Patriot: 16GB is the new 8GB for Sandy Bridge-E
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2011 3:04 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Memory
- Sandy Bridge
- Patriot
- Computex 2011
Patriot gave me a preview of their new Viper Xtreme Division4 DDR3 memory due out later this year. Patriot is targeting this new line at Sandy Bridge E systems, which support up to four channels of DDR3 memory (official support for DDR3-1600, but overclocking will surely be an option).
Given the current price of memory, Patriot expects the default configuration for SNB-E systems to be a kit of four 4GB DIMMs for a total of 16GB. Sandy Bridge E isn't expected until the Fall at the earliest so memory pricing isn't certain, but Patriot expects a 16GB SNB-E memory kit to sell for around $130 when Division4 is released later this year.
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ciukacz - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
current pc games rarely use over 1gb (the game process itself) so on my rig with 4gb ram i have plenty to spare. what could an average home user do with their machine to need 16gb ?Minion4Hire - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
It's not whether or not a user actually needs it, it's whether or not the THINK they need it. There are a shameful number of retail "gaming" desktops that are currently being sold with 12 and 16 GBs of memory. The average consumer thinks "more is better" and can better rationalize the cost difference. That's also one of the barriers keeping people from SSDs; why should they spend so much money on a drive that offers so little storage. They don't know how much it can actually do for them.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
I agree. Consumers get hung up on numbers: hard drive capacity, RAM capacity, CPU clock, VRAM capacity.It's difficult to explain how those "numbers" work so they know when enough is enough.
TrantaLocked - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
Lol, remember when laptops used to be sold with 256MB of RAM when Windows XP was out? The people that paid money to upgrade to 1GB benefited GREATLY over the next 5 years and on. The people who went with the "normal" amount are now screwed, while those with 1GB still are able to at least surf the web and watch videos. You never know when a new boom comes around that will outdate the standard 4GB RAM in a matter of months.jonup - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
Story of my life! You can believe how often I get "We need to get more ram, my computer is running slow!" at work.My answer: "No dumb shit, I have never seen you utilized more than 30% of you RAM. I told you to get an SSD when we were getting the laptops/desktops but you insisted on "at least 4GB of RAM with 64-bit Windows and 500GB hard drive. And stop being jealous of my 3-year old laptop, I am not trading it with you and did I mentioned, you insisted on 500GB!
jdietz - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
They should switch everyone to 60GB SSDs. At my work you're supposed to be storing all your work on the network anyway; it's not like you need that much local storage.GullLars - Thursday, June 2, 2011 - link
Substitute "dumb shit" with something a bit nicer, and it's about the same as i've told countless people. People are still jealous of the performance of my soon to be 4 year old laptop with a 2GHz C2D, 2GB DDR2 800, and 30GB Vertex (1), and they got something like an i7-820QM, 8GB DDR3 1333, and a 500GB 7200RPM HDD. For anything except heavy duty number crunching/editing and gaming, my laptop humiliates theirs. I never use my laptop for that stuff anyways.XZerg - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
Oh I can see the need for 16GB of memory and beyond if you know how best to utilize it. I already have 8GB of memory and I feel that is not enough. Few ideas to utilize your memory better to speed up your system:1) Ramdisk
2) No Pagefile
3) Allocate more memory for Virtual OSes that you may be running (for instance I use my personal computer with a virtual OS for Work, another for testing software, ...) The virtual Os allows me not to disturb any of my other environments (OSes).
clarkn0va - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
Of course I'm not going to try to tell you that you don't need X amount of memory, but my home desktop has no page file, makes extensive use of ramdisks, and is usually logged into by my wife and me simultaneously. All this on 4GB.I think you and the OP both make good points though, that a) most people don't need as much RAM as they think, and b) most people could probably get better leverage from their RAM if they knew a little more about it.
Certainly there are some uses that justify or necessitate more memory. Virtual machines, as you mentioned, are a big one. Then there are all kinds of server/multiuser roles, such as databases or terminal servers, where it's all just a question of scale.
Drag0nFire - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
I've found it's pretty easy to use up >4GB of RAM. I call it a slow march of software laziness.For example, one frequent configuration that used to max out my memory:
Win 7 takes about 1GB with all the normal background processes
Firefox 4 (or Chrome) takes about 1GB with a bunch of tabs open
StarCraft 2 takes about 2GB.
I got a big boost by switching to 8GB, even though just a year ago I was laughing with the rest of you at all those idiot consumers. And even when I'm not playing SC2, I find Win 7 is smart enough (or stupid enough, depending on your perspective) to keep most of the available RAM busy.
Your average consumer may not use 4GB for email and browsing, but with modern software it's not as hard as it used to be...