6Gb enough?

[Wenus23]

Looking to build a somewhat enthusiast rig here, was wondering if 6gb is going to be enough RAM.

i7 920
evga 758 x58
GTX 480 (when it comes out...)
1000w psu

looking to use computer primarily for gaming, in 3D (nvidia 3d vision set) @ 1080p with max settings if possible. will 6gb be enough RAM or should i go for a 12gb set? Thanks!

 

[taltamir]

1000w PSU? are you running 3+ video cards? if not then you need much much less.
In fact, having a PSU with too high a rating decreases its performance significantly.

 

[happy medium]

1000w PSU? are you running 3+ video cards? if not then you need much much less.
In fact, having a PSU with too high a rating decreases its performance significantly.

HUH?

 

[Sahakiel]

I'm guessing he means the PSU efficiency will be lower so the system outputs more waste heat as a percentage.

 

[Wenus23]

k, wondering about RAM, not psu. thanks

 

[jjmIII]

6gb is plenty..

 

[HendrixFan]

For an enthusiast, a SSD will likely net you a better experience than going from 6GB to 12GB.

 

[n7]

It's fine unless you multitask like crazy, especially w/ stuff like Photoshop.

I find that due to weird memory leaks in some apps & just leaving a lot of stuff running, i'm usually using around 2-4 GBs + whatever a game takes (this w/ my 8 GB for the last many years), so i'd say you should be fine w/ 6 GB.

 

[TJCS]

My memory was at 47% (2.8GB out of 6GB) with the following running:

Photoshop CS4 - doing some basic photo editing
Dreamweaver CS4 - XML editing
Burnout Paradise game running in the (background, minimized)
Firefox 3.6
Winamp playing music
Steam
Skype with 2 chat sessions
Windows live mail
Nod32 AV
W7 Pro x64

Normally, it is around 1.5GB used when I m just doing some web browsing and running some basic apps (word, email..). I let W7 manage my page file, and I rarely see my memory go above 50% even when I do video encoding or play games. Hope this helps.

 

[jhansman]

Enough for what? When I re-built my system I went for 8GB, and at the time that was overkill. Now I do image processing in Photoshop and play COD4 and other demanding games, so now I'm glad I went that route. With the possible exception of an SSD, RAM is the probably the best investment you can make in your system, IMO.

 

[lsv]

My memory was at 47% (2.8GB out of 6GB) with the following running:

Photoshop CS4 - doing some basic photo editing
Dreamweaver CS4 - XML editing
Burnout Paradise game running in the (background, minimized)
Firefox 3.6
Winamp playing music
Steam
Skype with 2 chat sessions
Windows live mail
Nod32 AV
W7 Pro x64

Normally, it is around 1.5GB used when I m just doing some web browsing and running some basic apps (word, email..). I let W7 manage my page file, and I rarely see my memory go above 50% even when I do video encoding or play games. Hope this helps.

Looks like my ram usage, 4gb of use for;

Sound Forge 10
Ableton 8
CS:Source
Eve
Various msn/skype/Firefox

No real slow downs until the games had to access the HD for map changes/etc.

So yea, 6gigs is fine for now. Go to 12 if you're going to be working on gigantic videos/images.

 

[billyb0b]

6gb will be plenty, but if you have another 200-300 to burn go with 12gb

and definitely a ssd in there

 

[TXAngel08]

6gb is plenty..

Ditto... Even if you're a heavy multi-tasker, there are very few situations that call for more than 6GB of memory.

If you really want a fast system, invest in a SSD, even if it is only the 40GB from Intel for a boot drive. Best money spent, ever... Windows 7 boots from cold in 20 seconds, shuts down in 5 seconds, heck, Windows 7 installed in under 5 minutes off a USB memory stick.

You should have seen the speed at which the Windows Updates ran, even including Office 2007 SP2, it installed so fast I almost thought something went wrong.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Windows 7 boots from cold in 20 seconds,

*sigh* Is this progress?
I have a Win98 rig that boots in 10 seconds off a PATA HDD.

It'd be nice if, one day, Microsoft would remove the bloat.

 

[TXAngel08]

*sigh* Is this progress?
I have a Win98 rig that boots in 10 seconds off a PATA HDD.

It'd be nice if, one day, Microsoft would remove the bloat.

10 seconds from power button press? Damm, that is a fast BIOS... I know what you mean about Windows 98, I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with Windows 98SE on it that boots faster than anything else I have, other than this new SSD machine.

NT just isn't as fast as the DOS line, but I wouldn't go back for a second (other than to play the old game classics, which is why I have the 8200)

Of the 20 seconds Windows 7 takes, half of that is the BIOS, the other half is from the Windows logo to finished desktop.

For a 15GB OS, that's not bad.

Your point about bloat is well taken however, it is what it is...