Recommended memory for E7500 and Q9450

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

Rather a configuration question than purchase help, but how much memory should I use together with an intel core2 E7500? Not how much memory this or that requires, but how much memory could this processor actually makes use of? I imagine if you have too much memory the processor still won't be fast enough to process everything so it will become redundant. 2GB, 3GB or 4GB?

A similar question with Q9450, is 4GB enough or should I have more for it?

Configurations nowadays have 16GB. Is it really wise to have this much memory for todays processors? What should one look for to determine how much memory fits together with a CPU?

 

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

Also, I have a P5KPL-AM EPU motherboard that is supposed to be able to run 1066 memory, but when I have it POST shows it to be only 800, and when I look in CPU-Z, it's just 400. On another motherboard the BIOS said the memory was a 1066mhz, but when looking in CPUZ it was 533 or something. What is this about? In the P5KPL-AM I am not able to change neither ratio nor clock of the memory.

 

[UniversalTruth]

how much memory could this processor actually makes use of? I imagine if you have too much memory the processor still won't be fast enough to process everything so it will become redundant. 2GB, 3GB or 4GB?

I think there is no such thing. I mean that the constraint from the motherboard is already at much lower level than what the processor itself actually supports.

A similar question with Q9450, is 4GB enough or should I have more for it?

The more the better. Windows uses different amounts when you have 4 GB and 8 GB. I would prefer 8 GB DDR3 as the processor supports because it is dirty cheap.

 

[swaaye]

DDR2 is relatively expensive so I don't think I would pay for 8gb of it at this point.

 

[Albuquerque]

Those processors support a max of 8GB; they are entirely capable of "using it". The amount of memory that is right for you will ultimately depend on how you're going to use that system.

I agree with swaaye; 8GB of ram is unlikely to be worth the money on those systems.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Those processors support a max of 8GB

False.

MAXIMUS II GENE
Mini Size, Max Mobility
Intel® Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Quad / Core™2 Duo Ready
Intel® P45/ICH10R
Dual-channel, DDR2 1300 Support
MemOK!
SupremeFX X-Fi built-in
CPU Level Up

4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1300/1200/1066/800/667 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture
*Refer to www.asus.com or this user manual for the Memory QVL(Qualified Vendors Lists).

Edit: Those processors also support DDR3. With appropriate motherboard you will be just fine with cheap 8 GB of DDR3

 

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

Hm ok, I was just thinking that having all that datain RAM would be pointless if there is not enough fast a processor to process it.

 

[UniversalTruth]

In principle, a 64-bit microprocessor can address 16 exabytes of memory. In practice, it is less than that.
For example, the AMD64 architecture as of 2011 allows 52 bits for physical memory and 48 bits for virtual memory.[4] These limits allow memory sizes of 4 PB (4 × 10245 bytes) and 256 TB (256 × 10244 bytes), respectively. A PC cannot contain 4 petabytes of memory (due to the physical size of the memory chips, if nothing else) but AMD envisioned large servers, shared memory clusters, and other uses of physical address space that might approach this in the foreseeable future, and the 52-bit physical address provides ample room for expansion while not incurring the cost of implementing 64-bit physical addresses. Similarly, the 48-bit virtual address space was designed to provide more than 65,000 times the 32-bit limit of 4 GB (4 × 10243 bytes), allowing room for later expansion without incurring the overhead of translating full 64-bit addresses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

 

[swaaye]

Back then the chipset was the limiter for Intel system RAM capacity. P45 bumped it up to 16GB.

On the same note, AM2+ CPUs are the first from AMD with 16GB support AFAIK.

 

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

Maybe I should ask the question, if I have a dual core processor, where would I notice the difference from having say 4GB RAM and IGB?

On a similar topic, how do I match the right graphics card to a CPU? What is it that causes it to be a bottleneck?

 

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

8GB*^, or even 16GB if you will.

 

[swaaye]

IGPs will somewhat slow down a system because bandwidth is shared between IGP and CPU. It's usually not noticeable for desktop use. You also lose some RAM capacity because some is dedicated to the IGP. IGPs are too slow for gaming and not worthwhile unless you are talking the latest AMD APUs or Intel HD 3000/4000. Even then they are relatively quite slow.

When choosing a game video card, resolution and game preferences are what you consider. A Core 2 Duo can run most of the latest games just fine. What games do you want to play and what resolution will you run at?

 

[Albuquerque]

Back then the chipset was the limiter for Intel system RAM capacity. P45 bumped it up to 16GB.

Indeed; I did not know there were chipsets that supported 16GB of ram on those platforms. Interesting...

Maybe I should ask the question, if I have a dual core processor, where would I notice the difference from having say 4GB RAM and IGB?

In whatever case you might encounter where RAM is a limitation. If you use an application that is actively using more than 4GB of ram, the difference will be blatant.

Try to think of it this way: your hard disk may be dozens of gigabytes, even several terabytes in size. Can your processor execute against any and all of the data on your drive? Surely it can, although it can only do it as fast as the disk allows.

The same can be said for your ram -- if it were possible to load 128GB of ram into your dual core machine, your processor could use every bit of it. The performance tradeoff comes when the extra RAM allows you to avoid reading or writing to the painfully slow disk.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Those processors support a max of 8GB; they are entirely capable of "using it". The amount of memory that is right for you will ultimately depend on how you're going to use that system.

I agree with swaaye; 8GB of ram is unlikely to be worth the money on those systems.

Try to have one hundred tabs open in Chrome/Chromium, other stuff opened in Firefox, your heavy OS and file manager and small apps : this can take a surprising amount of memory. Then a lot of the nice performance you may have comes from the automatic disk caching that goes on and use hundred megs of memory.

I have 3GB on an oldish dual core (X2 245, similar to the E7500) and it's not quite enough, it would only be good enough if I didn't load so many tabs in the web browser. What if I want to launch a game that uses over 1GB memory without closing the crap in the background?, or what if I wanted to run some rather heavy OS in a VM (using say the KDE desktop), or both.
I'd gladly have 8GB memory on that computer. I'm only stuck due to the motherboard having two fried ddr2 slots (with the ddr2 sticks I have I could conceivably put up to 4.5GB on a fully working mobo)

Now let's imagine you want to do some heavy Photoshop kind of work, loads of layers and megapixels and only have the E7500. 8GB of memory would be worth it.
If all you wanted to do is to dump blurays and re-encode them, then a Q9450 with 2GB would serve you better.

By the way, if you worry about your processor not being fast enough to deal with that data in memory, making it pointless : from the processor's point of view, the memory is already painfully slow, in fact. It's most happy if all the data you're working on fits in the L1 caches.
A memory operation takes many hundreds of cycles, and the cache hierarchy does a great job of making it less of a problem. It's a small miracle that our computers work so well.

 

[Jaroslav Kourakin]

I just got a gtx260 from a friend and found this:
http://international.download.nvidia.com/GPUA/screens/battlefield-3-perf.jpg

and this
http://static.commentcamarche.net/www.commentcamarche.net/pictures/FEuGNTa3-12-12-10-0207-s-.png

Apparently both the card and the dual core will cancel each other out somewhere between 25 and 45 fps. Thus the q9450 really needs another gfx card to make it justice, and more RAM because the motherboard I have has only two slots and 4GB DDR2 is too expensive. (It currently has 2x2gb)

I will probably just go ahead and sell the q9450. I'm not really interested in gaming, just more interested in fitting parts together.

 

[swaaye]

Yes, a GTX 260 is a major bottleneck for many recent graphics-intensive games. You would do well with a Radeon 7850 or GeForce GTX 660 even with the old Q9450.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Q9450 is oldie but if you overclock it to let's say 3.8- 4 GHz, I think it will be just a slight bottleneck for cards like 6870, 7850, etc