Not really, I don’t.
Right now, I’m running 12GB of DDR3 at 1333MHz on an eVGA X58 board. The OS is the Windows 7 RC, 64-bit version.
I have to credit Brad Wardell at Stardock for giving me this wacky idea. Now, among performance geeks and server farms, 12GB isn’t all that much. Even these days, though, high end systems running Core i7 tend to ship with “only” 6GB.
Now, this is not a “who needs more than 640K” kind of comment. Having 12GB is great. Something that doesn’t get written about too much is the whole issue of system responsiveness.
Back in the good old, pre-Vista days, Jason Cross wrote an article called Why Windows Vista Won’t Suck. I’m not going to sit here and point fingers at Jason and laugh, since I edited the article and thought it was great. As it turns out, though, we were a tad optimistic. Windows Vista was something of a beast until SP1 was released. Even after SP2 it is, shall we say, less than perfect.
Back at the initial RTM of Vista, though, the world was almost all 32-bit. After Vista had been out for nine months or so, I jumped into 64-bit Vista, which was a real eye-opener. Running aVista x64 with 4GB of RAM proved to be such a different experience. The OS was noticeably more responsive than running on 32-bit. So as it turns out, Vista x64 gets an “okay” from me, while Vista 32-bit really did kind of suck (until SP1, where it was merely adequate.)
In fact, when we recently ordered a new laptop for my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, who heads off to UCLA this fall, she whined about getting Vista. So we waited until we could get a free Windows 7 upgrade…
That’s not to say the actual features that users saw sucked, though. It was just the underlying plumbing. Okay, so UAC out of the box did kind of suck.
In the past couple of years, we’ve seen most systems ship with Vista x64. As of SP2, Vista does seem noticeably more stable and snappy. But the improvements in Windows 7 — both plumbing and the new UI features — now make it much more compelling. Heck, Windows 7 even runs better on three year old hardware than Vista.
Sorry to meander around Windows problems, but I do have a point. In some respects, I think Vista was engineered with a 64-bit future in mind, and the 32-bit version became a victim of that. If you look at some of the odd bugs in the RTM of Vista — like the double usage of video frame buffer — and it appears that the engineers writing a good chunk of the OS seemed to think they had an infinite amount of RAM.
Windows 7 seems much tighter and more responsive — but then, I haven’t used the 32-bit version. Still, having 12GB of RAM was, in retrospect, almost a better reason to get an X58 motherboard than the actual Core i7 CPU itself. (NO complaints about the CPU, though.)
I really notice the extra RAM when I have a ton of Windows open, and when I’m running that huge memory hog known as Adobe Bridge + Photoshop CS4 64-bit. It all runs smooth as butter.
So when are you getting your 12GB?
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16 comments
tlmck says:
July 25, 2009 at 1:39 pm (UTC -7 )
I downloaded the Win 7 RC in 64 bit with full intentions of running it on a 4gb DDR2-800 machine. However, after testing both 2 and 4gb, I could not really tell a difference for what I do, which is play older first person shooter games. It does run a whole lot faster than Vista x32, but not quite as fast as Win 2000 Pro.
Neil says:
July 25, 2009 at 1:45 pm (UTC -7 )
8 ain’t bad for now with W7RC x64… smooth as it can be until I nab an SSD
Ryan E. says:
July 25, 2009 at 2:05 pm (UTC -7 )
12 gigs coming just as soon as I can get my hands on a P55 mobo.
Jeff says:
July 25, 2009 at 2:38 pm (UTC -7 )
I use VMWare Workstaion on my system frequently, and I’ve really enjoyed having 8GB or RAM for that purpose more than anything. I did notice also how much easier it was to actually have a VM running in the background for work, and being able to task-switch into Fallout 3!
I probably won’t go 12GB+ in my home machine until I finally decide to upgrade this system to whatever Intel’s mid-range is in a year or two from now. Quad-core proc and 8GB of RAM has served me so well that I’m at the point where I’m looking at almost a completely new build next time I get the upgrade itch.
Now we’ll have to see if I notice a difference on Monday on the ESX 4i server I just upgraded from 8GB to 12GB, that’ll be interesting.
Stephen L. says:
July 25, 2009 at 3:18 pm (UTC -7 )
You’ve sold me on 12 Gb. Now what speed can I reasonably expect to run 6 sticks? (I’m not crazy about the speed hit.)
Josh says:
July 25, 2009 at 5:00 pm (UTC -7 )
The real question for Core i7 is 6GB vs 12GB.
You didn’t mention how much RAM you’d been running before the upgrade. I can imagine it’s a big boost in responsiveness from 4GB, but from 6GB?
Loyd Case says:
July 25, 2009 at 7:02 pm (UTC -7 )
I’m not completely sure, but isn’t Core i7 dual channel? So you’ll go with 2, 4, 8 and (expensively) 16GB?
Loyd Case says:
July 25, 2009 at 7:03 pm (UTC -7 )
I checked, and I’m actually running six DDR3-1600 sticks at DDR3-1333. Plus it’s triple channel, so there’s a ton of available memory bandwidth.
Loyd Case says:
July 25, 2009 at 7:04 pm (UTC -7 )
For normal stuff, maybe not. Photoshop x64 + Bridge + editing raw files? Definitely.
Tim says:
July 26, 2009 at 4:35 am (UTC -7 )
Hey Loyd, It’s great to see you writing again! I’ve bookmarked this blog and look forward to reading your insights.
As for answering your question of when I will get 12 GB. I plan on running 12 GB or RAM when I build my Core i7 system in a few months!
After all, I’d rather have “too much” RAM then not enough ram!
Noel Clark says:
July 26, 2009 at 5:50 pm (UTC -7 )
I agree with Josh. I’m running 6 GB DDR3 1600 on an EVGA X58 but wondering if 12 GB is worth the entry fee? Second question to explore: some reviews suggest that SSDs consume more CPU resources than standard HDDs. Does this mean games will run slower with an SSD, even if they load faster?
Great to see Loyd writing again!
Loyd Case says:
July 26, 2009 at 6:06 pm (UTC -7 )
If SSDs consume more CPU cycles, my hunch is that it’s not by much. I’ve heard few complaints from laptop users with SSDs. Boutique gaming PC companies (eg, Falcon NW) think SSDs are a boon, because games load so much faster.
Memory is cheap. You can find 6GB of DDR3-1600 now for well under $100 — close to $90 some places.
DaveMuk says:
July 26, 2009 at 8:33 pm (UTC -7 )
Been keeping up to date with you after ET through your twitter, glad to see you’re writing again. keep up the good work, lets get those benchmarks up and running again. Im looking forward to more of the same.
admin says:
July 26, 2009 at 10:36 pm (UTC -7 )
Right now, I’ve got some freelance stuff pending that may involve some performance testing, but nothing to announce yet.
Paul says:
July 30, 2009 at 7:16 am (UTC -7 )
I unfortunately am forced to run Windows 7 RC on a 7 year old Gateway with 896 mb of ram and a 1.5 GHz P4. Thank God for the video card that I was able to salvage from my equally as old Compaq that died about a year ago. Win 7 runs decent on it…if you only run one app at a time. Forget about Multitasking. I am in desparate need for some new PC hardware. Not sure when that is going to happen. Oh well. Maybe some day.
Sean says:
July 30, 2009 at 8:59 pm (UTC -7 )
Looking forward to going to 12gb of ram when I upgrade to Intel’s 32nm i7 refresh next summer. Until then I am content with 4gb on Win7 RC 64 bit, having previously used Vista x64 and before that XP 64 bit edition. It still gets bogged down at times when I am multitasking but I expect this to be much alleviated with Win7+SSD+12gb of ram.
Concerning Vista, I’m consistently frustrated to see people criticize the OS in generalizations that either have little basis in experience or would be more appropriately directed towards hardware vendors’ driver support. Default UAC settings notwithstanding, I have had no problems with Vista itself besides the early inaccurate progress bar issues. Even before SP1 I preferred it to XP. I’d like to think that the criticism is that of a vocal minority but it sure has seemed to be a persistent and loud one.