Introduction
This application note will explore the benefits of using 8GB of
Corsair DDR3 system memory in a dual-channel DDR3-based PC, such
as an Intel® Core™ i5 or Core™ i7 (Lynnfield) system, or an AMD
AM3 Phenom II™ PC. It will show how the additional RAM allows for
a ’snappier’ and more responsive PC, with performance improvements
of up to 186% versus a PC with 4GB of RAM. And it will also show
how adding more RAM allows you to change the way in which you use
your PC, by allowing you to ‘do more’. This includes running more
applications (and never needing to close them), working with more
data, and even running another ‘virtualized’ operating system. For
example, you could run a virtual Ubuntu Linux operating system as
a pure email / home admin PC, leaving your Windows installation
free for office duties, or just as a pure gaming system.
These benefits will be discussed in more detail during the
course of this application note, but a summary of the performance
results and benefits is shown below.
Read the rest of the Application Note after the jump.
Performance Results Summary
Summary of benefits to using 8GB or more
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Changing the game with
8GB
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Benefit
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| Windows ‘caches’ more data
into RAM |
Applications are more responsive and
Windows feels generally faster and ’snappier’ with no
delay switching between applications |
| Less / no reliance on the
pagefile on the hard disk drive |
The storage drive is the slowest
component in your PC. Even an SSD is at least an order
of magnitude slower than RAM! |
| Leave your applications
running all the time |
Everything is immediately available
when you need it |
| Work with more and larger
photo an video files |
Edit longer HD video clips and work
with more high-resolution digital photos, without the
PC slowing down to a crawl |
| ‘Sleep’ and ‘Resume’ faster |
Don’t shut down your PC, just save the
session into memory so that you can resume from where
you left off. 8GB makes this process faster |
| Have your favorite game
running in a Window |
Need a break? Just mouse over to WoW
or Guild Wars for 15 minutes, or have a few rounds of
Counter-Strike |
| Virtualize another operating
system without needing to close any other applications |
Use Ubuntu Linux for all your home
email / finance / administration, and have a pure
Windows OS gaming or office system. Or just try out
different operating systems for fun! |
| Make better use of multiple
monitors |
With so many applications able to run
at once, it makes sense to spread them out across
multiple monitors. |
Background
Over the last 12-18 months, assisted by the wider adoption of
64-bit operating systems and the increasing memory usage of
applications and games, enthusiasts and gamers have accepted 4GB
or 6GB of memory as the ‘base level’ for a modern PC.
DDR3 has also taken over from DDR2 as the memory of choice now
that Intel has moved completely to DDR3 on its Core i5 and Core i7
(Lynnfield) CPUs with dual-channel DDR3 memory controllers, and
AMD has made the transition to DDR3 with Socket AM3 Phenom II
processors.
The increased number of platforms that support DDR3 has also
helped to drive down the cost of DDR3 memory, and as a result
consumers have the option to install even higher quantities of
memory. Installing 8GB or 12GB of DDR3 memory would have been a
luxury 18 months ago, but these larger memory densities, and
potentially even higher densities, are now affordable.
8GB versus 4GB – Real World Performance
Testing
To investigate the benefits of using 8GB of memory as opposed
to 4GB, we built a test PC based around an AMD Phenom II 710
Socket AM3 processor and AMD790FX motherboard, which supports
dual-channel DDR3 memory. Although we used an AMD platform, these
benefits apply equally to any dual-channel DDR3 platform, such as
Intel Core 2, Core i5 and dual-channel Core i7 (Lynnfield)
processors.
We then recreated a typical desktop home/office environment,
using a selection of popular office and multimedia applications.
This ‘Typical Application Set’ was workable when using 4GB of RAM,
so the aim of the benchmarks is examine whether extra memory
headroom can provide performance benefits even in situations where
more than 4GB is not a requirement. By recreating a typical
desktop environment we can show how an application would perform
in the real world. To maintain a consistent test environment, the
system was rebooted and the application set reloaded after each
test.
The benchmark results show that installing extra memory can
provide significant performance benefits, even in situations where
the overall memory usage does not exceed 4GB. Installing more
memory allows the operating system to store more data in RAM,
rather than relying on the pagefile on the storage drive. This
makes applications respond more quickly, and provides access to
your data, photos and video files without delay. Many of the
benefits cannot be shown in benchmarks, and are simply the result
of greater ‘responsiveness’ when switching between applications
and performing tasks.
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