

So basically adding memory did not solve her real issue with transferring (correct me if I am understanding incorrectly) but more like other combined tasks she did got her a OOM, because to me in a technical sense it does not make sense for ram to have been the factor involved with transferring of files. It honestly sounds to me like she was doing too many things that caused her to get an OOM alert.

If that's the case then it's pretty misleading to say look at a thread related to transferring of data on hard drives and say 8gb is standard when that simply is not the case.

Anyways I am running the tests right now Ill be back in a jiffy.

 

Basically she didn't have enough RAM so she needed to enable page file. But enabling page file(auto grow) put her in a situation where the copy process would grab lots of memory and crowded out other process(so she would never hit OOM) and whenever she wanted to bring those process back, it has to be pulled from page file again while the HDD is already crowded with the copying command and it becomes a feedback loop.

Which is why I said different people have different RAM need. For her need, 4GB is not enough. As simple as that. It is hard to extend to a general situation. Just needs to be tested.

EDIT:
and for the copy process, RAM plays a role as it seems. It seems that it wants to cache(in its own buffer thus malloc) for as much RAM as it can get from the OS and that is why the page file get involved.

 

Yes and No! Here the actual results:

Testcase 1: 4GB RAM + system-managed pagefile size:

Total lag! System almost unusable while transferring huge amount of data (10+ GB) from/to the HDD, especially from one partition to the other (as transferring to/from external drive is only limited to about 25MB/sec over USB 2.0)

Testcase 2: 4GB RAM + manually limited pagefile size - max 1024MB:

Lag still present and irritating but system better responding. However temporary solution as OOM was being reached every couple of hours - hence 4GB RAM + 1GB Pagefile is NOT enough.

Testcase 3: 6GB RAM + system-managed pagefile size:

Great progress! Lag almost completely gone, system usable, small delays here and there, but usable!!

Testcase 4: 6GB RAM + pagefile disabled:

Lag GONE! System responds as if there is no data being transferred (minor latencies now and then, almost invisible...). Over a week now with disabled pagefile - not a single OOM, although I have been using Photoshop quite actively lately.

Absolutely!! FREE RAM progressively goes to zero when copying. Screenshots available in the other threads.

 

That's a pretty bad test of whether you need more than 4GB of RAM or not. Many programs require some page file, and the fact that you get OOM errors or other issues does not mean you need more RAM.

Open Task Manager and go to the Performance tab. Under Physical Memory, there should be four categories, in Windows Vista and 7--
Total: this is the total amount of available RAM that Windows can utilize
Cached: this is the amount of RAM Windows is using for its caching purposes (but will be freed if your programs need the space)
Available: this is how much RAM is available to the user (equal to Cached + Free)
Free: this is entirely unused RAM

To put things simply, if your Free RAM is not at 0, you're pretty much not going to see any noticeable benefit whatsoever by increasing your RAM amount.

Given the super-low prices of DDR3 RAM these days, I would say it's not necessarily a bad idea to pay $50 for a set of 8GB RAM. But if you're going to be paying more than that, especially to upgrade RAM in a notebook that you'll be replacing 2-4 years down the road, it's not worth it. Invest that money in an SSD instead, and trust me, you won't be hitting a RAM bottleneck anytime soon.

As for transferring large batches of files:
I've never had my system slow down to a crawl when copying even tens of GBs of files. I'm not sure whether that's because I am using an SSD or whether I use FastCopy to copy large amounts of files, but in either case, I still don't find >3GB of memory essential.

 

And what does the fact, that 4GB + disabled pagefile hits OOM AND the fact that 6GB + disabled pagefile doesn't, tell you?

Answer: There is no software that requires pagefile installed on the computer and 4GB are insufficient, whereas 6 are sufficient.

This is pretty much the same one can determine using your method, only disabling pagefile is much easier, faster and "reliable" method IMO, because the actual amount of FREE RAM at a certain moment gives no general information - it could be 2GB now and 0 in 5 minutes - one would need to constantly monitor...

 

games I was told that checked for existing of page file but other than that, what do you mean by 'many' ?

If you get OOM, what else does it mean other than 'there is no RAM to serve this request' ?

My 'Free' almost always goes to close to 0 after a day or two, but my cache also goes up. So Free is not a good gauge. Available is.

But this is not the whole story, the point is you don't know you 'spike' memory needs from these numbers. That depends on work habits. There are two way to gauge this, disable page file is the quick and easy way. Using the performance monitor is another(which is a bit difficult to setup and you need to analyze the result).

edit:
for those want to track that, this link was about XP but the method still applies to newer version of Windows
just that the counter and meaning of counter has changed a bit. compare that to my disable page file suggestion.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article...omized-version-of-performance-monitor/5263541

 

What else were you doing during the file transfer? Once again I think it was just a combination of several programs, and of course the transfer hogging up resources.

 

Trying to maximize my 5-10 Firefox windows, each with 2-10 Tabs. Trying to maximize Skype from the tray (was taking good 5-20 seconds to load content).

Trying to refresh IE tabs. Same with Opera.

Firefox had the biggest delays, than IE, Opera was the fastest but still almost unusable.

 

I see. Firefox 5-10 windows, 2-10 tabs each. Depending which Firefox it is, that could easily be in the 300mb range for memory usage.
IE seems to scale in memory usage once you hit 4+ tabs, but it's not unusual to hit over 200 mb's alone using a few tabs on IE.
Opera I forget, I ditched it as soon as I tested the email client/found it would not work for hotmail.

Hmm yeah sounds about right, nothing odd here just seems you finally met your needs with 6gb of ram, and tbh sounds to me like your typical workload is not very typical.

 

My list of IE instance can easily goes up to 500M+(total combined) after a few days of use. Same goes for Chrome.

 

what do you mean?

But yes - 6GB turned my PC into the computer I thought I was buying )

 

Aye. I don't like to use IE too much, too slow/clunky for me. I prefer Chrome's small usage of address bar/tab realestate.

 

What a difference 50 bucks(4GB) can make

 

Is this all you have running at the same time? If your computer has trouble with this, then it isn't the amount of memory.

 

I mean your workload, as in what you do is not something MOST people do any given day. That's why I kept insisting you don't recommend 8gb of ram to someone, when chances are they won't need it even with Photoshop CS5.