New Computer, Vista 64bit

Dell Workstation. Came with 1 GB (2x512) of ECC RAM.

NonECC RAM is allowed.


Installed 8 GB (2x4) of nonECC RAM PC2-5300 667 MHz (the fastest RAM specified for the workstation MB)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820148111


The Dell's BIOS properly recognizes the 4 sticks of RAM as being 2GB each of nonECC RAM

Vista properly recognizes the 8 GB of RAM.

Running the Microsoft memory test, the RAM tests good.


All Great, right?


Well, maybe not.

The Vista WEI (Windows Experience Index) had a value of 4.5 for the original RAM.

After I installed the first two sticks of RAM (into the same slots as the original RAM) the WEI improved to 5.4. Maybe not as high of score as I would like, but a big improvement.

I did the installed all of all of the OS and software updates. Installed the remaining two sticks of RAM, did a full degrag, then ran the WEI and with 8GB of RAM the WEI is ONLY 5.5.

4GB of RAM only improved the WEI by a single decimal point???? That improvement in theory could have come from the degrag or one of the software updates.


Had a brain fart. Went to the Crucial site and used their scan to determine what RAM could be installed. The Crucial scan said that I had 4 slots occupied with 1 GB sticks.

Hmmmmm.


By all means the system dramatically improved when I installed the original 4 GB of RAM. Vista sure loves the RAM.
I did not expect a huge improvement going from 4 to 8GB. Not for casual tasks anyway. But in a manner of speaking it is like the extra 4GB of RAM is not installed. There is absolutely no noticeable improvement (at least during casual usage), and the WEI score, plus Crucial test indicate the RAM is not detected or not improving the system.

I have done a full re-install of Vista, removing all Dell software components incase there is a conflict. The system if fully updated, and has NOTHING but Vista loaded on the drive. Reinstalled the RAM, like that would solve the problem if the RAM was testing good and was recognize.

System is composed of a Q6600 CPU, EVGA 8800 GTS, and WD Raptor. WEI score is 5.9 down the line except the RAM.


Maybe I am just imaging things, but from my point of view, if the RAM scored 5.4 with 4GB, the speed of the RAM might keep it from ever scoring 5.9, but the additional 4GB could complete more computations per second etc, so the extra RAM should have scored higher.


What test do I need to perform at this point? Am I chasing a ghost? Anybody have bumped their RAM from 4 GB to 6 or 8, and if so, did the WEI score improve?

Bump

Bumping my own and hoping for a response

You got a nice bump before because you may have been a little bottlenecked on your RAM. But you fixed that with the first upgrade. So the issue no longer about how *much* memory your system has. It's how fast it is. You'll have to overclock the FSB/RAM in order to increase the throughput and improve your score.

And the Dell system likely can't OC the RAM.

Most likely you are not seeing a gain as Scott pointed out because you are not being limited by RAM.

You went from giving your mahcine what it needed to perform to giving it more then it needed for everyday stuff.. Dont expect a speed boost if your surfing the web and browsing your hard drive.. I however went to 8 gigs as well.

Same thing no big speed increase under vista 64. UNTILL i started playing games and vista started caching them. Now i see a GIGANTIC increase in speeds. load times are almost instant some load so fast the bar didnt even have time to move. If you dont play games or do thing that requier alot of ram you just wasted money. For now anyways untill that everyday stuff you do needs more ram.

8 Gigs in the Post-Crysis era will be a necessity, I can't even believe we are even discussing 8 GB of RAM.

As well, my next major upgrade in 2 years will be 8 GB when I build my next computer.

Maybe sooner if Crysis kickstarts a new gaming era in hardware like Doom 3 (here's hoping!!!).

remember, that is 5.5 out of a current maximum of 5.9

and yeah, enforcer22's right. you're not going to notice the difference between 4GB and 8GB for everyday casual usage. even vista doesn't need more than 2GB to run comfortably for that.

As others have said, in different words... How much memory were you using before the upgrade? How much memory does Vista say you're using now? For most things that I do, my machine uses < 2GB of RAM (like 1.2 to 1.5 GB). It's only when I'm running games that I wish I had more. And I've usually got a taskbar or two full of running apps, plus my wife often leaves herself logged in while I'm on, etc.

In terms of speed, upgrading from "slow" memory to "fast" memory will make very little difference, I'd suspect. If you're lucky, you'd see 10% improvement in your memory benchmarks, unless you start overclocking your memory. In terms of real-life performance, you will see considerably less performance than that overall. If you do a google search for memory reviews, you'll see a number of reviews that spout off about how good this memory is, but if you read through to the final benchmarks where they test games or apps, you will likely see very little difference.

As others have said, you would probably need to over-clock your memory to get any better ratings out of it, but you may have issues doing that on your Dell. And that memory may be the fastest you can plunk into your system, but other systems can go faster. NewEgg has up to PC2-10400 memory.

And sorry to rub it in, but I get a memory benchmark of 5.9 with my 2GB of PC2-5300 memory. I overclocked my CPU (E6300) so it runs at the same frequency as the memory (both at 333MHz, instead of 266/333 for CPU/memory). So as I tell my wife (repeatedly), it's not the size of your RAM, but the way you use it...

Clint

Thanks for the encouragement..... and the rubbing in.

From the sounds of everythng, my "problem" is just the speed of the RAM. Alas every system has to have a bottleneck.... this just means that I found mine.

No, can't modify the Dell Bios, thus any OC is impossible.

But I knew that going in and my goal was not a gaming rig or a cutting edge platform, but rather a stable high performance business workstation that is going to stay ahead of my needs curve for a good while, meet my needs for a while, and be just slightly marginal for a year or so longer. If I can get 3 years without cussing the unit's performance I will be thrilled to death.

Yea, 5.5 out of 5.9 is decent. Hells bells it is way better than most computers. The system should meet my goals. Like it has been said, it is not the speed of the RAM, but the quantity of the RAM.

By the way, right now I am sucking up about 1% CPU usage and 15% Physical Memory. That is with nothing running but Vista and browser with 4-5 windows open.

But a couple hours ago I was sucking up 31-32% CPU usage and 26% Physical Memory. Of course all I was doing was downloading a 100MB p_rn file, listening to some tunes, decomressing a 600 MB RAR file and playing 4 screens of on-line poker. Hey, a boy has to have his priorities.

Of course the real purpose of this 'puter is business tasks. And that is where the real sucking of resources will occur (web development, photo editing, inventory management, mapping and shipping applications....). Haven't started loading any business applications as I just trying to give the machine a workout to make sure any bugs are worked out and the user interfaces are set up to my desires.

Oh well. Life is good if all I can witch about is my 5.5 WEI score.

I would be more worried about how much ram you have and not the speed of it if i was you and having as many cores as possible if you intend on doing that and more at the exact same time. the speed of your ram doesnt really make any difference other then bragging your ram is faster and it gave you a 10% boost in speed which is totaly mitigated by the ammount of ram 4 over 8 gigs. faster ram doesnt give you more resources to use more ram does. quad core would help you i think. That is assuming you wish to run everything and more mentioned at the same time

Several things... The amount of memory you're using (~25%, or 2GB) for your casual tasks explains why you're not seeing any performance difference after going from 4GB to 8GB. You could upgrade to 128GB and still not see any performance changes

Second, if you're doing serious photo editing, you'll likely see a noticeable performance boost when you get into that. Again, monitor your memory usage. As soon as you start venturing into the 4+ GB, that's where you'll be glad to have the extra memory.

And finally, the Window Experience Index is (as far as I know) a generally useless "benchmark" by which to evaluate your system. So don't worry about the 5.5 to 5.9 step. If you really want to know how your system is performing, find a real benchmark program and use that. Do a Google search for "DDR2 memory review" and find out what program different reviewers are using. See if you can find a demo/personal copy of one of those, and see how your system is doing. SiSoftware's Sandra and FutureMark's PCMark are a couple. The WEI gives you a single number without any way to tell what it really means.

Clint

The memory line on the WEI says memory operations per second. That should bear no relation to how much ram you have. Run CPU-Z to verify exactly what your ram configuration is and at what timings. When you go from 4gb to 8gb, the motherboard may have to adjust the timings downward.