Depends. If your system can see it, IE 64-bit, it's nice to have it around. It's probably more than you need, but still nice to have. Just match it to the speed of your current RAM.Gawdzilla wrote:quick question, will adding 8 Gig of ram improve performance enough to justify the cost?
In short: ram doesn't affect speed as much as CPU. As far as what affects speed goes, it's like CPU> Hard Drive/SSD for the OS> RAM> motherboard.
Match the RAM in twins (for dual channel, two identical), trios for x58 (LGA 1366, triple channel) or identical sets of 2 or 4 for quad channel for LGA 2011.
Fast ram only makes much of a difference if you have good/very good components already. 8 gb is more than you'd likely need unless you're a heavy user. More speed is more noticeable as far as effect on the system than a larger amount of RAM, IE. 8gb DDR2 2000mhz (if board supports and BIOS settings right) rather than 16gb DDR3 1333 will give faster performance, unless you're topping out your RAM usage for the 8gb.
Overall apart from the issue of speed, I'd say it's best to fill out your RAM slots so you don't have to think about the damn stuff anymore as far as upgrading. 4 times 4gb sticks is the usual for most boards, though the board I'm looking at and newer top-end boards take 8gb sticks. Though those are on the expensive side so far.
*EDIT: I just saw a bunch of stuff had been posted before my reply, GZ has 64-bit OS. Treat this post as a general guide.*
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The memory is OCZ Platinum.