2GB or 4GB?

Question

I'm thinking about buying a Dell XPS M1710 and am trying to decide on how much memory I should get. I can get either 2GB or 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHZ, 2 DIMM.

The 4GB is almost $3000 more... Is it worth the extra money?

I am looking for a powerful computer that can handle complex 3D graphics programs (rendering, animation.) Do I need the extra memory for this type of work? (I'm willing to shell out the money if it is something I need.)

Answer 1

If you are going to be using memory intensive programs like you described, I would probably go with the maximum memory possible.

You may want to see if you can get cheaper memory from another company like crucial.com. You may find a better deal.

Answer 2

dell are notorious in the public sector for constantly crashing requiring a technician etc.
try custom building a computer to suit your needs.

i do not know what the processor is in that system, but you can get a pretty decent custom job for around £3000 to £10000 depending on your ideal specifications.

for compnents see www.dabs.com

remember that when building your system crucial ram are damned good (pc2700 sdram in my system never had a problem and my system seems lightening fast on occasion such as file transfer between drives).
seagate hard drives provide the best reliability and stability.
and your system should have a psu with a minimum of 25% more power than your components demand.
AMD processors provide a better more stable system than intel from my experiance.
you will also need a high quality GPU i'd strongly suggest an ATI radeon based card if you want to be able to output your completed work to an external device such as a tv or VCR that has the RCA or scart plugs. geforce cards tend in my experiance to only output to black and white TV.
and yes the memory will help but XP home and its equivelent can not handle more than three GB (not the two as another answerer said).
(i know i use 3GB RAM on my XP home based system running an amd sempron 2Ghz CPU)

2GB $3000 more seems excessive.
you will need enough RAM to run each program that you need to run together. remember too that for best performance keep at least 15GB free on your primary C: drive your system will need the space for the page file and temp files.
clean up the system daily as you finish for the day and your system will give many years of trouble free life. providing you use only high quality parts.

Answer 3

It is not worth the extra money
2gbs more should only cost 600 max
and that is if you are using the best RAM out there
(Corsair Dominator PC9500 which is well over 1.1ghz in speed)
otherwise, it should only be 300 or less.

for 2gbs mroe of DDR2 SDRAM 667Mhz, i would say a good 250 dollars more is what you should pay
cuz putting it in is nothing
u just snap it in place.

Answer 4

That's not right. an extra 2GB memory would only be $250 or so.
2GB will be enough to do anything you want anyhow. Even if your computer did work with 4GB, Windows would have to disable virtual memory to use it, and some software doesn't like that.

Answer 5

I would go with the 2 gigs and if you find yourself needing more just order it from a third party company it would be a lot cheaper that way. Also ram is pretty easy to swap out

Answer 6

no its not worth the money

i was actually in a similar situation

i have a 1.5 mb of memory and i wanted to get a new comp with 4 mb casue i often need the space for my video editing, similar to your gaming, and i found that on my brother computer he has 4mb but his computer was only slightly faster than mine

Answer 7

Anything over 2GB doesn't work at all with a 32bit windows. You would need a 64bit CPU and you should wait for Vista too.