Is More Memory Better?
Author: Richard Swinburne
Published: 8th July 2008
Consumers have enjoyed record low memory prices for over nine months now in DDR2 memory. Over the past six months, even latest 4GB and 8GB kits have been finding new lows. We've seen a continued demand for DDR2, even with all of the DDR3 support that's been cropping up.
Many Nvidia nForce and all AMD processors are still limited to DDR2 and even the new Intel P45 chipset still supports it, so it doesn't look like it will be going away any time soon. In fact, the P45 chipset only supports 8GB of DDR3 memory, while DDR2 gets 16GB!
But with the increased availability and decreased price, enthusiasts are faced with a new question: is a 4GB kit or even an 8GB kit worth the cash splash over a basic 2GB? What scenarios warrant the extra memory?
With the help of memory giant Corsair (who kindly provided us with a few 2GB and 4GB PC2-6400 C5 DHX memory kits), we decided to take a range of typical, sometimes intensive real world scenarios to see what makes the difference, and where the common memory footprint now lies.
Despite the P45's ridiculous 16GB support, 4GB DDR2 DIMMs are still very, very expensive...so we've limited our scope to four sticks of 2GB (totaling 8GB) at most.
32-bit versus 64-bit operating systems: the 4GB memory limit
As you may or may not know, 32-bit operating systems are limited to addressing a maximum memory size of 4,294,967,296 bytes, or "4GB" in more normal terms. However, this 4GB is shared between all MMIO (Memory-Mapped Input Output) devices - this includes graphics cards. Therefore, that nice, shiny new 512MB graphics card you've just bought limits your entire system memory use to just 3.5GB. What about the newest Nvidia GeForce 280 GTX with 1GB of GDDR3? That'll reduce your system memory to just 3GB.
See source for full story:
bit-tech.net | Review - Is More Memory Better?
