Computer RAM prices

[stevie_b]

A question for those of you experienced in buying computer parts: does the price of computer RAM (purchased directly from reputable manufacturers such as Crucial) generally rise as the type of RAM becomes more obsolete?

 

I've recently bought a 2nd hand PC which takes DDR2 RAM: if the price of this stuff is likely to rise over the next, say, 2 or 3 years, I'd be inclined to max out the motherboard's RAM capacity now.

 

1GB sticks of this DDR2 sell for about £20. Now, my old PC takes PC133 RAM,of which a 512MB stick costs over £40, so the difference is not inconsiderable.

[michael]

A question for those of you experienced in buying computer parts: does the price of computer RAM (purchased directly from reputable manufacturers such as Crucial) generally rise as the type of RAM becomes more obsolete?

 

Yes.

 

It's generally really expensive when new, then gets gradually cheaper to the point it's almost being given away and then it climbs again as it becomes harder to get hold of.

 

Then it gets really old and you can't even give it away (but you still keep it just in case).

[caseys]

Yes, eventually but if you look at prices normally RAM is exorbitantly expensive when it comes out (like DDR3 is compared to DDR2 now) and then tails off after 12 months, normally slowly decreasing for 24 months and then stabalises for 12-24 months. Then it's quite hard to buy any RAM which was not produced on a mass scale (specific speeds, obscure voltages etc), mainly for laptops and high end motherboards though.

 

When you say max out the ram what are we talking here? 2Gb? 4Gb? 16-32Gb?

 

Quite frankly if you're not doing graphical design or using many 64-bit apps for science, photography or movie editing then anything over 4Gb of ram will be overkill for at least the next 2 years. Most applications just can't use the address space. That and I doubt you're running a true 64-bit OS instance.

 

If you're looking at buying > 4Gb I would consider looking into SSDs or a faster spin HDD with more cache on it, RAM most of the time is not the bottleneck in a system.

 

Remember also where you can to buy DDR2 in pairs, i.e. have 2x512 or 2x1024 or 2x2048 to be able to exploit the dual channel features. Otherwise in some cases 1.5Gb of ram (1x512 + 1x1024) will barely run better than 1Gb in 2x512 sticks.

 

My machine is about 18 months old now and to max out my ram would still be nearly £950, admittedly that's a heck of a lot cheaper than it was when it was new, but quite frankly I'd still never ever use that much memory to justify the spend.

[stevie_b]

Thanks for the info guys. The computer I've just bought came with 4x512MB = 2GB of RAM. The motherboard can take up to 4x1GB = 4GB in its 4 RAM slots, so in order to max it out I'd need to buy 4 1GB sticks, and just junk the 512MB sticks or keep them to show my grandchildren.

 

The PC has a 32-bit processor AFAIK, so I won't be running a 64-bit OS. At the moment I'm running WinXP 32-bit on it, probably upgrading to 32-bit Win7 soon.

[caseys]

The PC has a 32-bit processor AFAIK, so I won't be running a 64-bit OS. At the moment I'm running WinXP 32-bit on it, probably upgrading to 32-bit Win7 soon.

 

Just take the machine up to 3Gb then, as I think 32-bit can't address more than something like 3.1-3.3Gb of memory. No point buying 4Gb.

[Jake]

I think 32-bit can't address more than something like 3.1-3.3Gb of memory. No point buying 4Gb.

32bit XP can't but some other 32bit operating systems can.

[CJ]

This is interesting as I have 2 x 1gb sticks of RAM that was recently purchased, selling on Ebay now. It is Crucial 1GB PC3200 DDR 400 RAM (CT12864Z40B).

 

I am thinking now whether I should sell or keep it for a while and see what happens?

[stevie_b]

32bit XP can't but some other 32bit operating systems can.

 

Do you know if Win7 32-bit can?

 

Edit: I found this: http://alexmillsonline.blogspot.com/2008/10/windows-7-32-bit-accepts-more-ram.html

 

a 32-bit OS can only allocate 4 GIGS of memory including your video card, etc, thus no matter what OS you have you can't utilize a full 4 gigs of ram unless you're using a 64-bit machine with a 64-bit os

[Jake]

Do you know if Win7 32-bit can?

 

Edit: I found this: http://alexmillsonline.blogspot.com/2008/10/windows-7-32-bit-accepts-more-ram.html

 

a 32-bit OS can only allocate 4 GIGS of memory including your video card, etc, thus no matter what OS you have you can't utilize a full 4 gigs of ram unless you're using a 64-bit machine with a 64-bit os

Nah, that's not right.

32bit Win Server 03 can use way more than 4GB, up to 128gig depending on the exact version of the OS and which service packs are installed.

I hear OSX can handle >4gb too, apparently.

[caseys]

Nah, that's not right.

32bit Win Server 03 can use way more than 4GB, up to 128gig depending on the exact version of the OS and which service packs are installed.

I hear OSX can handle >4gb too, apparently.

 

You are correct, it's just that each process can only have a

 

OSX happy handles more than 4Gb Got Snow leopard here running on 12Gb currently. When I boot into XP though I'm showing less than 4Gb

[Jake]

I think Stevie's question has been answered, so hopefully he won't mind if I now hijack his thread a bit ...

 

 

OSX happy handles more than 4Gb Got Snow leopard here running on 12Gb currently. When I boot into XP though I'm showing less than 4Gb

 

I'm wondering why you are using 32bit XP anyway?

 

Tell me a bit more about your setup please. You're dual booting OSX and XP? On an Intel Mac I presume? I didn't know they could do that. Makes sense I suppose.

[stevie_b]

I think Stevie's question has been answered, so hopefully he won't mind if I now hijack his thread a bit

 

Indeed it has, hijack away.

[The-Plethora]

Hey Steve, are you certain it has a 32 bit processor? There is a good free app called CPUID which you can find on google that shows you all the details about your CPU and if it can handle 64 bit instructions etc, worth a look.

With RAM as cheap as it is right now I would max out, going back a bit I bought 8GB of RAM just under a year ago for less than 100 quid, probably even less now.

[caseys]

I think Stevie's question has been answered, so hopefully he won't mind if I now hijack his thread a bit ...

 

 

 

 

I'm wondering why you are using 32bit XP anyway?

 

Tell me a bit more about your setup please. You're dual booting OSX and XP? On an Intel Mac I presume? I didn't know they could do that. Makes sense I suppose.

 

32 bit XP because I have a licensed copy and it's one of the versions which I have all the drivers for wireless keyboard, mouse, Bluetooth, wifi, Ethernet and graphics cards would like to do 64 bit sometime but at the moment purely using for games

 

I have an 8-core 3.2ghz xeon mac pro with 6x2gb for ram, 2x320gb hdd raid-1 for primary disk and 2x1tb raid-1 for scratch data. And about 2tb on various external drives. Jammed a radeoj 4870 in there too for games.

 

Yep you can dual boot, tri boot, quad boot just depends on how many different osx versions or flavours of windows you want to be able to run. I have it purely for gaming (mmm fallout in 1920x1200) as if trying to run fusion or parallels and run xp in a vm for gaming would just make pointless overhead. Everything else i can mainly do in osx. Got the ram for Photoshop and aperture as shoot a lot of stuff in raw format. They're good machines and designed and built very well and it should last me a good 4 years without having to upgrade bar the storage.

[stevie_b]

Hmm, I'll give that CPUID a go. I'm pretty sure it's a 32bit processor though. It's a Dell Dimension 9150 with a Pentium D 3GHz CPU.

[DamanC]

DDR2 RAM is dead.....well not quite. There was a huge price hike a month ago, there will be another in the new year. As it stands DDR2 is on par with DDR3 price wise.

 

As a result, we have basically dropped DDR2 in favour of DDR3.

 

Steve, go as far as 2GB, after that it will more than likely be something else that will cause a bottle neck.

[Jake]

32 bit XP because I have a licensed copy and it's one of the versions which I have all the drivers for wireless keyboard, mouse, Bluetooth, wifi, Ethernet and graphics cards would like to do 64 bit sometime but at the moment purely using for games

 

I have an 8-core 3.2ghz xeon mac pro with 6x2gb for ram, 2x320gb hdd raid-1 for primary disk and 2x1tb raid-1 for scratch data. And about 2tb on various external drives. Jammed a radeoj 4870 in there too for games.

 

Yep you can dual boot, tri boot, quad boot just depends on how many different osx versions or flavours of windows you want to be able to run. I have it purely for gaming (mmm fallout in 1920x1200) as if trying to run fusion or parallels and run xp in a vm for gaming would just make pointless overhead. Everything else i can mainly do in osx. Got the ram for Photoshop and aperture as shoot a lot of stuff in raw format. They're good machines and designed and built very well and it should last me a good 4 years without having to upgrade bar the storage.

Interesting, thanks.

Sounds like a great setup. Must've cost a bomb though.

 

I've always avoided Macs because the (few) Mac-users I know are all horrendous fanboys - well, that and you have to pay for the software.

[caseys]

Interesting, thanks.

Sounds like a great setup. Must've cost a bomb though.

 

I've always avoided Macs because the (few) Mac-users I know are all horrendous fanboys - well, that and you have to pay for the software.

 

Even managing to get a staff discount it was horrendous. But then I look that it'll last me that long and then I'll spend the same again on a newer model probably when the evolution of nahalem is well bedded in. I used to be spending £1800+ on a 17 laptop every 3 years and it just doesn't give vfm so I switched to desktops. Spent a little more but have over 4x the processing power and storage options

 

nah I'm not a fan boy, it's a good os but it has it's flaws. Security via obscurity is no excuse. That and I use some command line operating systems at work (os/400; z/os, solaris etc) and just find every os has it's ups and downs. A cut down slimlined version of xp is very good and I'm intrigued that they've done a windows 7 kernel that can install on 35mb of disk.

 

Google and read up on Hackintosh if you haven't already, you could always try osx on a pc that way to see if it takes your fancy.

[Jake]

Yeah, I spend a big part of my work days on Solaris and AIX. I like that it's not idiot proof (by a long way), if it was easy they wouldn't need folks like us.

 

I'd be interested to try OSX on PC though. I'll look into it.

 

Cheers

[stevie_b]

Steve, go as far as 2GB, after that it will more than likely be something else that will cause a bottle neck.

 

I've currently got 2GB in it. Any ideas what could be the next bottleneck, or is that highly system-specific? Don't get me wrong, the Dimension 9150 seems fine to me with no perceived bottlenecks, but I'd just like to future-proof it a bit whilst the parts aren't too obsolete. If something fundamental like the motherboard architecture is the bottleneck, then I think I'll leave it as is.

[caseys]

I've currently got 2GB in it. Any ideas what could be the next bottleneck, or is that highly system-specific? Don't get me wrong, the Dimension 9150 seems fine to me with no perceived bottlenecks, but I'd just like to future-proof it a bit whilst the parts aren't too obsolete. If something fundamental like the motherboard architecture is the bottleneck, then I think I'll leave it as is.

 

If your CPU isn't peaking much about 50% for most of the time your bottleneck will most likely be your hard disk not being fast enough. Storage is generally the bottleneck on any system.

 

I came up with an analogy for a friend the other day who doesn't know much about cars but understands computers, but it probably works the same way.

 

If you think of a computer as a car :

The HDD capacity is the capacity of your fuel tank

The HDD spin speed is the throughput of your fuel line(s)

The memory clock speed is the throughput of your fuel pump

The memory capacity is the possibly duty of your fuel injectors

The CPU clock speed is your possible RPM

The CPU core count is your amount of cylinders

The CPU L1/L2/L3 cache could equate to the cylinder capacity.

 

Any bottleneck in turn will make the car slower (won't gain maximum power) basically because it can't get enough fuel (data) into the engine (CPU).

 

The HDD stores your data. The HDD pumps your data to memory (the faster the RPM of the HDD the better, or even better a SSD), the frequency of your memory is the rate it can read in, write out data. The capacity is of course how much it can store to quicky give/receive to the CPU without having to interact with the HDD. The cache in the CPU allows it to work on things even faster without having to go to external memory.

 

For instance let's say your CPU could do 10,000 instructions a second if it was running at WOT.

 

An instruction in L1 cache may take 0.00001 seconds

An instruction in L2 cache may take 0.00005 seconds (5x slower)

An instruction in from ram may take 0.00020 seconds (20x slower)

An instruction which needs something from the HDD may take 0.00500 seconds (500x slower)

 

Normally because either the CPU doesn't have enough L1/L2 (can't change that) or fast enough memory it's sat doing hardly anything. If you've got a lot of memory it's normally the HDD slowing it down to a point.

 

L1/L2/L3 cache = very expensive

Ram = slightly less expensive

Disk = cheap

Tape = dirt cheap

 

Supercomputer tuning and even big server tuning goes down to such a level that certain tasks will have the RAM chip nearest to the CPU as it's got less distance to travel (even though it's the speed of light and the distance is in inches).

 

Sorry for the waffle, I know more about computers than cars, but just though I'd try to explain in an analogy most would understand here

[stevie_b]

Thanks for the info caseys, I appreciate it. I'm pretty comfortable with computer internals, although I don't know about them to the same depth as others such as yourself. I do like the analogy.

 

The PC's got a SATAII HDD, which (hopefully: I haven't checked yet) spins at 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm. As long as only having 2GB of RAM won't generally be the bottleneck for non-gaming and non-image-editing usage, I think I'll hold off from upgrades. Of course all this depends on what the PC is used for: if lots of memory intensive applications that gobble up RAM are run concurrently then the hard disk is in danger of thrashing, as the system struggles to keep up with requests to move data to and from the swap space on the disk.

[Scott]

Kind of on/off topic but when it comes time to upgrade the harddrive I highly recommend the Samsung F range. I have an F1 and F3 1TB drives. They are the fastest drive's I have came across in 7200rpm form. I have 5 HDD's in my main PC, 3 of them run at approx 60mb/s when running a drive check. The Samsung F's both crack over 105mb/s. At first I just couldn't believe how fast they were, I just enjoy them now. The difference is very noticeable when transfering files between them.

 

Stupid I know but I don't get the benefit via the OS as it isn't on the larger capacity drives. I tend to stick to a smaller drive so that I don't get the urge to fill it with crap.

 

Just FYI