How much RAM is needed to get good+ 64 bit Win 7 performance?

SubZero

I have question regarding Windows 7 at 64 bit.

On a machine that has XP 32 bit with 4 gig RAM, video can take 1.25 gig, leaving 2.75 gig. But XP can still run fine.

If you install 64 bit Windows 7 on that machine, you get back 1.25 gig for full total of 4 gig.

Is 4 gig sufficient for good overall Win 7 performance at 64 bit? Or is 8 gig more the normal for running effectively with typical applications like Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, LibreOffice, Audacity 2, Chrome, Firefox, CorelDraw X5, Paint Shop Pro X4, VideoStudeo X5, etc?

Not all at once, but normal of 2 or 3, maybe 4 open at a time doing things? Chrome browsing, take screenshot to Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro X4, Cut and Paste to LibreOffice, thing like that?

I do not have wide range of hardware on which to test, as all work machines are in use.

I did not know if you need 12 gig or 16 gig or even 32 gig to get most from 64 bit Windows 7 depending on programs. AutoCAD, Full Photoshop CS6 suite, etc.

Thank you for helping

CDan

4GB will get you by, but 8GB isn't really that expensive and offers plenty of room. Only reason for more than 8GB would be specialized gaming or rendering applications.

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alan1476

CDan is right here. RAM is so cheap nowadays, its worth it to invest a little more and get an 8gb kit or even a 16gb kit. There are great 16 gb kits on Newegg for less than 100.00USD. 8gbs can be had for about 50.00USD, but 16gbs will be enough so you will never use that much and you wont ever have toi worry.

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CDan

Be careful if looking at 4-stick kits. Many MBs have limitations on speeds, timings, etc when using 4 sticks. Some are flat out buggy. I recommend staying with 2 sticks of low-latency.

IOW, there's more to consider than just how much.

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Kerry56

I just went from 4gb to 8gb in my main machine and cannot see any difference in performance (using Win 7 64bit). It may help in certain applications, but nothing I can perceive so far.

Apparently none of my normally used programs are memory intensive. My ancient copy of Photoshop might be helped by the extra ram, but I rarely work with it.

I am running 4 sticks of 2gb ram and have no issues. It is perfectly stable. They are the exact same model Corsair ram. The two newer ones cost me $20....the original ones cost $80 back when I built this computer.

Ram has dropped in price so much you should just get two sticks of 4gb.

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bigmike7

Yo SubZero-

I have Windows 7 Professional and 16GB of RAM and have had this machine for over a year.

As far as I can tell - 8GB would be more than sufficient for my uses-eh.

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CDan

Win-7 Pro 64 here, just idling I rarely see more than 1400MB in use with 8G available. Range is 1200-1700 when browsing, etc. I just opened about 100 high-res images in Photoshop and didn't use more than 3G total.

Another consideration is whether your vid card uses system RAM.

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AllanDeGroot

I switched up from 4gb to 8gb on my HP d5000T (Q9450 C2Q)
a couple of months ago and it near doubled the speed of several Video programs I use.

with 4gb of RAM my "MCE-Buddy" program took about 60-80% of real-time to convert a TV program from Media Center DVR format to mp4.

Now with 8gb of RAM it typically takes 25% of realtime running in the background while I'm busy doing other things

I run Win7-pro 64bit

I'd try more RAM, but PC2-6400 RAM in 4gb SIMMs aren't cheap, and
ASUS says my IPIBL-TX "Burbank" MoBo only supports 2gb SIMMs

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coolcolors

My laptops are 4gigs total except for a gateway it has 8 gigs laptop ram. With my desktop at 4Gigs and GPU 1Gig I haven't notice slow down much except the noise an excessive heat form the GPU when running hard. But I think 4Gigs is sufficient for my uses. 8Gigs was just a off shot to see if my laptop would take it and it did even though the manufacture specs listed max as 4gigs but that was before the new ram came out. As other stated on here unless your video editing and production and CAD and music having more ram will help there as well as some games do like more RAM but then again that is the GPU functions for the games.

SubZero

Thank you all for helping.

It seems to be that 8 gigabyte is sweet spot for 64 bit Windows 7.

It makes sense to be that number the more I read your commenting.

16 gigabyte maybe for workhorse doing video render with multithreaded 64 bit program but mostly 8 gigabyte is good.

8 gigabyte is also less expense, so that is also good.

Help has been appreciated.

bigmike7

Yo SubZero-

Good decision-eh

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yojimbo197

4Gb of DDR3RAM on my laptop seems to be fine for Windows 64 bit. However, I also have a discrete GPU, which helps out. On my i5 2nd gen Sandy Bridge laptop, I have 6Gb of DDR3 RAM. It works ok, but sometimes its a little laggy, especially since I"ve been running dual monitor setup with HDMI and VGA.

coolcolors

That's good to know..but I will go 8gig when I upgrade to a new ddr3 motherboard and until then I stick around with 4gid ddr2 on my current motherboard unless I find dd2 that I want to go 8gig.

SubZero

I have done more extensive testing and in one Intel configuration of triple channel, 6 gig of memory gave good results. But most system only allow either 4 or 8 of memory.

If you have 4 gb of memory, sticking with Windows XP 32 bit seem a very good option. I find Win 7 32 bit with 4 gb to be less responsive.

But, I find that if you have a video card with large memory on it and still only 4 gb of memory, Win 7 64 bit will free up memory. One card took 512 mb and another (Geforce GTX 285) 1.25 gb of memory when using 32 bit OS. With 64 bit OS you free all of that up. It does require more overhead, but if you have multicore processor, you only take small hit. So 64 bit Win 7 seems good for even 4 gb of memory in some cases. I find Windows XP 64 bit to be problematic with less working driver support.

In testing, Win 7 64 bit on 8 gb system does give less disk thrash (noticeable) than with 4 gb. Not much noticeable over 6 gb.

So yes, I believe 8 gb is sweet spot for Win 7 64 bit to make it worth your time and effort.

If you have many true 64 bit program, or run multiple 32 bit program at once (video edit, photo edit, audio edit, etc. for Multimedia production) then I found 16 gb may even be helpful, or 12 gb depending on triple vs ddr or quad mem.

Hope information is helpful. Thank you for replies

Vbritt

I have one machine running 8 GB dual channel ram and another running 6 GB triple channel ram and I can't see any difference between the two. I would have to agree with others that have indicated that 8 GB is the sweet spot. I do a lot of video recoding and it handles the task very quickly on 6 GB of ram.

coolcolors

I think that is where the difference is video or music or cad application is where the larger RAM capacity helps. I been running 4gigs so far on my laptops with exception of my 17 gateway has 8gigs all runs good so far. Only lags is the internet when scripts try to hoag the system memory trying load their sites. But the larger memory helps when playing large 1980x1080 video files on my laptop but more rams allows you to run more apps which helps. Could be or couble be not but more ram definitely helps and if 8gig is the sweet spot then be it is. Just adding more Ram does adds in price that's the big down side.

_chef_

Q: How much RAM is needed to get good+ 64 bit Win 7 performance?

A: Depends on what programs you are running, always.

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SubZero

I have done more testing and confirm to myself that 8gb seem to be best spot. I can find almost no benefit from more than 8gb on 64 bit Windows 7 unless I run extensive Video and Audio processing / recording of high resolution in particular content.

I have test on 8gb, 12gb, 16gb, 24gb and 32gb system. To me 4gb is not enough for anything beyond basic, even with 64 bit to free up video memory block out in 32 bit.

Kenshin

It's always better to use some of the RAM space instead of HDD. I like to download to RAM instead of HDD or SSD. It's even better with compressed downloaded files and I need to uncompress before running. RAM's also good for storing very large DOCX and PPTX files. So having 1.5TB RAM onboard is better than having an iPad with 256MB RAM, or a 1GB Windows 7 PC with 1.5TB HDD.

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DrageMester

I'll bet it's better than having only GigaBytes of RAM!

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Kenshin

I noticed many of the latest C602 chipset-based motherboards support 768GB RAM. They have 24 slots and the maximum size of compatible RAM modules is 32GB and it will soon be 64GB. Supermicro and Tyan must have increased the number of slots because RAM chips are very cheap these days. This 64GB set (8 x 8GB) costs only US$334.99. It's actually cheaper than the 64GB SSD (Mtron, SLC NAND) I bought two years ago. It will take some more time for a 32GB module to become cheaper than a set of four 8GB modules though.

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ChristineBCW

24 slots for RAM?!! Oh my... I hope Hubby doesn't see those. He keeps wanting to tear a wall out to extend shelves for the DVD collection! If he hears about larger MBs, oh my... he'll have us living in a house with nothing but wheeled cubicle sides!

"No - roll it out a bit further... a bit more. There! Now, put in those last sticks of RAM and see what happens!"

I tell ya, that's some Desktop. I bet my 286SLT will still fire up faster, load DOS 6.33 and WordPerfect 5.1...

Kenshin

There are still some SLC SSD drives from Mtron with IDE interface.

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roadworker

OS virtualization has also a heavy footprint on RAM.
I have 6 GB of Corsair Dominator 1866 ,and when I fire up VirtualBox or XP Mode,my windows 7 doesn't have many headroom anymore.....

yojimbo197

I can definitely relate. I've got over 1600 CD's and a bunch of mixes on slim CD's. One of these days I'll have a shelving system big enough to adequately display them. One of these days. Though I'll probably needs something even bigger by that time.