NEED help increasing RAM/speed for multi-tasking

**techreactor** · 1 Jan 2006, 04:57 PM

Seeing your benchmarks, you should stick to MODS: 2 512 double sided

**Chewy** · 1 Jan 2006, 08:30 PM

Yes,
The everest benchs tell you how your mobo is reacting to the mix of ram.
But only at certain bios settings. And these benchs don't test the use
of large amounts of ram so the dual 256 tests almost as good as the dual
512. If you are gonna get into photoshop real heavy then you might need
the extra 2 x 256.
I went for pure speed with shrink and a limited budget, and I have a matched pair of faster ram stuck in a drawer that cost 50% more than
my present sticks.
Send back the 2 x 512 single sided and leave the 2 x 256 in reserve
for a future date if you ever find anything that needs more than a gig of
ram.
My 2x 256 6294MB/s read, 1928MB/s write, 45.7ns latency,
my cpu and memory controller enhance this ram's performance,
adding the other ram just slows it down.

**anonymez** · 1 Jan 2006, 09:28 PM

like chewy said, everest does not take into account the amount of ram during the benchmarks.

adding more ram does not increase the memory read/write rates, rather it greatly lowers the need for windows to use virtual memory, which is much slower. the benchmark does not test this

**Chewy** · 1 Jan 2006, 10:04 PM

it does test compatibilty between unmatched sets of matched ram

IMHO

**Dr Klovernutz** · 2 Jan 2006, 06:26 AM

So what you are saying is that I am peaked out at the read and write speeds and latency. Then why does 2 double sided 512 produce faster results than when i have 4 512s in? And how come double sided 512 have a different speed than single sided?

I'm thinking I may return everything and buy 2 256 (single or double) . Should i stay away from crucial.com? should i buy elpida or from dell? I am really confused.

What exactly does everest test? How can I increase my speeds. Chewy has only 2 256 mods, what kind do you have??

Well like i said I plan on adding a tuner (recording) as well as playing games OR being able to use my computer while encoding (and i use photoshop a lot)
what should i do.
UGHHH...

happy New year
-Dr. K

**Chewy** · 2 Jan 2006, 07:03 AM

Ram is like anything else, slow, fast, faster, but it's all about bottlenecks.
The 2 512 dbl sided are plenty fast enough to keep up with your cpu and
motherboard, some cas2(lower cas is faster) pc400 ram would have been better. My case, I was just trying to find ram that wouldn't bottleneck my
cpu and motherboard. I tried 3 sets of sticks before I maximized performance.
If I were to try and open some heavy duty photo shop apps, I would probably run out of available ram and would start disk thrashing(using the swap file).
A simple three finger salute(Ctrl,alt &del) during any operation shows task manager, and you can monitor memory is use and available.
Why do your 2 sticks outperform any other combination, it's all about compatibility.
Four identical sticks might outperform 2 sticks on your motherboard, depending on what you are doing.
Design your own benchmark customized to your needs.

**anonymez** · 2 Jan 2006, 10:19 AM

klovernutz, if you're going to be using photoshop, get as much ram as you can get. capturing video (i'm assuming you mean DVB-T) does not take much resources, rather hard disk space. most programs allow you to set it to high priority, definitely enable it.

as chewy said, the differences in read/write rates indicate compatibility. for heavy photoshopping, and multitasking while photoshopping, i say screw the relatively small difference in read/write rates, and go with plenty of ram.

**Chewy** · 2 Jan 2006, 10:38 AM

anony,
your ram couldn't be slowing that cpu of yours very much, do you have
matched sticks?

**Dr Klovernutz** · 2 Jan 2006, 04:51 PM

I am afraid curiosity has the best of me now. I want to see how my system would react with 4x 256 in it. I am going to send back all of the 512MBs I have and order 2x 256MBs.

1. Any suggestions on what kind I should get
(ie> crucial, elpida, dell (i know its not dell brand but maybe my mobo has an affinity for crap touched by dell's stinky hand) kingston)

2. Should I get single sided or double sided?

Here is what is in my system now:
ELPIDA
EBD25UC8AKFA-5B
PC 3200 -3033-0-B1
256MB 0339SE035

these have chips on both sides but only 8 total chips so they are SINGLE SIDED.

**Dr Klovernutz** · 8 Jan 2006, 08:43 AM

I thought I would let you know, I recieved the 2 256MB mods from crucial.com
see if you can figure this one out.

I think this may be a case where either the people who argued that all 4 modules should be the same are correct, (technically all four of the 512s where not the same 1 pair was single sided and 1 pair was double sided), or the mother board of a DELL 4600 (intel i865PE) doesn't like sticks of 512 (I am leaning towards this, look how just a pair of single sided 512 performed.)

I am curious to see if there is a technical answer for what is going on here.

Either way these are the sticks I am keeping, they perform as well as my elpidas and combined they out perform all combinations up to 2G of RAM on this machine. My goal was to encode DVDs faster, instead I can run photoshop smoothly and surf the net while encoding (although I still experiance lag when opening a program/ window) and I think I can handle just about any game, afterall I am still running 1Gig. Plus I am saving some $$ since the 256s are obviously cheaper than 512s.

Curious to see how sticks of 1G would perform. Maybe down the road, since this upgrade now only ended up costing me $60 vs $115.

Curious to hear your opinion on this
take care
-Dr K

UPDATED RESULTS of BENCHMARKS with using 4 256MB modules (all single sided, no double sided are

avaliable from crucial.com)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODS: 2 256 single sided (crucial modules)

cpu-Z
memory:dual

everest
read: 3750 mb/s
write: 1200 mb/s
latency: 112 ns

chipset:
memory modules:
slot #1 512mb

----------------------------------------
MODS: 4 256 single sided (both Elpida and crucial.com)

cpu-Z
memory:dual

everest
read: 3800 mb/s
write: 1685 mb/s
latency: 111 ns

chipset:
memory modules:
slot #1 512mb
slot #2 512mb

**Chewy** · 8 Jan 2006, 08:52 AM

bang for the buck optimized

NEED help increasing RAM/speed for multi-tasking

NEED help increasing RAM/speed for multi-tasking

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