2 or 3gb of ram

[phantom404]

Is there a big performance gain going from 2GB to 3GB? Only going to be used for games.

 

[darkxshade]

2 is more than enough.

 

[jc9970]

Originally posted by: phantom404
Is there a big performance gain going from 2GB to 3GB? Only going to be used for games.

Nope not for gaming, atleast not yet.. You're good with 2GB.

 

[alimoalem]

nope

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: jc9970

Originally posted by: phantom404
Is there a big performance gain going from 2GB to 3GB? Only going to be used for games.

Nope not for gaming, atleast not yet.. You're good with 2GB.

 

[dreammachine]

Thanks for the help...friend asked for me while I joined up. Guess I'll save the additional money for new monitors. Thanks again.

 

[YoshiSato]

How much ram do you really need?

 

[snoopdoug1]

Originally posted by: YoshiSato
How much ram do you really need?

According to that, 1 GB is fine for all the new games?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Doug3737

Originally posted by: YoshiSato
How much ram do you really need?

According to that, 1 GB is fine for all the new games?

Multitasking Is What Is Really Affected

We assembled a simple multitasking test in order to further explore the importance of system memory size. Up until this moment it has been fairly obvious that when using only one application at a time, 512 MB system memory can indeed be enough. This is especially true in applications that don't need a lot of memory, although, as we've shown, it is absolutely not true when the application requires large amounts of data (e.g. high quality textures).

Quake 4 has shown the most benefits from more system memory so far, or at least it took the biggest performance hit due to insufficient system memory. While 512 MB clearly was not enough at Ultra Quality, we were interested in seeing how much system memory we needed in order to use a memory-hungry application at the same time while looping the game.

...

With 1.5 GB (2x 256 MB + 2x 512 MB) and 2 GB system memory, the FPS result was lower due to higher CPU load, but the game experience amazingly was just as smooth during the file transfer as before or after it. At the same time, the file transfer quickly reached its maximum speed and didn't slow down. Actually, this was also the case when running the game at Low Quality settings with only 512 MB of system memory.

1 GB

Indeed, 1 GB of system memory will most likely be enough for the average user and for people.

2 GB

Still there are situations where more than 1 GB is what you want.

* If you are a professional user, you might need more than 1 GB for really heavy applications.
* If you intend to do heavy multitasking, especially if you have more than one CPU or CPU core. Running RAM intensive games such as World of Warcraft, downloading files via high speed FTP or encrypted protocols, Bittorrent or any P2P program; decompressing large archives and playing large size video files in a window or on second monitor all at the same time can max out your system memory pretty fast - if your CPU can handle it.

While 1GB of RAM is sufficient for almost any game if you're not running anything else at the same time, most people have *some* stuff running the background. And other than BF2 and Q4 at high settings, they didn't test any really memory-intensive games (like some MMORPGs). I'd say the conclusion here is "1GB is pretty good, but 2GB is better, especially if you are multitasking."

Going much beyond 2GB has very limited benefits unless you are heavily multitasking. In 32-bit Windows, a single application can only access up to 2GB of RAM (there are some kernel options you can use to get 3GB of application space, but developers generally can't count on this). What that means is that even if a single game/application needs almost 2GB of RAM by itself, you would be OK with 2GB of RAM as long as you weren't trying to run much else at the same time.

 

[YoshiSato]

Well I have 2 GB in my rig. But i'm not what you call a normal user.

I believe I could put 4GB in my rig but the cost of 1GB modules is not worth it the lack of preformance increase. While I'm not sure I'd think I have to use registered 1GB chips which only adds to the cost(I have not investigaged the registered requirement because I'm not going to thorw away 2GB of good 512 modules.)

 

[Porter21]

lol, wish I even had 2gigs of ram