1 Gig VS 2 Gig RAM Benchmark

[redpoints]

First post here, i tried lots of searching but with no answers besides guesses and conjecture. Does anyone know of any actual benchmarks comparing the performance of 1 gig vs 2 gig ram in gaming?

I have Kingmax PC4000 memory, 2 x 512, running in dual channel and i really want to know what difference another pair of the same would do. Has anyone conducted a benchmark for this scenario?

Opinions are like @$$sholes, everyone has one, but i really want to know some facts. Hopefully one of the knowledgeable folks here will have an actual answer. Thanks.

 

[GoSharks]

as with any increase in amount of ram, there will be no FPS difference, and probably some to very small "loading time" differences.

 

[imported_X]

Again, it depends on what you mean by "gaming". In most games you probably won't see much of a difference. In MMORPGs like EQ2 you will. You only need to play the game with 1GB and see your hard drive being constantly accessed through page filing to know that memory is the bottleneck there.

 

[JavaMomma]

I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

 

[Stas]

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: redpoints
First post here, i tried lots of searching but with no answers besides guesses and conjecture. Does anyone know of any actual benchmarks comparing the performance of 1 gig vs 2 gig ram in gaming?

I have Kingmax PC4000 memory, 2 x 512, running in dual channel and i really want to know what difference another pair of the same would do. Has anyone conducted a benchmark for this scenario?

Opinions are like @$$sholes, everyone has one, but i really want to know some facts. Hopefully one of the knowledgeable folks here will have an actual answer. Thanks.

I ran some benchmarks for 512MB, 1GB, 1.5GB and 2GB
XP Pro, IC7-G (875PE), 3.4C Northwood P4, 9800AIW,
All are PC3200 DIMMs, timings were handled @ SPD default, dual channel enabled 1-1.

512MB (256x2) @ Default 3400MHz
1GB (512x2) @ Default 3400MHz
1GB (512x2) @ 3% OC 3502MHz
1.5GB (512x2 & 256x2) @ Default 3400MHz
1.5GB (512x2 & 256x2) @ 3% OC 3502MHz
2GB (512x4) @ Default 3400MHz
2GB (512x4) @ 3% OC 3502MHz

BTW, I used the PassMark PerformanceTest V5.0 to run the tests.

 

[imported_X]

Having played both WOW and EQ2, I know that EQ2 is a lot more memory intensive. I was able to play WOW on reasonable settings, but EQ2 is totally painful with my humble 768M of ram. It can take 5 minutes just to move from one zone to the next, especially within Queynos.

 

[w00t]

its all about counter-strike

 

[redpoints]

Thanks Blain, that was what I was looking for, not the useless "believe me so and so yadda yadda will/won't need bla bla" type answers most people come up with.

From seeing your benchmarks, I won't bother with a second gig of memory.

 

[BFG10K]

If you're expecting a FPS boost from more RAM you're simply not understanding the issue at hand.

More RAM will help level load/reload times and similar.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

You have obviously never played WoW back to back with 2GB then 512MB.

I'm not sure that more than 1 gig does a lot, but 512MB + WoW is disk-thrashing city, and pretty painful.

Over 1 gig reduces thrashing some, but not a whole lot. I think most of the delays at 1GB are server related. But no 512MB is not "plenty". The game works okay, but not optimally.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: redpoints
Thanks Blain, that was what I was looking for, not the useless "believe me so and so yadda yadda will/won't need bla bla" type answers most people come up with.

From seeing your benchmarks, I won't bother with a second gig of memory.

Honestly, benchmarks will not show memory as a problem until it's REALLY a problem. There are other delays associated with memory that will not usually show up in typical benchmarks that use FPS as their only metric.

For example when I was benchmarking BFV, the difference between 512MB and 768 MB was exactly zero in FPS comparisons done more than 30 seconds after a level load. However level loading was nearly twice as fast with 768 MB and the level, once loaded, was quite choppy for the first 30 seconds or so with 512MB. This didn't show up in FPS measurements, but it was very noticeably choppy, sometimes with significant pauses.

Compare those with 256MB, which was totally inadequate and KILLED FPS, to the point that FRAPS would record zero FPS at times.

This is exactly why the "feel" and subjective comments are about all you can go by. RAM doesn't affect the 'bulk' of a game until it's really bad, but there are several other aspects that can be affected by having or lacking RAM.

 

[redpoints]

Concilian, you're describing various component bottlenecks, and yes, I realize that 1 gig of ram will not be a FRAMERATE bottleneck for most games today, i don't see anything in the benchmarks that indicates load times will be significantly improved with 2 gigs as opposed to 1. I wasn't expecting a huge fps increase from the memory, but it seems to me that nothing really increases when memory goes from 1 gig to 2, like it would when you go from 256meg to 512 or 1 gig, because at those numbers, the amount of ram is clearly a bottleneck in overall performance.

 

[imported_X]

However level loading was nearly twice as fast with 768 MB and the level, once loaded, was quite choppy for the first 30 seconds or so with 512MB. This didn't show up in FPS measurements, but it was very noticeably choppy, sometimes with significant pauses.

:thumbsup:

If the dweeb doesn't want to listen to personal experience, his loss. Unless he is playing a game like EQ2 or BF2 in any case, he probably won't notice a big difference and will continue in his belief in "real benchmarks" lol

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: redpoints
Thanks Blain, that was what I was looking for, not the useless "believe me so and so yadda yadda will/won't need bla bla" type answers most people come up with.

From seeing your benchmarks, I won't bother with a second gig of memory.

I understand that the PassMark Performance Test benchmarks are "synthetic".
For those harping on "real world" advantages of X amount of memory being better than Y... POST YOUR "REAL WORLD" BENCHMARKS FOR US ALL TO SEE. :laugh:
A phrase comes to mind... "Fish or cut bait"

It takes considerable time to run benchmarks (sythetic or "real world").
IF you believe that you are correct about your views, take the time and... POST YOUR BENCHMARKS FOR US ALL TO SEE.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

WoW lags with even 2GB of ram in TM and 200-300 players whacking at each other. More is better in WoW.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

That's the problem. Benchmarks are often very bad at reflecting the real-world gameplay when it comes to ram.

Please look HERE. As you can see, there isn't much difference between 256 and 1 gig of ram for WOW.

But read carefully..."Note that the 256MB portion of the video has all its graphical settings set as low as they can possibly get. If we had compared videos with equal settings, the 256MB portion of the video would be chugging along at a miserable .1 frames per second. That's right folks - a frame every 10 seconds."

Watch the video to see that even 512mb is not good enough for WOW. But since you already have 1 gig, before you get another gig, what videocard and cpu do you have?

 

[JavaMomma]

Originally posted by: Kensai

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

WoW lags with even 2GB of ram in TM and 200-300 players whacking at each other. More is better in WoW.

Thats what I was thinking. I lag out for almost a full minute in Ironforge with 1GB of RAM. So many people all those graphics and stuff need to be loaded up and they are cached in virtual memory. I checked memory usage WoW uses 450MB of physical memory, and 450MB of virtual memory on my system.

Ohh I am buying a new system right now, and I was thinking of getting 2GB of RAM:
AMD ATHLON 64 3700+ PROCESSOR S939 SAN DIEGO 2.2GHZ 1MB L2 CACHE 90NM RETAIL BOX
OCZ EL PC3200 400MHZ DDR 1024MB DUAL CHANNEL GOLD VX MEMORY KIT 2X512MB CL-2-3-3-8 184PIN
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.8 200GB SATA W/NCQ 8MB CACHE 7200RPM 8MS HARD DRIVE
PIONEER DVR-109 DVD-RW 16X6X16 DVD+RW 16X8X16 DUAL LAYER+-R 6X CDRW 40X24X40 INT IDE NO SW OEM BLACK
1.44MB BLACK 3.5IN FLOPPY DRIVE
DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR MOTHERBOARD ATX S939 NFORCE4 SLI DDR 2PCI-E16 SATA RAID SOUND G
eVGA E-GEFORCE 6800GT 256M TV-OUT & DVI PCI-E VIDEO CARD
ANTEC P160 ALUMINUM CASE 4X5.25 2X3.5 4X3.5INT FRONT USB FIREWIRE AUDIO
OCZ OCZ45012U-450W MODSTREAM POWER SUPPLY PCI-E READY W/ EZMOD CABLE SYSTEM & BLUE LED FAN

 

[Arcanedeath]

Once you have 1GB of ram w/ WoW your in good shap, WoW needs more video memory in raid settings or you to turn down the eye candy to get decent frame rates.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Blain
I ran some benchmarks for 512MB, 1GB, 1.5GB and 2GB
XP Pro, IC7-G (875PE), 3.4C Northwood P4, 9800AIW,
All are PC3200 DIMMs, timings were handled @ SPD default, dual channel enabled 1-1.

I really don't see how any of those benchmarks show anything about RAM. You have done 30 CPU/graphics benchmarks. It doesn't look like any of them help comparing RAM capacities.

To have a valid capacity benchmark you'd need actual games/applications, and your results would need to show your swapfile configuraton and hard drive specs.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Blain
I ran some benchmarks for 512MB, 1GB, 1.5GB and 2GB
XP Pro, IC7-G (875PE), 3.4C Northwood P4, 9800AIW,
All are PC3200 DIMMs, timings were handled @ SPD default, dual channel enabled 1-1.

I really don't see how any of those benchmarks show anything about RAM. You have done 30 CPU/graphics benchmarks. It doesn't look like any of them help comparing RAM capacities.

To have a valid capacity benchmark you'd need actual games/applications, and your results would need to show your swapfile configuraton and hard drive specs.

You're kidding right? Look down the left side at the amounts used. :roll:
Everything about the setup stayed the same except the amounts of memory and the FSB when I OC'd 3%. It's all an "apples to apples" comparison.

 

[imported_X]

The point is that you're not using benchmarks that reflect the effects of RAM in memory intensive games. For example, you would need to look at load times when moving between zones with different ram configurations to make any kind of educated judgment.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: JavaMomma

Originally posted by: Kensai

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

WoW lags with even 2GB of ram in TM and 200-300 players whacking at each other. More is better in WoW.

Thats what I was thinking. I lag out for almost a full minute in Ironforge with 1GB of RAM. So many people all those graphics and stuff need to be loaded up and they are cached in virtual memory. I checked memory usage WoW uses 450MB of physical memory, and 450MB of virtual memory on my system.

Sorry to say, but that doesn't get much better with 2GB. I still lag like hell going into Orgrimmar (or Ironforge if I ever play alliance, which is pretty rare, because I can't stand some of the people who play alliance). That appears to be a server related issue. Same thing with large scale PvP, it's Blizzards issue, not a client issue. With 2GB, tracked memory usage doesn't change much from where it is with 1GB, at least in my experience. There is some less disc thrashing, but there is still quite a bit. WoW just doesn't seem to be setup to work well with lots of RAM.

My guess is that the servers will only transmit to each client at some specified rate, and no higher. So when you're in an area with lots of others, you just don't have the bandwidth to transfer the needed information back and forth. When I startup in Orgrimmar, I will load, then if I hit the map I will pause for 20 seconds, then if I open my mailbox I will pause for 20 seconds, then if I open the guild window, I will pause for 20 seconds.... All indications are that the lag is due to tranfers with the database server, and not client side issues.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Stas

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I too am wondering, I play alot of World of Warcraft and I have 1GB. I am thinking of getting 2GB of OCZ PC3200 VX RAM. I could not find any benchmarks between 1GB vs 2GB

Believe me, WoW does not need 2GB of RAM. In fact, 512MB should be plenty.

You obviously never played WoW before. Can you run on 512mb? Absolutely, but there is a huge difference when you move up to 1gb... anybody who has ever played the game at 512mb vs 1gb can tell you that, to assume anything else is just ridiculous. Now, will 2gb give you the same increase when you get from 512mb to 1gb... i don't know, i haven't played WoW myself with 2GB yet (i'll probably try out WoW in a few weeks).

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Blain
You're kidding right? Look down the left side at the amounts used. :roll:
Everything about the setup stayed the same except the amounts of memory and the FSB when I OC'd 3%. It's all an "apples to apples" comparison.

He's saying the benchmarks aren't doing anything that will specifically test RAM differences. I've explained already that a RAM deficiency will not show up first in framerates, that means that using framerates as a benchmarking method is a poor choice.

Unfortunately subjective 'feel' IS where RAM will show up first, and there aren't very many ways to translate that into objective numbers.

Level load times is about the most objective thing there, and when I tested that for BFV (about a year ago) the numbers looked like the attached table. Even though the average FPS looks GREAT for the 256MB case, the actual game was virtually UNPLAYABLE because of all the pausing and such. The benchmarks show it some on minimum FPS, but reality was WAY worse than just a slightly lower minimum FPS with a good average. WAY WORSE.

Also, while 512MB was playable after you had been in the game a few minutes, the first minute or so was pretty choppy. So choppy it would be difficult to like load the level, get in a helicopter and expect to be able to fly it without crashing. These are things that affect gameplay significantly, but are not shown in the numbers.

Believe what you want, but the reality is that the reason people don't provide hard numbers for memory differences is because hard numbers for memory differences mean very little. They are not an accurate representation of real world performance.

It's like if you were presented with benchmarks comparing different CPUs with a 5900XT in DOOM 3 at 1600x1200. WOuld you trust the numbers from that benchmark? Of course not, it won't be sensitive to differences in CPU becuase the CPU has no problem feeding the 5900XT to it's maximum capability. Similarly, normal benchmarking simply doesn't show RAM size limitations.

By the way these were with a AXP at 2200 MHz / 200 FSB / 5900xt. Also, I had truncated the maximum frame rate at 80FPS, because I was looking for changes in performance I would actually see, not changes that dropped momentarily very high framerates that were well over my refresh rate. I don't care about framerate changes from 150 FPS to 120 FPS, so when I do benchmarks I filter out garbage like that to increase the SNR in the area I actually care about.