Hey all,
I'm looking to upgrade my computer soon and was wondering about memory. I plan on getting the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe with an Intel i5-2500K CPU. I also plan on going to Windows 7 in order to take advantage of DirectX 10 and 11 as I already have a GTX470 video card. Would I see a difference between 4GB and 8GB of memory? I know that the price difference between to two is around $40 or $50 dollars. I know it's not much but that extra money could buy a game or even go towards my TrackIR 5 Pro. I currently play all the new simulator games like Wings of Prey, DCS Blackshark and soon DCS A10C plus the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor and Battlefield stuff. My current setup has 4GB running on Windows XP with an old E7500 CPU and it does a fairly decent job pushing out 1920x1080P on my 55 inch Sony. Any suggestions on memory and also for my computer build?

My hopefully new setup

Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard
Intel i5-2500K 3.3GHZ CPU
current EVGA GTX 470
WD WD4500HLHX velociraptor 450GB for games
WD WD5002AALX SATA 6.0GB/s for operating system
Windows 7 Pro
Antec 300 case
Corsair CMPSU-850HX power supply
current Cougar HOTAS w/ Thrusmaster RCS pedals

Well I can tell you I have all the games you mentioned and they all run fine with 4GB ram at full max settings. I dont think you need more than 4 GB nowadays. That being said, ram is pretty cheap and going to 8 wont break the bank. Its more important that you get the fastest ram your board will take. Id rather have 4 gigs very fast ram than 8 of crap. None of those games you mentioned will use all 4 anyhow, so you can get 4 now and if down the line, you want more, you can always add more ram or sell what you have and buy new.

Rob

My system is reporting that out of 8184Mb of RAM, it's using 2361Mb at idle. That should answer your question if you are going with WIN 7 64.

Hmmm... I got 4GB RAM and my Task Manager is saying I'm only using 1.4...

In trying 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB with my current system, I measured no significant difference in FPS in any game I looked at. Probably, going to 16 from 8 slowed things down a little bit as my timings went to 2T from 1T (as expected) -- but, I didn't notice a slow down either. Thus, I tend to recommend 4GB for a "cost effective" system. As others noted, memory is so cheap that its not dumb to buy more -- but one does not need more, apparently.

I have 97 processes running though.

Until 64bit coded games actually hit the market, I don't see them using more than 3GB (LAA executable). 1GB is plenty to run the base windows install with.

There are a few instances where having more than 4GB will give you an advantage:

-HD video editing. Modern video editing software will take advantage of large amounts of RAM over 4GB.

-Large format picture editing: Same as above.

-If you have a graphics card with large amounts of VRAM. Graphics cards like to reserve at least 1.5 times their VRAM in system memory.

-Professional 3d rendering in programs like Maya or Solidworks.

For the price difference I bought 2 x 4GB so it'd run in dual channel. That way I'm not short on memory slots if I ever want more and I'm not stuck with single channel.

I know a lot of people run four sticks. But you will have less difficulty OC with two sticks. I guess it's just harder to get four stick to play nice when OC. So If you are going to OC get the 2x4Gb kit instead of saying well I can get some more later because I have four slots.