1GB of Memory is (((NOT))) TOO MUCH RAM!!... Not anymore.

[paralazarguer]

but the file thats open isnt 927mb... its just that big in the format you saved it in. you may have written a 927mb file to the hard drive, but the one thats open in photoshop is still 5mb

That's correct. It's only taking 5mb. He's not dealing with a 300 meg file. It's just data replication. Not unique data.

 

[Delbert]

I would like to hear some thoughts about this article at PCWorld.com that basicly says more that 256 has diminishing returns. It was written back in October.
I do belive I can justify 512MB, but I have a brother in law who insists 1 GB should be the minimum.

 

[Booter]

DONE!!
scannend a high quality image, saved it as bmp, resized it to 672mb --> fired up PS File --> Open --- Voila! 672 MB bmp file open in Photoshop.
'nuff said

 

[sharkeeper]

Pffffft, I can't believe someone just compared PC133 to DDR 2700. That's like putting a 8mb VooDoo 1 against a Radeon 9700Pro and saying the extra 120mb's of memory made all the difference.

Comparing PC133 to VM even on a fast array of X15.3 drives is like comparing a dog sled to the space shuttle.

Cheers!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper

Pffffft, I can't believe someone just compared PC133 to DDR 2700. That's like putting a 8mb VooDoo 1 against a Radeon 9700Pro and saying the extra 120mb's of memory made all the difference.

Comparing PC133 to VM even on a fast array of X15.3 drives is like comparing a dog sled to the space shuttle.

Cheers!

What he said ^. If you're running out of RAM, which is Whitedog's findings with his game, then (duh) you need more RAM. Whether it happens to be PC133 or PC2700, it will be faster than swapping to disk.

 

[BFG10K]

Newer games like NOLF2, Unreal 2 and UT2003 can easily eat up 512 MB systems running Windows XP, especially at high resolutions and at high detail levels.

I've just upgraded to 1 GB RAM from 512 MB and I've noticed slightly quicker load times and much quicker reload times, especially across different maps.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Newer games like NOLF2, Unreal 2 and UT2003 can easily eat up 512 MB systems running Windows XP, especially at high resolutions and at high detail levels.

I've just upgraded to 1 GB RAM from 512 MB and I've noticed slightly quicker load times and much quicker reload times, especially across different maps.

you mean I have to get another stick of Hyper-X??
$$$

 

[chizow]

Also, to further what some have been saying about poor programming/poor memory management, I think what people are referring to are memory leaks resulting from poor coding. This is a very real scenario in games, as most are rushed out the door and not corrected until a subsequent patch. If you've ever wondered why your gaming experience gets "chunky" after a few hours of gaming, its probably b/c of a memory leak that results in low system cache and constant accessing of the swap file. The only fix I know of is a reboot Extra RAM will certainly delay this phenomena though.

OTOH, coding that allows a game to scale and use all available memory is not what I consider to be poor programming. Yes, there might be more efficient ways to allocate memory resources, but the penalty in doing so (perhaps extra CPU cycles) may prevent them from doing so. Also, I think the SDR vs. DDR comparisons made are somewhat exaggerated. I don't know of any current DDR chipsets that offer more than a 15-25% increase in performance over an SDR solution (based on extrapolating results between a SDR to 1st-gen DDR solution, then a 1st-gen DDR to current-gen DDR solution). Of course the situation is much different on a P4 platform, but Whitedog is referring to an AMD rig that is much less bandwidth dependent. But still, any performance hits from going to swap are much greater than 15-25%.

Keep in mind that the performance increases are largely a result of both the chipset memory controllers as well as the DDR, not just DDR by itself. My bro was running 1280MB of PC133 with 1 gig as a ramdrive (b/c he had so much PC133 lying around), and I thought for sure it was overkill. Even on an SDR platform (1.4 T-bred on an Asus A7V133), the difference was quite pronounced, and certainly snappier than the swap file as others have mentioned

Chiz

 

[mee987]

Originally posted by: Booter
DONE!!
scannend a high quality image, saved it as bmp, resized it to 672mb --> fired up PS File --> Open --- Voila! 672 MB bmp file open in Photoshop.
'nuff said

resized to 672mb? your ORIGINAL scan needs to be that big

 

[Slappy00]

But how many OTHER games are like this? That is the key question I assume. I don't think there are. Battlefield 1942 runs silky smooth on my configuration and I can' t think of a currently more demanding game

I play morrowind and let me tell you I can run from town to town with no load time (after the inital loading of the map into ram) . Alot more "real" wen your not waiting for a map to load from your HDD...

In general I agree that "there is no such thing as too much ram" This is esp true in multitasking. I usually have Flash MX, Photoshop, my burner, and a MP3 player, along with a webpage or two, and sometimes even J-Creator (or gwad-help-me Visual Studio), all running at the same time, and let me tell you the more ram the merrier. As for GAmers your milage may vary, but for servers and developers you cant have enough

 

[paralazarguer]

DONE!!
scannend a high quality image, saved it as bmp, resized it to 672mb --> fired up PS File --> Open --- Voila! 672 MB bmp file open in Photoshop.
'nuff said

Enuff said? I guess if you don't know what you're talking about. We've already tried to explain that you can't resize. It doesn't work like that. It's just redundant data which doesn't get stored. Geeez...
As mee987 said
"resized to 672mb? your ORIGINAL scan needs to be that big"
That's right. Get a better scanner. Scan it in at highest settings. Open two or three...hit the pagefile...hit the pagefile...

 

[Whitedog]

Originally posted by: BD231
Pffffft, I can't believe someone just compared PC133 to DDR 2700. That's like putting a 8mb VooDoo 1 against a Radeon 9700Pro and saying the extra 120mb's of memory made all the difference.

I'll trust chiznow on his statement but a gig of ram is not as big a help as you make it out to be Whitedog. With the memory you bought you've upped the the Work Per Clock Cycle to 2 times that of PC133 at the same clock, you've switched to arguably the fastest Athlon chipset available, and you've upped the front side bus by 33mhz which brings about a 100 to 200 mhz performance bump to the Athlon core. Wake up man

.

There was quite a bit a talk about SimCity4 and the memory hog it is. Some people "WITH" 512 of PC2700 were saying the game ran like a dog, they upgraded to 1GB and the game ran Much smoother... DUH! I know going from 133MHz to 666MHz (effectively) is a huge boost in performance. But the issue is the GAME RUNS BETTER with the increased amounts of RAM. I put one of the leftover 256 PC133's into my wifes pooter... taking hers from 512 to 768 and the game runs much smoother for her too.

The whole point in this thread is NOT to compare performances between PC133 and DDR2700, but to show that TODAYS Software are taking FULL ADVANTAGE of having upwards of 1GB of memory...

Wake up man.

 

[Whitedog]

Originally posted by: paralazarguer

DONE!!
scannend a high quality image, saved it as bmp, resized it to 672mb --> fired up PS File --> Open --- Voila! 672 MB bmp file open in Photoshop.
'nuff said

Enuff said? I guess if you don't know what you're talking about. We've already tried to explain that you can't resize. It doesn't work like that. It's just redundant data which doesn't get stored. Geeez...
As mee987 said
"resized to 672mb? your ORIGINAL scan needs to be that big"
That's right. Get a better scanner. Scan it in at highest settings. Open two or three...hit the pagefile...hit the pagefile...

Are you sure you know what YOU'RE talking about?

A Bitmap is a pixel map. There is no such thing as redundant data on a bitmap. If you resize an Image, it recalculates the image and assigns EACH PIXEL a new value. When saved, it is the exact same thing as a high resolution scan. The data becomes redundant only when you use a compressed format such as GIF or JPG for example. A bitmap is a pixel by pixel Map of an Image. Each pixel is assigned X bits for color, depending on the color depth of the file. A 24BIT bitmap is just that. It doesn't matter if is it is solid black. Each pixel takes up 24bits x width x height.

The only difference is when you convert it to a compressed file, THEN the bit redundancy comes into play... That is way too long a process to explain here... which is WAY OFF TOPIC ANYWAY!

 

[Sunner]

Just cause one game, for whatever reason(I'll leave the reasons for SC4's RAM hunger to the programmers around here) likes to gobble up 1 GB of memory doesn't mean "today's" software will make good use of 1 GB of memory.

For one thing, SC4 runs just fine on my XP@1540 MHz with 512 MB and a GF3 Ti200@250/250, but like I said, I haven't played it that much, so I guess maybe it will slow down once I have a city the size of New York.

Are there any other games that require 1 GB of RAM to run fine?
I dont play all that many games since 95+ percent of the games coming out these days suck, but I do try out games that look interesting, I've been playing some C&C Generals for example, runs just fine, as does every other game I've tried out.

As long as it's one game that requires it, it doesn't make any sense to buy that extra 512 MB, that will only make SC4 the most expensive PC game ever.
Unless you just HAVE to play SC4 at the highest possible details and require absolute smoothness that is.

Oh and that's 333 MHz DDR or 166 MHz real, AMD doesn't use a quad data rate(I hate whole "pumped" terminology) FSB

 

[Whitedog]

Besides, you all are talking about two completely different things... A High resolution scan is WAY many more pixels than a standard bitmap is. You couldn't take a High Resolution scanned image (Something like 12,000+ pixels wide/heigh) and save it as a true color bitmap. Who would do that?

Let's see... a 12,000 pixel square High Res scan saved as a bitmap would be... uhmmmm... 3.5GB's?? lol

Those are commonly saved as TIFF files... which DOES use pixel redundancy.

 

[Whitedog]

Sunner, I'll bet you money when DoomIII hits the streets, people will be running to the store for more memory.

Just a hunch.

 

[Whitedog]

I dont play all that many games since 95+ percent of the games coming out these days suck

Then you shouldn't have much to say in this case.

As long as it's one game that requires it, it doesn't make any sense to buy that extra 512 MB, that will only make SC4 the most expensive PC game ever.
Unless you just HAVE to play SC4 at the highest possible details and require absolute smoothness that is.

My wife bought Zoo Tycoon (OK, so I loaded it and played it... it's kinda fun )... it's as big a hog too.. It's not just ONE GAME. But as you said, you don't buy games, so you wouldn't know.

Oh and that's 333 MHz DDR or 166 MHz real, AMD doesn't use a quad data rate(I hate whole "pumped" terminology) FSB

Missed some more details...
NForce2 chipset with a "pair" of PC2700 DIMMS... that's 333MHz DDR x 2 = 666MHz.

 

[Whitedog]

I just want to add one more point before I head our for lunch... (and I'll leave this thread alone)...

As long as it's one game that requires it, it doesn't make any sense to buy that extra 512 MB, that will only make SC4 the most expensive PC game ever.

How many people do you know... (I would see a lot of hands raising) went out and bought a new $250 VIDEO card to play a new game that came out? Or WILL when one does (DoomIII)????

What's the difference?

Because you bought it for the ONE game, means you're ready for all the future titles that are coming out... So, you're going to eventually aren't you?

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper
I wish motherboards supported bigger size memories. 256GB of RAM would be real nice. Having support for that in XP would be nice too.

First thing you need, is a CPU that could use that ran. 32bit CPU's would not cut it.

EDIT: I'm planning to upgrade in the second half of this year (propably sept-oct). I was planning to get 1gig of RAM, maybe I really should consider something like 1.5 gigs ?

 

[Sunner]

Then you shouldn't have much to say in this case.

If I didn't play them at all, I would have agreed, but I typically try most new games that look somewhat interesting, and so far they've all worked fine.

My wife bought Zoo Tycoon (OK, so I loaded it and played it... it's kinda fun )... it's as big a hog too.. It's not just ONE GAME. But as you said, you don't buy games, so you wouldn't know.

See above, though I will admit I've never tried Zoo Tycoon, didn't even know it existed in fact

Missed some more details...
NForce2 chipset with a "pair" of PC2700 DIMMS... that's 333MHz DDR x 2 = 666MHz.

Not quite.
For one thing, the FSB itself is still running at 166/333, so you won't be getting 5.2 GB/Sec of bandwidth.
And even on a P4 with DC-DDR 128 bit 166/333 RAM != 666 MHz, it's merely 2x64 bit 333 MHz DDR.

 

[Nemesis77]

I'm starting to think that Master of Orion 3 will be too much for my 384megs of PC133 RAM

 

[Whitedog]

Not quite.
For one thing, the FSB itself is still running at 166/333, so you won't be getting 5.2 GB/Sec of bandwidth.
And even on a P4 with DC-DDR 128 bit 166/333 RAM != 666 MHz, it's merely 2x64 bit 333 MHz DDR.

You know, I never even thought of it that way. My CPU is an 1800+ @ 266FSB... SO, What good is the NForce2's 2X memory bandwidth if it is bottlenecked by the FSB?? In actuality, it shouldn't be any slower running single vs. Dual Channel? Can anyone agree or disagree with that?

Thanks for bringing that up Sunner.

 

[sharkeeper]

First thing you need, is a CPU that could use that ran. 32bit CPU's would not cut it.

MP systems are capable of addressing > 4GB memory size. Having a four way Opteron with 128GB per CPU would be nice.

Cheers!

 

[Booter]

Whitedog sorry for the OT This will be my final post about PF in this thread.

OK Just for the hell of it i rescannend the image, the original data size is 467MB its a bmp

high resolution file. I openend it in Photoshop, audio is on, + Director is open with a 8mb
dir file + browser windows.

Again no problem i applied some sharpen filters, did a 180 degrees "rotate canvas"and saved
it back to disk. Now how is that for a stress test!?!

Final note.
First it was 300mb bmp file now its multiple 600+mb files. Anyway it's hardly any normal
working condition to open multiple 600 or 800 Mb high resolution files in a home
desktop with 1 IDE drive. It would be stressful for the system regardless if you have PF disabled or enabled.

To get back on topic I completely agree with Whitedog! I gig is not to much anymore. Also I say that 1 gig ram is the optimal for best performance in XP! It's the sweet spot for WinXP. The memory management in XP is far superior to any previous windows version including win2k.

Ofcourse I could be wrong, just my 2$ cents based on my own tests,
/Booter

 

[EeyoreX]

Originally posted by: Slappy00 In general I agree that "there is no such thing as too much ram" This is esp true in multitasking. I usually have Flash MX, Photoshop, my burner, and a MP3 player, along with a webpage or two, and sometimes even J-Creator (or gwad-help-me Visual Studio), all running at the same time, and let me tell you the more ram the merrier. As for GAmers your milage may vary, but for servers and developers you cant have enough

Maybe I am mistaken, someone please correct me if I am, but with most of the above listed programs open, "true multitasking" is not happening. Mostly the program you are actively using is "tasking" while most of the others are just sitting idle. Plus, my understanding is that in real "true" multitasking more than one program is run completely seperatly from the others. In this case I would think that all those programs are running and sharing all the same CPU cycles instad of, say, Photoshop using the entire CPU and Flash MX using the entire CPU (So, a multi-CPU config is where "true" multitasking can take place).

This is just my understanding of the process, and if someone can correct/confirm my thinking that'd be helpful. Mostly for my own informational needs.

And, to speak to the thread topic, I don't agree completely, At least not yeat. I recently went from 512MB to 1GB RAM and have noticed litle to no difference. Perhaps it is due to my "no longer fresh" install of my OS (WinXP) but I plan to reformat/reinstall soon anyhow. But, I'll also admit to holding to the "more is better" thinking and will keep my 1GB RAM

\Dan