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Anyone using 2Mb ram?

post #1 of 21
10/14/04 at 1:00pm
Thread Starter 
My main question:
Is anyone using 2gb?

I'll be photo and video editing on a 3790.
I use a Nikon D70 rig for stills -- Sony DCR-HC30 minidv & a helmetcam for mountainbike and footrace action vids.
Nikon Capture & Photoshop for stills.
Who knows what for vids - the experiment continues.
I don't want to be hamstrung, but if 1gb is realistically enough, I'd like to know.
Additionally, how might 2gb improve battery life v 1gb.

Proposed PC Torque 3790 order (after Monday's 755 price drop):
*2.0Ghz Dothan
*WSXGA+ (I use reading glasses, WUXGA comments worry me, but I'm willing to listen. I do occasionally use my reading glasses when editing photos)
*1gb (2 sticks 512mb looks waaay cheaper than anything I can find for 1 stick of 1gb. I'll obviously have to "waste" at least 1 stick, if I add ram later)
*60GB 7200RPM
*8x DVD+- w/DL
*Bluetooth
*12 cell batt
*XP Home (unless I can be convinced XP Pro does anything other than allow me to be a member of a Windows domain)

Is upgrading a 3790 - HD, optical drive, mobo, CPU, graphics - basically a tinkertoy operation (like desktop building) on down the line?

Thanks to the folks in the forum and to PC Torque.
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post #2 of 21
10/14/04 at 1:06pm
Most of use are using 512MB or 1GB. A few have moved up to 2GB.

Don't know of anyone still using 2MB???
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post #3 of 21
10/14/04 at 1:54pm
He must have meant 2gb of ram, not 2mb of ram, because he is ordering today (not back in 1633 b.c.). So in those terms, yes I am getting the 2 gb for music making purposes.
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post #4 of 21
10/14/04 at 2:01pm
Oh yeah.... I really should have read your post a little more. As for the question about 2 gb of ram improving the battery life, I don't think it will because it's not a battery . But then again, read my sig.........
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post #5 of 21
10/14/04 at 2:37pm
2gb will probably lower your batter life because they will have to be powered. I use 2 gb, because I actually have programs that will utilize more than 1 gb. I think that's pretty common for video editing, too, but for the most part it is uncommon. It may be that if you're doing video editing and the program has to use more than 1 gb to run, that you'd get more battery life with 2 gig because of the extra harddrive use that would be caused by swapping memory to disk without the extra memory.
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post #6 of 21
10/14/04 at 4:58pm
Having more RAM installed might also prevent pagefile swaps, meaning that the HDD would be used less, possible saving a little bit of power, but I think it would be a wash with the added power used by the additional RAM. Again that's just in theory.
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post #7 of 21
10/14/04 at 9:01pm
Thread Starter 

gb, mb, who's counting?

Doh!
That should have been gb, not mb. This is what I get for deleting caffeine for no good reason.
And I'd even put it as 2 512k sticks of ram, to add even more stupidity.
Of well, thanks for having a sense of humor about it all. 1633 b.c., indeed.
Anyway, 2gb is sounding pretty rare on this forum.
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post #8 of 21
10/14/04 at 10:11pm
Thanks for appreciating my sense of humor.

Yeah... 2 gb ram isn't too common around here. See, the only reason I really need it is because I'm using this Vst plugin called the Garritan Personal Orchestra, and in order to play the entire orchestra, I need one gig of ram! And I plan to use other Vsts in addition to that, so I want something a little more than 1 gb. Thus, I'm going with Sager because they (unlike a few other companies I know of...) don't charge over a thousand dollars to upgrade from 1 to 2 gb of ram. Only around 300 bucks for the same upgrade on a Sager.
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post #9 of 21
10/14/04 at 10:46pm
i'm probably going to get a 1gb stick in addition to the 512 stick oem. for 1.5gb total, should be sufficient for me
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post #10 of 21
10/15/04 at 11:58pm
I edit picture taken from my Sony S700 camera using gimp. It is not at all uncommon for an uncompressed picture ( while editing ) to reach 1+ gig of memory usage. The pictures start off at a resulotion of 4048x3040 and once you start editing, yikes. I have 2gigs in my 8790 and have not once had it access the hard drive for swap space. If you are going to do editing, or move lots of pictures, get 2. I also believe that if you do not have two sticks of the same memory size DDR will disable, please correct me if I am wrong on that. The more power the better .
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post #11 of 21
10/16/04 at 2:11am
Well the 855 chipset that the 3790, and all centrino's (pent-m's) use does not support dual channel memory, so you can mix and match what ever you want memory wise as long as all other specs are same.
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post #12 of 21
10/16/04 at 3:00am
When I bought my Sager 4750, I paid $50 more to get a 1 dimm 1024MB memory module knowing that there was only 2 memory slots for a max of 2048MB. If there is a real advantage of adding that extra 1024MB then I'll pay the extra $300.

So far from reading this thread, I don't have a reason.
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post #13 of 21
10/16/04 at 4:27am
I run with 2 gigs in my Desktop..
Believe it or not some times it HURTS gaming performance...
I've run games (such as Star Wars Galaxies) with 1 gig and 2 gig in the system and actually get better overall performance with 1 gig...

I would assume a lot of it has to do with Windows not knowing what to do with 2 gigs... And the fact that the MSI k8N Neo2 board hates having all 4 RAM slots filled...

Even so, I've really noticed no difference between 1 to 2 gigs... that is in favor of having MORE memory... It's just a common misconception people make... Some times bigger numbers aren't always the best!
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post #14 of 21
10/16/04 at 5:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Al
I run with 2 gigs in my Desktop..
Believe it or not some times it HURTS gaming performance...
I've run games (such as Star Wars Galaxies) with 1 gig and 2 gig in the system and actually get better overall performance with 1 gig...

I would assume a lot of it has to do with Windows not knowing what to do with 2 gigs... And the fact that the MSI k8N Neo2 board hates having all 4 RAM slots filled...

Even so, I've really noticed no difference between 1 to 2 gigs... that is in favor of having MORE memory... It's just a common misconception people make... Some times bigger numbers aren't always the best!
You're kinda right there, but not entirely. It's not the extra RAM that was slowing you down. Windows has a bad habit of paging when it doesn't need to, mainly because it's designed to work with the smallest amounts of physical RAM. On my systems with 1.5+ GB of RAM, I turn the paging file off completely. One of my systems with 4GB of RAM runs this way and it plays games runs applications like a dream.

It's just a matter of tweaking Windows around your particular settings/needs.
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post #15 of 21
10/16/04 at 5:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Al
I run with 2 gigs in my Desktop..
Believe it or not some times it HURTS gaming performance...
I've run games (such as Star Wars Galaxies) with 1 gig and 2 gig in the system and actually get better overall performance with 1 gig...

I would assume a lot of it has to do with Windows not knowing what to do with 2 gigs... And the fact that the MSI k8N Neo2 board hates having all 4 RAM slots filled...

Even so, I've really noticed no difference between 1 to 2 gigs... that is in favor of having MORE memory... It's just a common misconception people make... Some times bigger numbers aren't always the best!
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post #16 of 21
10/16/04 at 5:24pm
I using 2 gb on my GX7 & I had 1 gb on my old 8890. I see a slight difference running photoshop & gaming but not as much as I thought with the GX7. That's running with no paging file on both systems. Maybe with heavy video editing it might be needed
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post #17 of 21
10/16/04 at 6:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheComputerGuy
Thanks for appreciating my sense of humor.

Yeah... 2 gb ram isn't too common around here. See, the only reason I really need it is because I'm using this Vst plugin called the Garritan Personal Orchestra, and in order to play the entire orchestra, I need one gig of ram! And I plan to use other Vsts in addition to that, so I want something a little more than 1 gb. Thus, I'm going with Sager because they (unlike a few other companies I know of...) don't charge over a thousand dollars to upgrade from 1 to 2 gb of ram. Only around 300 bucks for the same upgrade on a Sager.

Yeah I'm looking towards 2 gigs as well for basically the same reason, and I agree with your remark about the cost, how come some companies charge $600+ for 2 gigs, eurocom for example I think charge about $1600 candian which is roughly $1200 US.
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post #18 of 21
10/16/04 at 7:30pm
at newegg, kingmax 1 gig sticks are down to 193.00! thats like 20 bucks less then they were 2 weeks ago when i was pricing...
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post #19 of 21
10/18/04 at 7:42am
Actually it's a Latency Issue when it comes to 1gb v 2 gb of Ram, the OS simply can access 1gb of Ram faster than it can access 2 gb of Ram.

The same thing applies to why a P4 NorthWood Cpu will out perform a P4 Prescott Cpu of the same speed in some instances, the NorthWood only has 512k of L2 Ram (Discounting the EE CPU of course) while the Prescott has 1gb of L2 Ram. Theoretically the Prescott should out perform the NorthWood with more Ram but that is not always the case from the testing they have done on them...

Thats why it is usually recommended that you go with 1gb over 2gb unless you really need the extra Ram for Video Editing and other reasons like some people have posted in this thread already.

To go with 2gb of Ram just because you think more is better is just a waste of money & can & actually will slow your system down at times ...
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post #20 of 21
10/18/04 at 9:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoorBoy
Thats why it is usually recommended that you go with 1gb over 2gb unless you really need the extra Ram for Video Editing and other reasons like some people have posted in this thread already.

To go with 2gb of Ram just because you think more is better is just a waste of money & can & actually will slow your system down at times ...
Kind of sounds like the advice here is 1.5gb is the sweet spot for non-dual channel systems.
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