[OT]: Memory & Performance

[monarch_dodra]

On Wednesday, 4 September 2013 at 08:43:53 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Wednesday, 4 September 2013 at 05:04:00 UTC, Jonathan M 
> Davis wrote:
>
>> Only $49 difference? I'd definitely go for the more memory. Of 
>> course, I always
>> go for high performance over price unless the difference is 
>> really pricey, and
>> I wouldn't want as little memory as 8 GB either. I always use 
>> the maximum
>> memory that my motherboard will support. And memory is cheap 
>> these days, so
>> out of all the things that you could do to improve your 
>> computer, it's not
>> particularly expensive. But I guess that it all depends on how 
>> mch you're
>> willing to spend.
>>
>> - Jonathan M Davis
>
> You are right of course. I prefer to spend a little bit more 
> money and have a better machine. I was only wondering, if there 
> is a real difference between the two. If there is a real 
> difference, I would even go for the 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3 
> SDRAM at 1600MHz - 2 X 8 GB ( + $139.00 ), but that would break 
> the bank. Also I wonder if I could get it cheaper somewhere 
> else and add it afterwards.

Honestly, 4 is "usually enough", but a bit more never hurts. 8 is 
"*more* than enough".

Getting anything more than 8 is really just wasted money, unless 
you have a *very specific* use case that requires it: 
Specifically, the only one I can think of is having a VM farm 
server. Or maybe some *super*heavy* image processing or video 
editing.

Other than that, no, I would not cough up an extra +90$ for the 
+8 Gigs (I suppose +139$ is compared to the base 4 Gigs?).

Especially when you can get a 128 Gig SSD at that price.

BTW: About the "hybrid" drives. AFAIK, they used to be "better 
than not hybrid, I guess but still leaps and bounds inferior to 
an SSD". That said, their algorithms get better every day, so I 
don't know. I think the real choice depends on what kind of 
storage volume you *need*. I'd *default* back to a hybrid, if 
having a single SSD didn't fit my volume needs. But even then, 
external 2.5" drives are dirt cheap nowadays, so...