I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

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jztemple2
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I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by jztemple2 »

My other post about getting enough RAM for future-proofing a new rig got me thinking that maybe I ought to upgrade to 32GB on my current rig so I can play the largest maps in Galactic Civilizations III. This is a five year old rig, if that makes any difference. Currently, I have the following:

Motherboard: Asus® Z87 Plus
Memory: 1866MHz 2x8GB (16GB)
64-Bit Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium

I used to know a lot more about memory sticks and compatibility and all that good stuff, but not having done anything inside a rig except upgrade a video card in the last ten years make me rather vague on what is the best approach, which manufacturers to trust, whether it is better to add two more 8GB sticks or just go with two 16 GB sticks, etc. I'm not really even sure whether the new 8 GB sticks would have to be 1866MHz sticks or could be better. Is there better? Any help would very much be appreciated :wub:
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Victoria Raverna
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by Victoria Raverna »

Galciv 3 need more than 16 GB to play the largest maps?

If you have 2 or more empty slot, it'll be cheaper to just add 2x8 GB.

You probably need to upgrade the Windows 7 too since there is a upper limit of 16 GB with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). https://www.zdnet.com/article/max-memor ... windows-7/

If you upgrade to Windows 10 Home, the limit is 128 GB.
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TheMix
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by TheMix »

According to their documentation:
4 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR3
3000(O.C.)/2933(O.C.)/2800(O.C.)/2666(O.C.)/2600(O.C.)/2500(O.C.)/2400(O.C.)/2200(O.C.)/2133(O.C.)/2000(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1800(O.C.)/1600/1333 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel Memory Architecture
Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
* Hyper DIMM support is subject to the physical characteristics of individual CPUs.
* Refer to www.asus.com for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists).
So it looks like you can up the speed of the memory significantly. However, only if you change out your existing. Otherwise you would want to keep the speeds the same (I believe that's the current advice).

I think that dual channel means that you probably want to make sure to stick to pairs rather than single sticks. What I don't see is any limitation on size. So presumably you could go for 2x16GB or 4x8GB. Whichever you find the better deal on.

Edit: Actually, from the actual PDF manual, it looks like only 8GB is supported. Though it's possible that a BIOS upgrade changed that. So you may need to look into the BIOS updates if think that the 2x16GB option is going to be better for you. I'd suggest skimming through the Memory section of the manual. Just head to the download/manual section on the link above.

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jztemple2
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by jztemple2 »

Thanks to the two of you for the replies :wub:

First of all, yup, GC3 recommends 32GB for the largest maps, although since I have an SSD, maybe that will help compensate.

Mix, thanks for looking up the documentation. I never would have thought about the limits on the size of the RAM sticks. I probably knew that a long time ago, but having to understand the ins and outs of Medicare displaced a lot of more important information :roll:

And Victoria, thanks for looking up and posting the link to that article. I never even considered that the Win7 version would affect the RAM limits. It's so weird, until we upgraded to Win10, our tax laptops ran Win7 Professional but only have 2-4GB of RAM. Must have been a decision much higher up the food chain.

Looks like I'm just going to stick with my 16GB till I get a new rig. Again, thanks for all the help :D
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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TheMix
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by TheMix »

No problemo. I had to do some research a while back on a RAM upgrade. So I knew what to look for. Also remember that if your BIOS is newer, that there may be additional support added. Though I'm not sure the best way to research BIOS updates. :D

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jztemple2
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by jztemple2 »

So since I'm not going to increase my RAM, I wondered what was going to happen if I did play GC3 on the largest map with only 16GB of RAM. So I posted to the GC3 forum that question and here are the two answers I got:
You will get slower slowdowns after about 150-180 turns. If your page file's(the game will swap to this when it runs out of RAM) drive is slow and GC3 over uses it the game may crash.
I have 7 and only 16 and use AMD Radeon 7970M. What I do is put the "NoMinSpec" in Steam/Game Properties/General/Set Launch Options and I put my virtual memory on my ssd at windows managed. The game calculations still take time but no crashing. Yet
Somewhere vaguely in the back of my mind I remembered something about setting paging file sized manually so I looked it up and found this article. So I went into System Properties and set my paging file sizes myself with a maximum of 3X my RAM:

Image

That's probably overkill, but I never go below about 70 GB left on my SSD anyway. I'll see if it works on my next big galaxy.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
linkeram
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Re: I want to upgrade to 32GB, what kind of RAM do I order?

Post by linkeram »

If you're gonna upgrade to 32GB ram then order same 1866Mhz rams.
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