RAM Upgrade Questions

[SirDeity]

Hello! I have the GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P rev. 1.0 motherboard (specs here), but my huge copper CPU heat sink is covering one of my 4 RAM slots. So currently I only have 2x2GB of G.Skill DDR3 memory. It has been sufficient for the past two or three years, but some of my software programs are utilizing up to 97% of my memory now, which means it is time to upgrade. To this end, I have several questions.

First, I vaguely recall reading (years ago when I first built my system) that I needed an even number of sticks. In other words, I have this notion (whether true or not) that using 3 slots and leaving the fourth empty wouldn't work, or, at least, wouldn't utilize the stick in the third slot. I don't recall whether this was a restriction due to my operating system or due to the motherboard, or even if I just imagined this whole idea up out of nothingness, so I'm hoping one of you might assist me through helpful explanation(s) and/or elaboration(s).

Second, a friend recently suggested my motherboard might not be compatible with 4GB sticks, since 4GB sticks (according to him) didn't exist back when my motherboard was purchased. I have no reason to doubt his suspicions, but it'd be wise of me to find out for certain before purchasing any new RAM. Would anyone please verify for me whether my motherboard can handle 4GB sticks of RAM? If it is a matter of BIOS version, I should note that I recently tried updating my BIOS but the latest version (F14) available on GIGABYTE was incompatible (it gave me an incompatibility error when I tried double-clicking the setup/installer file).

Lastly (for now), I recently purchased an RPG game called The Witcher 2. I'm wondering if any of you hardware guru's or tech-savvy deities might have some recommendations with respect to a video card upgrade which would be most appropriate for CD Projekt Red's "Red Engine" (the game engine created specifically for The Witcher 2 PC game). For the record, my current video card which I wish to replace is a Radeon 5770 (which seems inadequate to perform well with high graphics settings).

Thank you all in advice of your kind support.

 

[yourmama083]

The reason you can not use a uneven number of ram modules is because your motherboard do not support triple channel ram.
Secondly.The 5770 is more than capable to handle the witcher 2.It would be a unnecessary upgrade.Think carefully about your upgrade.

 

[cube_]

Firstly, welcome to HWF!

First, I vaguely recall reading (years ago when I first built my system) that I needed an even number of sticks. In other words, I have this notion (whether true or not) that using 3 slots and leaving the fourth empty wouldn't work, or, at least, wouldn't utilize the stick in the third slot. I don't recall whether this was a restriction due to my operating system or due to the motherboard, or even if I just imagined this whole idea up out of nothingness, so I'm hoping one of you might assist me through helpful explanation(s) and/or elaboration(s).

Good question. This isn't easy to answer because every motherboard manufacturer is different and there isn't a universal solution. I haven't been able to get an answer from the online manual. Usually, this setup supported with newer boards such as yours. Have you tried running your system with the 3 sticks? What i think will happen is you will lose Dual Channel capability since you'll be running at an uneven number of sticks. 2 sticks installed in the first and third module will allow you to utilize dual channel, but adding a third might disable this. Adding a fourth will re-enable this. Can someone here confirm this???

Second, a friend recently suggested my motherboard might not be compatible with 4GB sticks, since 4GB sticks (according to him) didn't exist back when my motherboard was purchased. I have no reason to doubt his suspicions, but it'd be wise of me to find out for certain before purchasing any new RAM. Would anyone please verify for me whether my motherboard can handle 4GB sticks of RAM? If it is a matter of BIOS version, I should note that I recently tried updating my BIOS but the latest version (F14) available on GIGABYTE was incompatible (it gave me an incompatibility error when I tried double-clicking the setup/installer file).

According to their memory support list, they were able to provide support for a Samsung 4GB stick. But this doesn't mean it only supports Samsung brands. The answer is yes, you can add 4GB sticks as long as your total memory amounts to 16GB or less, since that is the most your system can handle.

Lastly (for now), I recently purchased an RPG game called The Witcher 2. I'm wondering if any of you hardware guru's or tech-savvy deities might have some recommendations with respect to a video card upgrade which would be most appropriate for CD Projekt Red's "Red Engine" (the game engine created specifically for The Witcher 2 PC game). For the record, my current video card which I wish to replace is a Radeon 5770 (which seems inadequate to perform well with high graphics settings).

Sure, but let's start somewhere else first. Is your 5770 installed in the first PCIe x16 slot or second? The second slot is set to run at only x8. Also, Witcher came out with patch 1.1. What are your temps while playing at high settings? Check it with SpeedFan (free and easy to use). The 5770 isn't a bad card and a lot of times there are other solutions to getting a better pump out of your card. Another good question to ask yourself is what kind of CPU are you running?

 

[SirDeity]

Thanks for the replies!

Firstly, welcome to HWF!

Good question. This isn't easy to answer because every motherboard manufacturer is different and there isn't a universal solution. I haven't been able to get an answer from the online manual. Usually, this setup supported with newer boards such as yours. Have you tried running your system with the 3 sticks? What i think will happen is you will lose Dual Channel capability since you'll be running at an uneven number of sticks. 2 sticks installed in the first and third module will allow you to utilize dual channel, but adding a third might disable this. Adding a fourth will re-enable this. Can someone here confirm this???

Thank you for the welcome! I've actually visited these great forums a number of times over the years, but it is always a pleasure to return.

It appears that my RAM slots are color coded, white and blue. The three slots available (from right to left) at white, blue, and white. The first white and first blue slots are currently being used my by existing memory sticks. I'm assuming the white slots are one channel and the blue slots are the second. I haven't tried putting in a third stick just to discover what happenes out of fear of breaking something. Also, I don't have a third stick laying around either. If it would be advantageous from a total RAM capability standpoint to use three of the four total slots, I'd certainly do so. Without reassurances, though, I'll likely just replace my 2GB sticks with 4GB ones.

According to their memory support list, they were able to provide support for a Samsung 4GB stick. But this doesn't mean it only supports Samsung brands. The answer is yes, you can add 4GB sticks as long as your total memory amounts to 16GB or less, since that is the most your system can handle.

This is good news indeed. I think I'll order these memory sticks very soon.

Sure, but let's start somewhere else first. Is your 5770 installed in the first PCIe x16 slot or second? The second slot is set to run at only x8. Also, Witcher came out with patch 1.1. What are your temps while playing at high settings? Check it with SpeedFan (free and easy to use). The 5770 isn't a bad card and a lot of times there are other solutions to getting a better pump out of your card. Another good question to ask yourself is what kind of CPU are you running?

My Radeon 5770 is installed on the first slot (slot nearest the CPU).

I'm a bit uncompromising when it comes to my graphics. I've tried customizing the graphics settings multiple times, experimenting with different variations. I run the game (same with every game I've played over the past several years) on 1920x1200 resolution (which is also my monitor's native resolution). I actually already created a thread recently with regard to The Witcher 2's game performance on my system, where I described my current system specifications as well as provided details regarding current graphics settings and game performance, on The Witcher 2 steam forum. I'll copy and paste a portion of my original post from that thread below (rather than retyping everything):

When I first started the game I simply clicked the "Auto-detect Best Settings" button under the "Video and language" option of the prelaunch menu, which apparently detected my hardware could handle max. graphics settings with 1920x1200 resolution. The following are my system specs:

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs)
Memory: 4096MB RAM
DirectX 11
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5770
Monitor: Acer 24" Widescreen (1920x1200 native resolution)

The computer is a little old by gaming standards but up until The Witcher 2 I've been able to play nearly every major PC game on maximum graphics settings. However, despite using the aut-detect to set up my game graphics, the game was quite literally unplayable. I couldn't even look around without getting completely lost in the blurs and instantaneous warpings due to insufficient hardware power. So I went back to the graphics options and customized it a bit. I'm really used to using 1920x1200 resolution, so I didn't want to reduce that. Instead I chose the following graphics settings, in order from top to bottom as shown:

Texture Downscaling: None
Texture Memory Size (MB): Small
Shadow Quality: Low
Number of Shadowed Lights: Low
LOD Distance: Near
Bloom: Disabled
Light Shafts: Disabled
Anti-aliasing: Enabled
Blur Effects: Disabled
Depth of Field - Gameplay: Enabled
Vignette: Enabled
Wet Surfaces Rain Effect: Enabled
SSAO: Enabled
Motion Blur: Disabled
Cinematic Depth of Field: Enabled
Depth of Field - Cutscenes: Enabled
Dangling Objects Limit: Disabled
UberSampling: Disabled
Vertical Sync: Disabled
Decals: Medium Spec

With these settings and my preferred resolution (with my hardware), the game is playable (barely), but more difficult during graphics intensive battles, such as the one against Kayran. The battle against Kayran was especially laggy. I had to turn the resolution down just to kill Kayran. The graphics, though, aren't any good.

Another thing I should note is that I have a G15 keyboard which has a nifty little feature called a performance monitor on its built-in LCD screen. It says the game never uses more than 10% of my CPU, so that's apparently not a problem. It says it uses over 90% of my memory, though.

To view the source where this portion was taken, please view my old thread here.

At any rate, even if some manipulation of graphics settings would slightly improve performance, it probably wouldn't look nearly as good as if I were to replace the Radeon 5770 with, say, the Radeon HD 6970. I'm thinking my Antec 650W power supply can handle the upgrade, so I sort of have my mind set on it. I considered upgrading to a cheaper card, like the Radeon 6950, or the GeForce 560 Ti, but I only upgrade my PC once every three or four years and I generally expect it to handle every game on maximum settings in between.

With respect to my CPU (as listed above), it is an i7 860 (8CPUs) ~2.8Ghz. I have never seen my memory usage go beyond 25% in any game or other software application, so I'm assuming my memory is more than sufficient. According to my G15 keyboard, my PC idles at about 0-5% CPU usage and approximately 57% RAM usage.

I'll have to resepond later with temperature details, though I don't suspect temperature as being a problem because my case has plenty of airflow (lots of room and fans on high speed) and the graphics appear the same when the game first starts as they do hours into it. One example of unsatisfactory graphics which I notice in The Witcher 2 (with the above quoted graphics settings) is pixelated graphics; little black dots are visible in model textures. I haven't seen this pixelation occur in any of game.

 

[SirDeity]

I used Catalyst Control Center to overclock my graphics card. The temperature seems to stay just below 70 degrees celcius at all times, and the performance in The Witcher 2 has significantly improved. It seems to run idle at about 40 degrees celcius. I'll probably still upgrade my hardware though. On a side note, I wish CCC had an integrated G15 plugin so I could view temperatures on my keyboard's LCD screen rather than having to minimize. I almost downloaded and installed MSI Afterburner to achieve this but I didn't want it to replace my CCC.

I still don't fully understand whether using three sticks instead of two would be advantageous or disadvantageous. I've heard and read different things from different sources. Some say I'm better off just using two slots, and others say using the third while leaving the fourth empty would be an improvement, albeit a small one. If anyone could provide more information on this subject it'd be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[violetblueskies]

from what i know running your pc with 3 sticks of memory may disable dual channel but increase your total memory.
i've seen some motherboards that will respond with a message at post saying dual channel disabled due to odd numbered installed memory sticks.
i'm not too sure about yours though.
why not find another heatsink/fan to fit in your pc that will free up space for you to install the 4th stick?
as far as the game goes, check out what others are saying about the game performance.
i know with benchmarks, games can bench high/low results at different resolutions.
some games will bench better at a specific higher resolution than lower.
but since you can't seem to get it working decently check this site out...

http://segmentnext.com/2011/05/18/t...nvidia-performance-no-sound-errors-and-fixes/

 

[SirDeity]

from what i know running your pc with 3 sticks of memory may disable dual channel but increase your total memory.
i've seen some motherboards that will respond with a message at post saying dual channel disabled due to odd numbered installed memory sticks.
i'm not too sure about yours though.
why not find another heatsink/fan to fit in your pc that will free up space for you to install the 4th stick?

I guess I don't fully understand the whole "dual channel" thing. What is the advantage of using dual channel? Is using dual channel for a total of 4GB of memory better than not using dual channel for a total of 6GB of memory?

I haven't considered removing the heat sink for two reasons. First, it is essentially glued over the CPU, which is a very fragile piece of hardware. If I tried to remove the heat sink, I could accidentally damage the CPU. Second, the heat sink looks very cool and serves a good purpose as well. I'd rather just go with the most advantageous of my two other options; using three sticks apparently without dual channel utilization or using two sticks with dual channel utilization. I'm still unsure which of those two options is more advantageous, though.

 

[violetblueskies]

imo being that you don't know for sure if dual channel is even being disabled all together, more memory is better.
it might run dual channel for the first bank of memory and just single on the 3rd. who knows? unless you see any indication at post.
as far as the glue goes, i'm baffled. are you sure its glued over to where the heatsink/fan can't be removed?
sometimes there can be some what looks like hot glue in areas but doesn't mean its not removable.
one thought that came to mind was that maybe it was glued down cause whoever built the pc didn't have a way to fix down the heatsink/fan.
maybe they lost the clips or something and decided to hot glue it down to stabilize it.
there is just no reason to glue down a heatsink/fan. what if your cpu goes bad then what? how would you change it out?
if you could snap a picture of the heatsink area with the glue it would be helpful.
im sure they make some solution out there that can help remove the glue.
if your not up to changing out the heatsink/fan then i don't know what to tell ya.
looks seem to be important to you when you have a 4th ram slot you could utilize that could help you with performance.
i would rather swap out the heatsink/fan to use the 4th ram slot to ensure im not only getting the maximum amount of memory but to also ensure they are running dual channel at their peak level of performance.

 

[SirDeity]

Thanks for the reply. I may have been incorrect when I said my heat sink was glued to my CPU. I built the PC about 3 years ago with the help of a friend so my biological memory could be at fault. The heat sink being used is one similar to this Zalman copper one. I vaguely recall putting the Arctic Cooling paste over the back of the CPU after mounting it to the motherboard, then carefully placing the heat sink on top of the back side of the CPU. For some reason I thought it would act like glue sticking the heat sink to the back of the CPU, but now I also remember using mounts to screw the heat sink down to the motherboard (similar to what is shown here) so I'm not really sure how difficult or risky it'd be to remove the heat sink/fan entirely. Sorry for the confusion, and thanks again for the input.

 

[violetblueskies]

if you didn't or aren't sure you put the arctic cooling paste, then i would highly suggest you remove it and apply some on there.
it's not an adhesive of any kind. it helps transfer the heat from the cpu faster to your heatsink and it makes a difference.
if i'm not mistaken, that zalman fan bolts down to the bottom of the motherboard.
so yeah in order to take off the heatsink you would have to remove the motherboard from the case to detach the heatsink.
just a thought, but if your heatsink is similar to this with all those fins and your saying it gets in the way of one ram slot you could clip off some of those fins in the area where it gets in the way.
it won't hurt the heatsink by clipping off a little section. at this point its up to you what you decide to do.

 

[SirDeity]

if you didn't or aren't sure you put the arctic cooling paste, then i would highly suggest you remove it and apply some on there.
it's not an adhesive of any kind. it helps transfer the heat from the cpu faster to your heatsink and it makes a difference.
if i'm not mistaken, that zalman fan bolts down to the bottom of the motherboard.
so yeah in order to take off the heatsink you would have to remove the motherboard from the case to detach the heatsink.
just a thought, but if your heatsink is similar to this with all those fins and your saying it gets in the way of one ram slot you could clip off some of those fins in the area where it gets in the way.
it won't hurt the heatsink by clipping off a little section. at this point its up to you what you decide to do.

I am certain I applied the Arctic Cooling paste. I just assumed it'd be adhesive. Thanks for the clarification. Also, thanks for the idea of clipping some fins off the heat sink. I think I'll just settle with two 4GB sticks for now, but I'll keep it in mind for future reference if I ever decide to add two more 4GB sticks.

 

[cube_]

Hey guys, sorry i've been out of the grind for a while. What did you end up going with SirDeity?

 

[SirDeity]

Hey guys, sorry i've been out of the grind for a while. What did you end up going with SirDeity?

I ended up just replacing the 2x2GB memory with the exact same memory but 2x4Gb instead (same speed, brand, etc, but more memory capacity). I also got a Radeon Sapphire HD 6970 Video card. I figure this upgrade ought to be good enough for at least a year or two. I'm looking forward to playing BF3 on maximum or near maximum graphics settings though, which I'm still a tiny bit nervous about.

 

[cube_]

Good choice. 8gb is more than enough. And i think you know how good that card is lol ;)...