Okay my friend is planning on getting a new gaming laptop with 16GB of RAM. I think this is crazy but i wanted to know what you all think. Does he need all that memory?

No. He can't even do anything with it either, unless he's using a specialized OS. 32bit OSs can surport around 3GB, 64bit i think is 6-8GB.

64bit Vista Business,Ultimate, and Enterprise support 128GB's of RAM.

And currently 16GB of RAM is nothing more then bragging rights. The CPU will probably be at its limits before you use 16gb

He says that 64 bit takes the cap off. so he can have as much RAM as he wants

Well that's not true either. 64bit can handle alot more RAM then 32bit but it certainly can't handle a infinite amount. How much RAM 64bit can handle also depends on the address space.

The motherboard will need to be able to support 16gb. As far as I've seen, laptop motherboards only support 8gb and rarely 12gb.

Dell Precision workstation laptops support 16GB

Then again, those are $2000+ laptops for businesses.

But hey who are we to judge on what people can afford. O_o

I thought it was unrealistic too that he would buy one so expensive but I honestly can't judge ones finances.

Wait lets face the facts
Who the hell would need 16GB of RAM? That's just harming the environment and resources.
If your going to play games max is around 8GB of RAM.

Yeah, there gets to a point where more RAM is just unnecessary. 2GB is what I'd consider for a budget desktop; 4GB is a normal amount that will work for most people; and 6-8GB is helpful for people that regularly do intensive video editing/gaming/similiar and have a lot of cash Additionally, to use more than 4GB of RAM you need a 64-bit OS. That can be a pain because some programs won't work on 64-bit, which is why I stick with 32-bit for everyday usage.

Your friend would be better off getting a laptop with maybe 4-8GB of RAM and using the money saved to get a better processor/graphics card. That would give better gaming performance than buying more RAM

Lol but I heard the newest edition of Norton would need 2-4GB's of RAM xD Sorry I had to.

Uhhh if Norton needed 2-4GB of RAM then more than 90% of the computers being sold would not be able to run it, as far as I know Norton 2009 only takes about 7mb of RAM, suppose to be less RAM not more.

There's very little reason for 16GB on a gaming machine. 4-8GB is more than enough. Plus he'll go broke putting four 4GB sticks into a system--last I checked the price for one stick is $150-200.

64 bit systems can support up to 1.5TB of RAM. i got 12GB of DDR3 myself.

explain to me what anyone would do with 1.5TB of RAM

I don't think that's correct...

I know Ubuntu 64bit only allows you to have 64gb of RAM, and Win7 only allows 192gb.

Supercomputers use that much ram in really intense calculations you can never have enough





Really depends on the address space of the OS you could make a OS support petabytes of RAM if you wanted.

I know nothing of tech stuff, but iirc, in a 32 bit system, you have a maximum of 2^32 bytes of ram, or 4GB.

Would the theoretical limit for a 64 bit system be 2^64 bytes of ram? (Something like... 15 million terabytes of ram lol)

There's a limit most processors use though, for max ram amount, isn't there? Not to mention motherboard size, hehe. But then again, couldn't you link up a bunch of 4x4GB mobos to allow multiple processors and ram on a single machine? Or is that not possible.


I'm here to learn! Please teach me! Although this is largely offtopic. :3

It can handle that much in theory, but (something like this) the kernel is what determines the maximum amount.

PAE.

Anyways, the /theoretical/ side of it says that a 32-bit OS can natively address up to 4 gigabyes of RAM. A 64-bit OS however can address up to 17,179,869,184 gigabytes of RAM (16 exabytes). That's 10¹⁸ or so. The OS itself will try to determine the maximum amount of rAM to address. As prior mentioned, basic Windows Vista supports up to 8GB or so. Windows Home Premium will support up to 16GB or so. Keep going until Ultimate and I think Enterprise too for a full 128GB supported. This is just for desktop OS's, so Server 2008 and the up-and-coming Server 2008 R2 both support more advanced technologies and are able to address more RAM as they're targeted for high-end workstations and servers.

i say: Wasted.
This is ONLY useful when operating system is 64-bit, and you have the best processor in the world.
16Gbs would be good for those who play Halo 3 emulation, and PS3 emulation.
Or Cache-ing the games. (To load the full game into the RAM. needs alot RAM to do that, but the fastest way.)
or making a HD movie in over 1920x1080 pixels, maybe 3000x2000.
Because, the max needed memory would be around 6-8Gigs.

Sooo... wasted money.. unless he is a REAL gamer or programmer to make a game with HD details like real-life, and no limit of sight. (No fog is made so the game can cache the world before you get there and also to not get so high preassure on PC, like in RS.)
Unless he has CrossfireX and a GREAT powesupply, and quad core CPU + the best GPU in existence, wasted.
It has to bve more equal to be able to process.
A PC with 256Mb ram cant have a quad core CPU, because then only little of the CPU wold be possible to use because it gets too little memory to load into.

Dont bother, like others have said its a waste. Tell him 4GB is enough for any serious gamer at this time.

you think i didn't already try that?

"640k ought to be enough for anybody" rings a bell?

It does. It's on a poster at school

Still, at this point in time 4-6GB is more than enough. Sure, in the future i'm sure we can look back on this topic and laugh but it's not the future, it's the present.

AFAIK what you are saying about 2^64 bytes of ram is correct. That's how I've allways understood it.

Its possible to get multi CPU motherboards, but I don't know that you can link multiple motherboards together in one OS. You could build multiple linux boxes into a big sever cluster, and run virtual windows on top of that, but it wouldn't be very practical. Unfortunately, there isn't a good way to link up 2 mobo's and drop windows on top =/. Even running 2 CPU's at the same time is a pain.

Of course, eventually once you get up to enough RAM, the CPU can't support it.. Because of this, OS developers don't code for that much. 100's of gigs isn't necessary, even for servers.

All of this is off topic however. OP, unless your friend does alot of photoshopping huge images (a couple gigs), or editing huge movies, 16 gb is overkill. 4-8 would be fine.

Yeah and 1TB usb drives are like 512mb drives now. I'll go build a time machine to buy some cheep stuff

Notice he said at this time

Yes, but when I buy a computer I expect it to last at least a few years.

By time we need 16gb of RAM that processor will be dated.

shizzle by time that happens we will be on 12 core CPU's

So you spend twice as much on it to make it last 125% longer? Doesn't add up in my opinion...

I didn't say I'd want to make it last longer, just long.

(Not to mention that I wouldn't buy it...but that's off topic)

Take a look at HP Integrity Superdome servers. Up to 2TB of RAM I believe, which can be harnessed by some OSs. You would use that for huge fudge-off databases and vast buffers of complex calculations. My dad was working at a huge mobile carrier where they used hundreds of these to manage.. all the phone calls on their UK network. That's what you do with that much RAM

@OP: On a laptop, aren't there only 2 SO-DIMM slots, meaning he'd have to find 2 8gig modules..? They don't exist

Does anyone have that video where that guy hoops a computer up with like 10TB or something of DDR3 RAM???
Where he liked ripped a DVD to his computer before a cd dropped out the window hit the ground?

no but i'd say the odds of actually being able to do that are pretty slim

That's would be the Samsung SSD Awesomeness.

An SSD is a hard drive that doesn't have any moving parts in it. They're also generally much faster (and expensive).

ok now i'm confused. they used 24 SSDs but how did they use them to take the place of RAM? Last i checked it doesn't work that way.

Only computers that use terabytes of RAM are super computers and those are primarily used in physics and nuclear calculations.

They don't. I was just posting to clear it up that the video he was thinking of was using SSDs and not RAM linked together.

I think they used 8/12gb of RAM, though.

Ah that makes sense now. Thanks