Curse

Lania Elderfire · May 03, 2008, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brianna

Agree'd with Quality over Quantity.

RAM hog Vista is non existent, it just uses more than windows XP so everyone freaks out. I have 2 GB of ram and I've only ever used up to 60% while running Guild Wars, FireFox, and tons of other chat programs/small things on the side, for the life of me I can't see why anyone needs more than 2 gigs right now, maybe in the future..? But not right now it.

Everything depends on use. Guildwars as a game is hardly a ram hog, and in the gaming world it's on the lower end as far as memory usage is concerned. If you have FPS games like Bioshock, the game by it self can sometimes use almost 2-3 gigs. Crysis on the other hand can't seem to use the memory space efficiently so it ends up using tons of pagefile on top of using tons of memory (Crysis on very high http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/433...ghcropaj0.jpg)... but this is due to it's limitations as a 32-bit application. MMO's really haven't gotten up there in the memory requirements but FPS games sure have hit and cross the line as far as what the 4gig memory space can handle. Of course this all depends on what graphics settings you end up using. Higher texture quality = more ram used.

Other games that are soon to be coming out like Farcry 2, Fallout 3, and other top teir direct X 10 games recommend at least 2 gigs of ram... so for gamers that like FPS, and want to play top teir DirectX 10 games, you'd be better off having more than 2 gigs... especially since DDR2 Ram is so cheap right now.

Brianna · May 03, 2008, 08:46 PM // 20:46

I play Call of Duty 4 on max settings with no problems, and I've played Crysis on medium settings without much problems either, didn't notice my RAM being an issue at all. I'm not saying that under intense usage that it doesn't help to have more, I know it does, but it isn't entirely necessary to have 4+ gigs of ram.

And especially your video card's onboard ram comes into play here with games, I think any true gamer is going to have 512mb or more of onboard card ram, it sure does help.

Lania Elderfire · May 03, 2008, 10:26 PM // 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brianna

I'm not saying that under intense usage that it doesn't help to have more, I know it does, but it isn't entirely necessary to have 4+ gigs of ram.

Like I said, it depends on how you use your computer. Your usage pattern may not require someone to have more than 2 gigs, but other people like graphics professionals and artists easily benefit from more. I personally already have 4 gigs and due to my usage pattern I run out of memory frequently and I'm looking to buy more ram, or just switch to a server/workstation mobo that can support up to 32 gigs of ram.

Besides like I said before a lot of directX10 games coming out this fall and winter have a 2 gig minimum as a recommended system requirement.... By the time windows 7 comes out games running direct X11 will definitely require a minimum of 4 gigs or more. 5 years ago system requirements were usually 256MB of ram with 512MB recommended. Today the minimum requirement is essentially doubled or quadrupled with the advent of Vista especially in games like crysis.... In another 5 years?.... I have no idea where it's going to be.... this is all starting to get nuts eh?

I even remember back when 4 MB of ram was a lot and it cost like 90$ for just 1MB of ram... lol

It's easy to add more ram when needed though, but W/O a 64-bit OS you're basically stuck with 3.25 GB of available ram.

Admael · May 04, 2008, 12:20 AM // 00:20

I stick by my comment where 2GB of RAM is enough, and there's no need for 4GB. And I've decided to back it up.

I boot to Vista, where's what my resources look like:

It's not fun at all, it's not fun at all. At 2GB, 46% of my physical RAM is gone at boot.

So I decided to "multi-task", the applications are sorted by the amount of RAM taxed.

In short, I can tab through all my games perfectly, I get the same amount of FPS in every game, 76 in GWs, 76 In CoD4, 76 in Bioshock, 55 in Assassin's Creed. There are bit of slow down between loading screens, but that's not a problem right? I can just tab to another game while it loads! And it's nothing I can do about it, the bottleneck is at the hard drive.

The short answer is always: "buy more RAM", but that's not always the best solution. Upgrading from 2GB->8GB isn't to speed up a slow system.

But then again, if you still have 256MB-1GB, you might want to make the effort.

Lania Elderfire · May 04, 2008, 12:55 AM // 00:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Admael

And it's nothing I can do about it, the bottleneck is at the hard drive.

Of course the bottleneck is the hard drive! at 90% ram usage the OS is swapping data into the swapfile and then back to the ram when you alt+tab. As the computer swaps back the game data back to the ram the frame rate normalizes, and the background game stays in the swapfile. You can run as many apps as you want as long as your swap file is big enough... and it can be as big as your hard drive. Problem is everything will slow down to a crawl because accessing memory data from the hard drive is ultra slow.

Having more memory isn't about "Can you do it" ...it's about "can you do it faster".

If the hard drive was as fast as Ram, there wouldn't be any need for RAM.

Admael · May 04, 2008, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Blasphemy! My machine doesn't crawl! I play those games fine!

But I know what you mean, even Vista's Aero forfeited its share of memory to priority programs to go first.

Lania Elderfire · May 04, 2008, 01:16 AM // 01:16

The other things with games is that swapping between an active game really doesn't show "real" multi tasking as the windows OS will put all it's resources into that one active game, while the inactive games get the lowest processor priority, and the lowest share of the physical ram.

The best way to show multi-tasking is to have the games running in windowed mode rather than full-screen and try to make all the games run decently in that mode....

NeHoMaR · May 04, 2008, 01:51 AM // 01:51

My opinion: Forget about x64 OS.

Oh! and about RAM, 2GB are absolutely enough. The big amount of RAM used by Vista is just cache, that cache is "deleted" if a game need the RAM.

Also, some small thing is true about x64: 64bits software is a little faster, but you get a big incompatibility issue with old software and current 32bits software (when I say software I am including games of course)

Maybe, in the future, the next Windows will be 64bit only (or 128bit? lol), and everybody will be forced to upgrade, not today.

Thizzle · May 04, 2008, 07:55 AM // 07:55

32-bit is 32-bit and 64-bit is 64-bit. Which means anything running on those has to be coded especially to that OS. Usually 64-bit is for 4GB of RAM or more and for server machines.

Admael · May 04, 2008, 08:06 AM // 08:06

I use 2GB on 64-bit.

It's enough to multi-task 4 games and Photoshop. If you can't then it's clearly NOT the RAM, which brings me to my point.

You can't expect 'more RAM' will do things more efficiently if the rest of your machine is up to par. That's all.

cebalrai · May 04, 2008, 01:26 PM // 13:26

For anyone buying a computer right now though, there's no reason to buy more than 2 GB. RAM is UBER CHEAP at the moment. And it might not stay that way forever.

Lania Elderfire · May 04, 2008, 01:51 PM // 13:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by cebalrai

For anyone buying a computer right now though, there's no reason to buy more than 2 GB. RAM is UBER CHEAP at the moment. And it might not stay that way forever.

2GB of DDR2 at 40$ is hard to beat. And no it won't stay like this forever because as manufacturer switches over to DDR3, DDR2 supply will shrink and rise in price like it did with DDR1 RAM. Also they are thinking of artificially raising prices as the Dram makers are losing money because it has gotten too cheap... but I doubt it will work

Also I doubt DDR3 will ever drop in price as it did for DDR2 as much as I think they'll control the supply more to keep prices high.