Solved Should I install 32GB of ram?

[area 66]

I don't want to break the party but I will never run 64 of non ECC RAM, I use only 16 GB on the PC of my signature ( even if I have 8 slots) because it's probably impossible to OC 64 GB of RAM and get stability, I have a VM server with 64 GB of ECC RAM , they run at 1066 as it's a server board with 4 CPU

 

[schemula]

My apps don't crash, the video or 3d renders, the computer is stable, etc. Performance seems fine, I'm not sweating the nanoseconds or the benchmarks. I threw some Prime95 at it and it did fine. Computer is a nice upgrade over my old i7-920 so I'm not even overclocking at this point. It's a desktop computer doing desktop things. It's not ECC and I'm not running a Xeon, nor an enterprise beyond small agency web and multimedia developer. Sure, I spent $100 vs. $800 or $400 on the ram (It was normally $180 but it was on sale, It's Corsair XMS3 1600MHz, not mega ultra premium, but not ram from the back of a van on the sidewalk either), but if there is a compromise in play, I'm not aware what it would be at this point.

I spent $900 total for this computer (already had a case and video card, so, $1200 if I had to buy everything this go round). A Mac Pro runs on outdated 2 year+ old hardware and I was not prepared to spend the $3000+ to basically get ECC ram, nor build an equivalent Windows machine just to get ECC ram.

I get the obsession, but don't really see how doubling my budget would get me double the performance over what I have now?

For kicks, and because I am interested, what are some good stress programs I can run to see what's up? I ran some Prime95 and it was fine, but I was mostly looking at the temps to make sure my thermal paste was applied decently.

 

[area 66]

RAM speeds as barely no impact on the performance, it's Marketing BS...... look at my spec, my ram are 1600 G-Skill , I think I pay $ 79 for it

Note that I64 GB of ram on my VM server not because I need it, but it's a burning test for them, so when I build a server I now the RAM are tested and reliable.

 

[Rukiri]

If you're on the AMD side, most intel 2011 chipsets have 8 dims.

 

[pparks1]

While that is your experience, try running Exchange 2013 or SCCM 2012 in a lab with a server running 512MB of RAM (or even 2GB). For example, the minimum requirements for Ex2013s CAS role is 8GB (yes, you read that right). If you want to actually test a production scenario out (not just your code, but the whole 3 tier app layer and the network that will sit around it and interact) will require more than 4GB of RAM .

Right, but most people who would be interested in these types of VM's probably wouldn't be running them on desktop machines either. Most of us, would have Hyper-V servers or ESXi servers with lots of RAM that we could use. My companies internal vSphere environment has 7 quad core servers, with 144GB of RAM in each and approx 60TB of SAN storage space including a 4TB SSD SAN.

My personal home computer has 8GB of RAM and that is enough for the things that I do. At work, my desktop has 16GB because I run VM's on it for testing and experimenting. I've never wanted more than that on a desktop or had a need. But I also don't run a lot of these 3d modeling apps and Adobe products either.

 

[Windunce]

Are we all billionaires today?

Ok, I found the receipt!
====================================
Account #5178940181
Invoice #48972059
Date April 17th, 1989
Qty ordered 1
Qty shipped 1
Item# SY 512-80-Expansion
Description 512K 80NS DRAM FOR AT COMPATIBLE
Unit Price 249.82
===================================

Any math geniuses out there?
Had I purchase 32 Gigs that day what would my total cost have been?

 

[schemula]

My personal home computer has 8GB of RAM and that is enough for the things that I do. At work, my desktop has 16GB because I run VM's on it for testing and experimenting. I've never wanted more than that on a desktop or had a need. But I also don't run a lot of these 3d modeling apps and Adobe products either.

An example workflow with Adobe After Effects. I'm working on a 2 minute video. I do a ram preview to see what it's looking like. It renders the whole video in RAM at full size (or whatever size and res full/half/quarter). I watch the video a couple of times (ram is fast so I can play it back at full 30fps) and I see two immediate issues I want to go in and fix. I stop the ram preview and there is a green bar showing which part of the video is stored in the RAM. Say I render the whole 2 minutes to ram, I'd a have a green bar running along the whole 2 minutes. So, I dive into the timeline and go work on the video at the 1:30 to 1:45 segment, the green bar and the content is purged from the RAM cache for that 1:30 to 1:45 segment. I need ram to work, maybe jump into Photoshop and/or Illustrator for a second and then jump back into After Effects. Now want to see my new work, I only have to re-render the 1:30 to 1:45 segment if 0-1:30 and 1:45 to 2:00 was able to stay in RAM.

Also, I can stick unrendered comps between After Effects and Premiere and in my experience, that gobbles up some ram.

So, I don't know when I'm going to need the RAM, but I bet sometime between now and when I decommission this computer, I will be glad I made this decision now.

4 passes into IntelBurn Test on Maximum. Ram is 99% filled up. Temps are under 80c and things look pretty stable.

EDIT: Just dedicated 1GB to my Intel HD4000 in UEFI. I can run my TV off the integrated while I work on my other 2 screens off my video card. The missing 1GB is pretty negligible.

 

[schemula]

Ok, I found the receipt!

Nice find!

My quick math shows: $16,384,000 (in 1989 dollars) to get to 32GB.

Amazing.

 

[Kebero]

I have 16GB in my laptop, and that just gets by running an ESXi VCP 5.1 lab...

 

[area 66]

when you run so much VM in a Desktop, it's the time to build a ESXi or Hyper-V servers, I run everything on my Hyper-V servers except clients that I run in a desktop, clients that I use to experiment, I run rarely more than 2 at the time.

 

[Windunce]

ok, i found the receipt!

nice find!

My quick math shows: $16,384,000 (in 1989 dollars) to get to 32gb.

Amazing.

Gah! Yikes! Sheeesh!

And MS-DOS 3.3 $89.95

The bad ol' days fer sure!

 

[Kebero]

when you run so much VM in a Desktop, it's the time to build a ESXi or Hyper-V servers, I run everything on my Hyper-V servers except clients that I run in a desktop, clients that I use to experiment, I run rarely more than 2 at the time.

While I di agree with you, not everyone can afford to do so or really needs to do so. My ESXi lab is for a class I'm taking to get VMware certification. Thus, it's nice go have it on my laptop. Maybe someone needs a portable lab for work (for whatever reason) or simply doesn't have the infrastructure in place.

 

[cluberti]

when you run so much VM in a Desktop, it's the time to build a ESXi or Hyper-V servers, I run everything on my Hyper-V servers except clients that I run in a desktop, clients that I use to experiment, I run rarely more than 2 at the time.

Why, when a desktop OS (Windows 8) already has a free desktop hypervisor (Hyper-V) built in, and can still be used otherwise as a desktop machine? It doesn't make a large amount of sense, from a small test / dev environment sense, to install a server-class OS to do this when the client OS is perfectly capable. If this was at scale, I'd say sure, but servers aren't very portable. Laptops with 32+GB of RAM are, conversely.

 

[area 66]

Because I found it more practical to balance the load, wait tomorrow I will get some pics of my VM lab.... seems I'm not playing at the same level

 

[Tseg]

1. 32GB was... $100. I remember when RAM delivery trucks used to get held up - ram cost more than gold. My first computer had 96MB of ram. Half of the cost was the computer. The other half was the RAM. $100 is pretty reasonable.

Ha! In the early 1980's my dad bought me a Radio Shack Color Computer. It came standard with 4MB of RAM, but for an extra $100 you could get the upgrade version with 6MB (not more... in total). It was in my parents basement for years, and when I went to retrieve it as a historic artifact, I found out my mom had thrown it out during the last basement cleaning. :-(