1GB of Ram

[Ages120]

Ut2004, Battle Field vietnam, any mmorpg game you can think of, and not really bf1942 but its mods most definetly need 1gb to keep from eating your hard drive alive with page files. I myself only have 512, and I can't even play Desert Combat or Battle field vietnam because my hard drive pages like mad stalling the game even though I get playable frame rates.

1gb is definetly worth it even if you have to go with slower ram to keep in budget.

Half life 2 might need more then 512 but its developers no how to optimize everything and will most likely make it run without huge amounts of paging. Doom3 I doubt will need so much with its small maps and low model counts. When mods for hl2 come out where the makers are not as good at making a game and often waste space a gig will easily be needed.

 

[ss284]

Originally posted by: Psych
Concerning BF1942...

I don't see why you'd need 1GB of RAM for this game. I ran this game fairly smoothly with 256MB of RAM, and I upgraded to 512 and I only noticed a little less lag than usual.

Have you tried any of the mods? I know that desert combat on a 32+ person server takes at least 400mb of ram. Before I had 512, and it chugged whenever there was alot of action on screen, or some moron crashed a heli into the ground, because my harddrive was swapping. Now that I added another 512 stick, its smooth as butter.

bf1942 mods crave ram more so than any other game I know of.

-Steve

 

[Looney]

Definitely get 1GB of ram... i've had 1GB in each of my system for almost 2 years, and certainly don't regret it.

 

[Arcanedeath]

1 GB is a safe bet now for playing games, Most newer games run better w/ 1 GB and any MMORPG (eg Everquest, City of Heros, DAOC, ect...) want at least 1GB to be smooth. Even w/ memory as expensive as it is now another 512mb isn't that much more and it can drasticly improve gameplay in many titles. Just my 2 cents... 🙂

 

[Nefarious1]

I'd say get the gig. when one of my modules went bad. I started to run with 1x12MB stick. IT was noticable slower. But i'm running in dual channel.so there is more than a loss in memory hit.

 

[wseyller]

I play Desert Combat(BF1942 mod) and Battlefield Vietnam. I know exactly how much memory my system uses because I have an LCD that shows the exact usage. Example: (881.98MB / 1022.73MB 86% Load). When at desktop in windows Xp I'm normally at about 20 percent usage of 1GB of system memory. I can see my memory fill up as the map loads. Depending on the map I've seen my lcd show anywhere from 70 to 95 percent usage. So these games by themselves use more than 512MB of system memory.

 

[MidasKnight]

bump

 

[Soulkeeper]

i got 1GB of ddr pc3500 as an upgrade from 768mb of pc133 mem
it was quite a leap (atleast from what i could notice), in comparison to 512mb of pc3500 the difference is less tho by a quite a good margin

256mb is not enough much anymore on the latest stuff
1024 is preferable imho

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: PliotronX
I noticed when going from 512->1Gig that there was a lot less hitching in games such as UT2k3, BF1942, SimCity 4, etc.. I would imagine it helps with Far Cry, UT2k4, et al. There was also less lag when exiting games and I could even leave more crap open while playing 🙂

That's exactly what I noticed as well. 😎

 

[dguy6789]

NO NO NO NO NO. there is a HUGE difference between 1GB and 512MB of ram nowadays. Dont listen to anyone who says use 512.

Try playing Ut2k4 at max settings then do it again with 512MB, you will cry. DO the same with C&C generals zero hour, and far cry.

1GB of ram is better then ANY 512MB stick out there. I dont care if you find 1 1 1 1 timing 512MB stick, it wont be as fast as 2 512s of even 3 4 4 10.

So, if you are building a system for gaming, 1gb is the MINIMUM, not preferable. 1.5Gb is better, dont go lower then a GB ever if you game.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
1 gig is the only way to fly

/1gb corsair XMS pc3200

I agree.

but 1gb corsair XMS pc3500 plat. in my case 🙂

let me expand my thought abit.

I have 2 gameworthy PCs:

Main Rig:
P4 @3.12Ghz
1 gig dual channel corsair PC3500
Radeon 9700Pro

Side Rig:
P4@2.6Ghz
512 buffalo PC3700 (running at PC2700 due to motherboard limitations)
Radeon 9800 (overclocked to Radeon 9700Pro speed)


In all reality these two systems (aside from the memory difference) should perform about the same in games. However there is a noticeable jump in performance (read: a lot less skipped frames) on my Main Rig. The only thing drastically different is the ram.

 

[caz67]

Most games are very memory intensive and demanding. I personally feel that you can't have enough memory. So yes , 1 GB is better.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I recommend 1 gig as the absolute minimum for a mid range to high end gaming rig.

I haven't attempted any of the latest games on anything with less than 1GB of ram.
Some games that have been out for a while really really taxed my system back when I only had 512MB.
Morrowind, Battlefield 1942 (the demo for this game, as I had 1GB before the full version came out), & Simcity 4.

My typical RAM usage when just cruising the web, checking email, listening to music, etc ... is about 350 MB ... (though I have newsbin pro running in the background ... and it uses about 55MB, and a BUNCH of tabs open in firefox .. which adds another 70MB, and my crappy windows firewall (Outpost) uses 22MB. Motherboard Monitor takes up 10MB too ...
so if I shut down lots of these things (which I usually only shut down 1/2 of thew when gaming) I could probably run on 768MB of ram without any trouble.

I'm hoping that the 1GB PC3200 chips drop in price ... (say $100 each maybe, even with cas 3 that would be fine for me) cause I'd really like to upgrade to 2GB.


512MB of faster/lowwer latency ram will make for small improvements in some things, but it will make for massive losses in times when you actually need that extra ram.

Get as much ram as you can. More is better than faster when it comes to Ram (as long as you don't go with like, PC1600 or low end PC2100, you will be fine)

 

[dionx]

i just bought a stick of Mushkin Blue 512MB PC3200 from newegg. i already of one of those sticks in my system, and with dual LCDs, i run alot more programs so firing up UT2004 maxes out the RAM usage. hopefully 1GB total not only helps UT2004 load faster but just have all the programs i use at once not slow down.

 

[Gerbil333]

I have 512mb, and my memory usage exceeds 570mb's sometimes after playing UT2k4, and often takes 15-20 seconds to exit the game. On occasion, the game will pause soon after a map is loaded and the hd will chug for a bit...that can take anywhere from 1 second up to 20 seconds (but usually about 1-5 seconds, and it rarely happens). FarCry also eats up all my RAM.

 

[dionx]

UT2004 exits real fast and i hear no harddrive activity after the exit. i can fire up IE right after exiting UT2004 and there is no lag

fired up Onslaught - Torlan and noticed the RAM usage went up to 688MB. immediately went to 394MB upon exit (high because i had other programs running at the same time)

 

[0roo0roo]

how did you measure that? i find that unless you have task manager open on a 2nd window, the ram usage drops when you minimize to check.

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
so your saying if you get 512mb of really fast ram, it will be the equivalent or even better then 1gb of slower ram?

really depends on the applications that you are using.
I agree that one fast 512MB is better then 1GB of slow ram if you aren't running heavy programs like video editing or photoshop .... etc...or the latest games...

 

[dmw16]

A gig is pretty much a must for the current round of games. Namely Far Cry and UT2k4. It will definatly be needed for HL2 and Doom3. Get a gig.

From first hand experience, I had 512MB of my ram go bad and while I was waiting for the new one, I lost about 10fps in far cry.
-doug

 

[dionx]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
how did you measure that? i find that unless you have task manager open on a 2nd window, the ram usage drops when you minimize to check.

i have dual screen. i run coolmon on the 2ndary screen so i can see ram usage and cpu usage as the game progresses on the primary monitor.

 

[Ilmater]

If you ever play BF1942, you will see an amazing difference. Guaranteed.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Here's another vote for 1GB!

If you're running WinXP and playing UT2K4, things will slow down if you go under 768. I consider 1GB the sweet spot if your playing modern games or using graphics programs such as Photoshop, etc. (though, PS will use all the RAM you can give it).

 

[CraigRT]

if you can do the gig, go for it.
for the most part, 512 is OK.. but on some games, as most people have said, you will see a difference.