24 replies to this topic

[xKratosx]

Eeek, sorry - it's the 430 (I'm doing a really bad job of this eh!)

That's a nice site for clarity though, thank you - http://reviews.cnet....7-33985675.html

[Detection]

xKratosx, on 06 March 2013 - 15:36, said:

Eeek, sorry - it's the 430 (I'm doing a really bad job of this eh!)

That's a nice site for clarity though, thank you - http://reviews.cnet....7-33985675.html

Yea looks like PC3-10600 from that review, you could fit the faster PC3-12800 RAM and overclock the FSB to gain the extra speed though

[xKratosx]

Thank you, to be honest I'm a little unsure when it comes to overclocking etc (bad experience with my old AMD CPU!) and would value stability above most things...
(also the BIOS on my Dell is a nightmare, I have no way of even removing the fan warning that appears since I changed from the OEM one!)

I'm tempted by the 4x3GB for the triple channel memory, but damn it's almost doubled in price in 2 months! http://www.hotukdeal...livered-1432907

[Detection]

Yea you might not have much OCing options in a pre-built machine, been a long time since I played with a Dell, I`m sure there will be people here who could help

Basically if you have the options, and only want to OC the RAM, you would raise the FSB clock speed and drop the CPU multiplier

FSB x CPU Multiplier = CPU Clock speed

I forget the exact calculation to determine RAM speed, but basically raising the FSB will also raise RAM clock speeds, but as I said above, if you don't want to OC your CPU at the same time, you need to drop the CPU multiplier as you raise the FSB

Example:

FSB: 200MHz
CPU Multiplier: x17

200MHz x 17 = 3400MHz CPU

--

FSB: 230MHz
CPU Multiplier: x15

230MHz x 15 = 3450MHz CPU

So now you have raised the FSB & RAM but maintained very close to stock clock speeds for the CPU

[xKratosx]

Thanks Detection That's good to know... although again based on my very limited experience in the BIOS on this machine it's not something I'd like to mess around with too much My case is very small too with 2 HDDs and an SSD (but only 2 hard drive bays) a big graphics card, lots of cables etc etc so I want to keep heat down to a maximum really... I think for the VMs the amount of RAM is most important rather than the speed... but saying that, even though I have an i7 this machine is well over 2 years old now, and I'm very much looking forward to getting a new one sometime (with a decent motherboard, and some room to actually breathe!)

[+BudMan]

Why do you think that using 80% of your RAM is bad? Are you swapping out? UNused ram is WASTED ram..

Now if your having to swap then yeah you need more memory, other than that why do you think your amount of RAM is the issue?

What do you think it should be using of your RAM?

Can you post a screen shot of your resource monitor showing your memory. How much have you allocated to your VMs? If you want to run more VMs then you have RAM for - then sure get some more. But I would also take a look at how much you have given to them - quite possible your have given them more than they actually require to do what you want them to do.

[xKratosx]

Thanks bud, good point about unused RAM being wasted RAM but when I'm this close to the edge I definitely think more memory is needed! Pardon my ignorance but is swapping out virtual memory? I imagine I am using that as my hard drive often crunches away for very little reason and my computer grinds to a halt (I run VMs on the SSD, and my main OS on one of the hard drives)

Here's a screenshot of my resource monitor:

[+BudMan]

Is that right Firefox is using 1GB of your ram - an 1/8 of your total? WTF dude??

Are you running VMs in this screenshot? How much are you giving to them? Can that be lowered? I would really suggest you look into how firefox is using 1.1+ GB!!

My firefox has been on all day.. With tabs upon tabs upon tabs open and its only using 700MB. You might want to restart it now and then, or change some of your habit

[xKratosx]

Thanks Bud... unfortunately I have around 80 tabs open (I use it as a to-do list of sorts, at times it gets up to 300!) and yes I haven't shut it down since yesterday (it is rare I leave my computer on over night though, so this is an exception)

I am running VMs, 5 of them with 800mb each, seems to be about the right amount for XP

[+BudMan]

You need to run 5 vms of XP? All at the same time on your workstation?

Vs getting more ram, have you thought of putting that money towards breaking out your VMs to their own host running say esxi? That would free up all the resources of your machine to do what workstations do, vs hosting 5 machines that are doing what they need to do - but could be doing it on their own hardware leaving you the full resources of your workstation

What they doing that they need 800? I give my w7 vms 512.. I do have an XP one - but rarely have a reason to load it and it only has 512 as well. So changing them to 512 would free up 1.5GB for your workstation to use.