3+GB of memory not needed for gaming?

[Hyraxxx]

I came across this Firingsquad's benchmark that compared 6 different operating systems. XP 32 and 64 bit. Vista 32 and 64 bit, and windows 7 32 and 64 bit.

Knowing that 32bit can only recognize about 3GBs of memory, when they were comparing primarily the performance of the OS's, I kept the memory limitations in mind and saw some interesting results. There was practically no difference in the average FPS.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_7_gaming/page5.asp

 

[fire400]

just do windows 7 with 4-6 GB's and you're set to go. Really, if you can down 150 bucks for 6GB, you got nothing to lose there.

I remember when 128mb SDR sticks were over a hundred dollars a piece.

http://i4memory.com/wp/article/474

obviously 6gb.

A well-written game will load everything into RAM to avoid slow disk accesses. It may have to access the disk during scene changes, but most of the time the gameplay will be independent of the disk.

On the other hand, if you don't have enough RAM to hold everything, then that might force the game to access the disk more often. If that's the case, you're probably better off buying RAM than a faster disk.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/253530-32-storage-gamer

 

[Hyraxxx]

I understand, I was just curious whether it was worth the hassle to reformat and go 64bit when a 32bit OS would run games fine given the memory limit. Given the benchmarks showed virtually no difference between 32bit and 64bit. And 32bit should limit the 6GB of Ram they used to about 3GBs. I have 4GB of ram currently.

 

[F1shF4t]

I was getting out of memory messages in SC2 with 4 gig of ram. (Although upping the pagefile from 600MB to 2000MB seemed to fix it)

No point keeping 32bit unless you have things which won't work in 64bit os. I think we getting close to the point where 4GB is going to be the absolute min for gaming system just like 2GB is now.

 

[Rifter]

ive been on 64bit Vista when i had 8GB of ram, then built a home server and went back to 4GB and installed 32bit Vista. Noticed no differnace at all gaming.

 

[Soccerman06]

There should be no difference between 4gb and 8gb if the system isn't utilizing 4 gb completely. However there are ways to increase memory usage through console commands or editing text files. Whether that really increases performance or not is dependant on game coding. 4gb is more than enough for gaming without many background programs on any OS.

 

[mv2devnull]

You must remember that Windows sets limits on how much memory a single Windows application can address. For 32-bit binaries that limit is 2 GB, regardless of whether the Windows is 32 or 64 bit. Most (if not all) games are 32-bit binaries.

Windows (dynamic linker) can be told to offer (a bit) more than 2 GB for a 32-bit binary with LargeAddressAware flag. But an application that has been written to rely on 32-bit addresses can break.

So basic assumption is that a game can only use 2 GB. Windows, drivers, and other applications do need some RAM too, but hopefully fit into 1 GB. If so, then that 3 GB is enough (for now).


If one would have plenty of RAM, one could set up a ramdrive and install the game there. If the game (a) fits into ramdrive, (b) repeatedly (re)reads its data files from "disk", and (c) disk access is the bottleneck, then that would really speed up. DDR3 is faster than SSD, isn't it? However, that would probably not affect the framerate, just loading levels.

 

[FishAk]

Instead of a RAM disk, doesn't it make more sense to go with W7x64? If you have more RAM than the game can use, won't superfetch still populate all the available RAM? I tend to think that would help the system all around, though if you were ONLY concerned with a particular game, the RAM drive might make sence.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I was getting out of memory messages in SC2 with 4 gig of ram.

System requirements only call for 1.5GB. You might want to check your setup there.

 

[Voo]

You must remember that Windows sets limits on how much memory a single Windows application can address. For 32-bit binaries that limit is 2 GB, regardless of whether the Windows is 32 or 64 bit. Most (if not all) games are 32-bit binaries.

Well you can set the flag afterwards with a few clicks and if the app is sensibly programmed that really shouldn't be a problem.. should - as long as nobody tried to be extra clever. Had quite some success with that and some older apps (there was also some way to let the memory manager allocate the high bit memory first, so you can find out rather fast if the app has problems with it or not)

 

[kalrith]

I was getting out of memory messages in SC2 with 4 gig of ram.

Same here. With Win7x64 and nothing running but the background programs and SC2, I use about 3.2 GB of RAM.

 

[kalrith]

System requirements only call for 1.5GB. You might want to check your setup there.

This probably assumes that you're using a paging file. SC2 uses about 2GB of RAM just by itself.

 

[Kyanzes]

Think of Gothic 3!!! Shitty programming needs a lot of RAM for memory leaks!!! Filled my 4GB back then in about fifteen minutes of gaming.

I think the convenient amount of RAM nowadays (talking about gaming here) is about 4-6GB. Go for 6GB to remain on the safe side.

 

[exar333]

System requirements only call for 1.5GB. You might want to check your setup there.

Maybe you should check your sources before posting? SC2 has widely been seen to use between 3.3-3.7GB of RAM in many systems. I have 6GB system memory, and I see around 50-55% memory usage; my brother has 4GB RAM and he is usually between 75-80% usage. It uses a lot of memory; not to say it runs "slow" with less, but it is very memory-hungry.

 

[Yellowbeard]

, I kept the memory limitations in mind and saw some interesting results. There was practically no difference in the average FPS.

For the most part, memory will rarely affect FPS anyway. Changing memory amounts to measure FPS changes is an odd test.

Having "enough" memory WILL improve your overall gaming experience as will HD thruput. Overall game load times, map loading, stutter due to swapping, HD thrashing, etc all can have a negative impact on your play and enjoyment.

As noted above, purely for gaming 4GB - 6GB is a great range for modern games.

 

[tweakboy]

Not a true statement. W7 uses almost 2GB of ram for OS and running apps. Soo if you have 3GB your in trouble especially newer games. With 4GB you should be good with games. Thank you and gg and gb and tc

 

[Yellowbeard]

Not a true statement. W7 uses almost 2GB of ram for OS and running apps. Soo if you have 3GB your in trouble especially newer games. With 4GB you should be good with games. Thank you and gg and gb and tc

What is not a true statement?

 

[Auric]

Maybe I have olde timey habits as far as closing apps when not in use, but usage tends to be closer to 1 than 2 GB.

As for 'nuff, I would rather say that not having it degrades performance (ergo increasing capacity cannot increase performance but only lessen or eliminate degradation and any more than that has no effect).

 

[Cerb]

Not a true statement. W7 uses almost 2GB of ram for OS and running apps. Soo if you have 3GB your in trouble especially newer games. With 4GB you should be good with games. Thank you and gg and gb and tc

I'm afraid that's the 'not true' statement. Maybe on an OEM box w/ crapware, but otherwise, no. More like 1/4 of that.

More RAM decreases the likelihood that you will need to go the disk for a file, and decreases the need to move pages to/from the disk, improving overall performance. Anyone who says you can't use more RAM has not tried .

 

[Hyraxxx]

I guess I am questioning the methodology of the review. The review is testing gaming on Windows OS both 32 and 64 bit, Xp Vista and 7. The average FPS seem not to change much if at all. Makes me think I don't need to jump on purchasing a 64 bit OS when 32 bit works fine according to the reviews. Did they forget about the RAM limitation? 6GB on a 32bit OS is overkill?

 

[Voo]

I guess I am questioning the methodology of the review. The review is testing gaming on Windows OS both 32 and 64 bit, Xp Vista and 7. The average FPS seem not to change much if at all. Makes me think I don't need to jump on purchasing a 64 bit OS when 32 bit works fine according to the reviews. Did they forget about the RAM limitation? 6GB on a 32bit OS is overkill?

I can kind of understand why someone wouldn't want to use XP-64 and why people waited when Vista came out (horrible driver situation)... but today? The only reason to buy 32bit Win7 is if you've got hardware that doesn't have 64bit drivers available (though what are the chances that it'll have win7 drivers at all?) or 16bit apps (ancient house developed enterprise stuff.. I fear there's too much of that out there, but it should still be overall negligible).

For 99.99% of all users, there's just no reason at all to go with Win7 32bit.. also don't forget about the other advantages 64bit gives you, other than just >4gb RAM.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

For the most part, memory will rarely affect FPS anyway. Changing memory amounts to measure FPS changes is an odd test.

Having "enough" memory WILL improve your overall gaming experience as will HD thruput. Overall game load times, map loading, stutter due to swapping, HD thrashing, etc all can have a negative impact on your play and enjoyment.

As noted above, purely for gaming 4GB - 6GB is a great range for modern games.

This.

Won't see much FPS difference at all. More RAM solves stuttering (noticed it bad in BF2 with less than 2GB and settings high. didn't show in FPS differences), level loading times, etc.

It sucks and is kinda lame to not have enough RAM, so that's why I always say you can't have too much. My next system in a year or so will have no less than 8GB.

 

[Yellowbeard]

With any modern OS, (and mebbe even older ones) XP32 bit and forward with 2GB or more of memory, increasing the system memory amount, ioncreasing the memory frequency, or improving the memory timings is going going to produce almost NO meaningful change in FPS or MAX FPS.

If you want to test it, load up and run 3DMark06 or Vantage even with 1GB of system memory. Then, add all the system memory you want to. The score will not change outside the normal score variance between tests.

Anyone remember when BF2 first hit and people with 1GB of RAM were complaining about lag and frame stutter? It wasn't the game servers, or the ISPs, the GPUs, the drivers, or anything else. It was lack of system memory. People popped another GB of RAM in and viola! However, FPS was still not affected.

But, FPS or more accurately, MAX FPS is not a good measure of the overall gaming experience. For overall gaming experience 2GB of memory is a bottleneck to better gaming. 4GB - 6GB is the sweet spot.

A 2GB-3GB setup is certainly playable and hits the same MAX FPS as the same hardware with 4GB - 6GB. However, you'll be sitting around twiddling your thumbs while the game is first loaded and while new screens or maps load. I hate loading into a game such as BF BC2 and all the vehicles are gone and guys are racking up huge scores or the other team is killing me in the spawn and capping bases.

4GB -6GB, an SSD, a quad core CPU, Windows 7 64bit, and a good GPU are good ingredients for a better overall gaming experience.

 

[Auric]

Anyone remember when BF2 first hit and people with 1GB of RAM were complaining about lag and frame stutter? It wasn't the game servers, or the ISPs, the GPUs, the drivers, or anything else. It was lack of system memory. People popped another GB of RAM in and viola! However, FPS was still not affected.

That was actually due to insufficient video memory when set to high textures. However, 'nuff video memory was not generally an option at the time so the next best thing was "paging" to system memory and if not 'nuff of that (i.e. 1 instead of 2GB) then the horrible stutter since then paging to disk. Or the setting could be reduced to medium. I played it aplenty like that with 1GB.

 

[arredondo]

I have a related question... if you are playing a game that recommends 2GB of RAM for best results and you clearly have enough at 4GB of RAM using 64-bit Win7, will 4GB of DDR3 RAM in the same setup provide any noticeable improvements over 4GB of DDR2 RAM?

To the point, does DDR3 have any real world advantage over DDR2 if you have way more memory altogether than an application needs?