Stupid question about RAM

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Is it worth to add an extra 512 mg RAM to my 2.2 ghz Pc? Sometimes I encounter slow in my game ( Mostly Temple of Elemental evil) But I heard it's a Secure ROM problem... Anyway having 1024 RAM is it worth it?

 

IF
OS = XP
THEN
512MB < 1024MB
END

IF
OS = XP
THEN
512MB = NOT ENOUGH
END

IF
OS = 98 OR ME
THEN
1024MB < 512MB
END

 

Taza in your last example, I assume you mean that 1024 isn't needed, or is it that it's actually worse than 512?

 

If the operating system is:
XP: The more memory, the better. You can even encounter problems with memory ending in 512MB.
98/Me: No more than 512MB. 98 goes around 50% slower with over 512MB.

 

How so? I mean, that makes no sense!

 

Well, 98 has serious errors if the memory exceeds 512MB...

"No one will ever need more than 640kb of memory"
^That is why M$ software is buggy^

 

Heh, then I guess I'd better abandon the idea of sticking with 98 on my new computer (Seeing how I'm shooting for 1024 RAM in my new comp)

 

Ofelix, have you voted in the weekly poll on the main SP page?!

 

@Taza
512 MB? For what??? Are you going to render 3d images or something? sjeez.
If all you do is playing games, 256 is enough

 

Think it this way: Win2k eat about 256 megs of RAM, and WinXP doubles it. If you have memory 512 megs, that leaves about 256 megs left to other applications. On WinXP whatever is left from the OS.

In short: 512 is enough, but RAM isn't very expensive, so why not double it while on the job?

 

@Rallymama Yeah why?


¨Check Front Page¨

OH! It just that for a long time I wanted to have a great PC to run most game smoothly and with max spec, So It bother me when my old 600 mhZ was sometime FASTER sometimes, so I wondered if 512 mg RAM was enough.

Anyway My PC support easily ToEE it just that the SECURE ROM is )&(*?&?% *?*?% with the slowdown!

@Taza Freaking! my OS is indeed XP

 

Yeah. What the last guy said.

It's wicked harsh to be running Win98. Pulling any flavor of NT will give you a tremendous boost on top of everything. Even XP Home changes everything.

Win2k will drop it's system down to 32meg, and XP drops to 60meg (64meg required to install it, though). 256meg is enough to pull 190meg free if you trim it down. With that 512meg, you'll pull 380meg (or so) free. Coupled with a 128meg AGP swap space, and 64meg of I/O buffer, you'll be real good with games.

512meg is probably what you want, if your mainboard chipset is halfway decent. Spend the money on a mainboard upgrade, first.

 

I presently run 1Gb of RAM, both on my machine at work, and at home.

The difference made at work is massive. It is common for me to have two or more copies of VS .NET open, plus another two VB6 instances, plus my email client, my MP3s playing, etc. Memory is a big issue when working like this, but I need to be able to do all that (ok... so my MP3s aren't strictly a requirement).

When playing games at home, it's a different matter. There are many reasons a game might be running slowly.

Take Jedi Knight II as an example. This game is extremely CPU bound. It doesn't matter if you're running the latest-greatest Radeon card and have 2GB RAM if your CPU only runs at 1Ghz. Likewise, despite a reasonable CPU and 1Gb of RAM, the Bazaar in EverQuest runs at about 2 frames per second if I turn all the settings up (settings which run fine in other zones in this game). Only half my RAM is being used, but my video card is melting.

If a game is running slowly, try to figure out why. I'm sure many people jam more RAM in their machines and find, to their disappointment, that it makes no difference to that particular game. More RAM will typically only help if your machine is doing excessive paging. By this I mean that your machine is using a lot of virtual memory, and as such, is reading from and writing to the hard drive a lot.

To understand what kind of burden your machine is under, I suggest popping up Task Manager while running your game. From here you can gauge the CPU load and memory usage. If you find you still have plenty of spare physical memory available, more RAM probably won't help you with that particular game (unless adding more memory allows you to turn on other built-in game features that will speed things for you, like texture caching, etc). If you find that your machine is doing considerable paging, you will probably find that a bit more RAM will help out.

RAM aside, I have also had problems with some of the recent copy protection mechanisms. I have found that some brands of CD ROMs do not cope well with whatever has been done to these discs to try to prevent piracy.

I'm probably gonna get a huge slap on the wrist for saying this, but you could consider trying to crack the game. I'm NOT advocating piracy. I have, on at least two occasions in the past, had the copy-protection mechanism make the game more or less unplayable, and been forced to crack the game. I’m talking about legit copies of games bought from reputable stores; there is no chance these were dodgy rip-offs. If anyone here purchased Imperium Galactica II, you might know what I’m talking about.

For people interested in running Win98 or WinME with more than 512Mb of RAM, the following article will be of interest: http://aumha.org/win4/a/memmgmt.htm

[ October 24, 2003, 02:43: Message edited by: Judas ]

 

Well My Video Card is a Nvidia Geeforce 4 TI 4200 128 mg and I have a AMD Athlon 2.2 Ghz with 512 Mg RAM IMHO it's a pretty good system wich was, btw, built almost only for gamming but the only game who run slowly is ToEE and it's truly a Secure ROM problem. However when I *ahem* do a lot of P2P *ahem* My Internet is very Slow even though I have High speed. So considering this and that I have about no real knowledge in Computer does is really matter if I give an extra 512 mg RAM to my Pc? Oh and BTW what does it differ my 128mg card to a 64mg card? What is the meaning of the Memory size of a Video Card?

 

Here is a spot on Firing Squad that proves that adding more memory to PC can slow it down. It depends on the mainboard/chipset, some handle more sticks of memory better than others.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part2/page14.asp

 

If you’re willing to spend the cash on the extra RAM, go for it. With a system spec like that, you’ll get your money’s worth out of it at some point. However, I can’t guarantee it will help with this particular game. I’m running a very similar config in terms of CPU speed and video card, but have 1Gb of RAM. As I mentioned, the RAM just doesn’t help in certain situations.

It doesn’t “matter” – adding the RAM will not hurt you (assuming you’re running WinNT / XP).

Think of your video card as a sub-computer. It has its own processor and memory. Many video-specific tasks are offloaded onto the video card. The memory on video cards is typically much faster than normal RAM, and video RAM can communicate with the graphics processor much more quickly than normal RAM. When you run out of / fill up your video RAM, your machine will have to use some of the slower system RAM for some of its tasks. Having more video RAM helps to minimize this.