4 G of memory useless for gaming?

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: ribbon13

Originally posted by: SophalotJack
Go cure cancer, genius.

Laetrile.

Next?

BTW, I'm getting 2.8GB peak commit charge with UE3 in a 32-bit enviroment right now... So I'll go with the '4GB not useful for gamers' stance because no one here is going to be having 32 player matches with a 2560x1600 screen.

UE3 = Unreal Editor? What else do you have running? That sounds huge.

 

[ribbon13]

Unreal Engine 3

 

[DEredita]

I've read that Windows XP (Home & Pro) can't reconigize 4GB of ram. From what I read, the BIOS will state 4GB, but Windows will show that you only have 2.5 to 3.25GB of ram.

Now with Windows XP 64-bit, every article I read says it has a different ceiling. Some say it's 120GB, some say 16GB and some say 12GB.


I won't waste the money for 4GB of ram if you have XP Home or Pro since it won't reconogize it all. IF you have Windows XP 64-bit edition and you have the money - then why not.

 

[Rubycon]

No complaints from X64

The A8N32-SLI allows GOOD ram to run at DDR500 speeds with heavy loading, i.e. all four sockets occupied with 1GB pieces. Must drop down to 2T but it's not THAT bad. Sandra scores go up to ~7200MB/S or so at 1T BUT that will cost half the memory (back to 2GB). Might as well use Win32? Not really - X64 is still better. No more 4095MB limits PER paging file either but that's another story unrelated to gaming.

With a good video card (1900/7900 class) the penalty dropping to 2T is not THAT bad.

 

[Rangoric]

3gb > 2gb.

In 32bit windows the max a single program will get is 2gb (intersting, will have to look that up) however, having more then that limit will help as it allows windows to not have a real chance to use the page file.

Its the reason you never fill a cup up all the way, you always leave some room.

So I have to agree, having 4gb can, and in the near future may help with gaming (and might already if you play a very memory oriented game like GCII on gigantic with everything abundant for example), but in general at this point game developers are staying away from that 2gb barrier.

So I am saying 4gb > 2gb, but only in the context that those are the only 2 values asked about. I'd say 2gb + 512mb would be ideal (as a minimum 3gb is a nicer rounder number) as that gets the cup just big enough that you should never have to worry about it.

Saying that more then 2gb is worthless isgnores not only what you are saying, but the fact that no matter what you have an OS.

 

[DEredita]

IMHO, I wouldn't waste 4GB with 32bit windows, either I would upgrade to 64-bit XP or wait until Vista. I capped off at 2GB. My next PC will have 4GB+.

 

[DEredita]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/top10.mspx

 

[Rotax]

i'm sure its been said, but mb no SINGLE game can utilize that amount, but if like me and MANY others you run multiple instances of say...in my case: Everquest . . you can use that amount. 3-4 clients prob run ok..could get away with more 5+ if you lower options, np.

Sure, playing FPS, u can't really play 2 chars at the same time, thus making it useless...but as stated above, 'certain' gamers can use it to its potential if wanted.

IMO, 2G is the best price -> perf ratio atm . .

 

[DrMrLordX]

If your sole reason for running 1 gig x 4 on an Athlon 64 platform is to "turn off VM", then you're hurting overall system performance. Running at 2T applies a ~5% penalty to everything you do that won't fit in your processor's l2 cache. Leaving VM on will give you a small performance penalty to your disk subsystem by performing presumably-useless swaps to the drive. If you're REALLY afraid of Windows overzealously pushing data to your drive due to swapping, you should just get a Gigabyte iRAM or something and put your swap file on that. 2 gigs of old PC2700 you have lying around the house ought to do the trick.

4 gigs obviously helps if you're running multiple instances of games or are running other processes in the background, even on a 32-bit platform. It's still hard to recommend it for Athlon 64 users what with the scarcity of high-performance 2 gig DIMMS on the market.