4gig vs 6gig Memory Upgrade

[crowdx]

Hi all,
just thought I would share some info. Since I started 5 manning dungeons I have been running with 4 gigs of memory and a quad core Q9550 cpu and Nvidia 9800gtx. Everything ran great, no lag etc. Then over the last few days I needed to start doing dailies to get some gold together, the issues started :( . It seems that the dungeons memory footprint is a lot less than the world even with the view distance at 25% on the main and 0% on the group. I bit the bullet and added in another 4 gig and this made a huge difference, the hard drive paging stopped and I am now seeing about 5.5 gig memory used with a greater view distance on all toons.
I will probably bite the bullet and up things to 8 gig which means dumping the other 2 gig in the machine and so essentially I dropped 4 gig of memory to get to 8.
So for those of you thinking of 5 boxing, it will work fine in a dungeon using 4 gigs but doing dailies etc will kill your machine regardless of the other components, it is all about memory and stopping the machine from hitting your hard drive.
Hope this helps others.

[Svpernova09]

Couldn't agree more. I run 8 gigs and wouldn't recommend any less. Especially if you are on a higher populated realm (lots of people in common areas you frequent)

[Ualaa]

I'd go 8GB on a Quad Core with DDR2.
Or 12GB on an i7 with DDR3, although 6GB is an option with the i7.

[crowdx]

I just added the extra memory, have not tried yet though. Is the i7 a better memory controller for their chipset?

[Ualaa]

The i7 has three channels, so ram chips go in sets of 3.
3 chips, 6 chips, 9 chips etc.

I went with six 2gb chips, but you could probably run three 2gb chips and run wow fine.
It depends on what else you want to run, if you are doing movies or whatever.
Or have a lot of background things open.

[wougoose]

Another option is one of the newer i7 Lynnfield's. They utilize two memory channels instead of three, which leaves 4x 2GB sticks an option for your 8GB total ram. Personally, I'll be getting an i7-860 and 8GB ddr3 1600 when I eventually click the checkout button :)

Anandtech Review: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3641
Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

[crowdx]

I ended up going with the 8 gig and my current chipset, unfortunately I am running DD2 and not DDR3 and so when I go to i7 I will need a new set of memory

[Sajuuk]

Another option is one of the newer i7 Lynnfield's. They utilize two memory channels instead of three, which leaves 4x 2GB sticks an option for your 8GB total ram. Personally, I'll be getting an i7-860 and 8GB ddr3 1600 when I eventually click the checkout button :)

Anandtech Review: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3641
Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

Sorry, but i5/P55 is just....ewwwww. (To me at least, it's a dead upgrade path, vs going 1336 i7 and having 12GB Ram (6x2Gb DIMMS) and gulftown CPUs (Six core + hyperthreading) coming out in the next year.

[wougoose]

Sorry, but i5/P55 is just....ewwwww. (To me at least, it's a dead upgrade path, vs going 1336 i7 and having 12GB Ram (6x2Gb DIMMS) and gulftown CPUs (Six core + hyperthreading) coming out in the next year.

I'm recommending the 1156 i7 as a cheaper alternative to the 3 channel bloomfields.

Edit: After reading up on the Gulftown, it may in fact be a good idea to still go with the current bloomfield 1366 i7 and a x58 board, as the Gulftown will supposedly slap in with current x58 1366 boards with a bios update. Thanks for enlightening me Saj :)