Does 1gb of RAM make much difference over 512mb?

[mangled]

I'm primarily concerned with gaming...I'm looking at purchasing 512mb of pc3200 ram. But am also considering 1gb. Probably going with Crucial.

My question is, is there any difference between 512mb and 1gb of RAM? Is it worth the extra expense for whatever added performance I may or may not get?

Current system specs are in my sig. Thanks!

 

[Snoop]

Really depends on the games your playing, but appears to be a trend that many of the new games really need around 1gb.

 

[mangled]

I play mostly first person shooters:

Call of Duty
BF1942
Day of Defeat
UT2k3

And of course Half Life 2 and Doom 3 whenever they come out.

 

[randumb]

I know BF1942 benefits a lot from 1GB RAM, not sure about the others.

 

[Acanthus]

BF1942 and UT2003 both benefit from 1GB of ram at maximum settings.

UT2004 on december 9th will more than likely also require 1GB for max settings. Doom 3 and HL2 will both benefit as well.

 

[mangled]

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Jeff7181]

With RAM prices what they are, there's really no reason NOT to get 1 GB for a gaming machine. You'll be much better off with 1 GB of PC3200 than if you spent a ton on faster PC4000 and only got 512.

 

[JBT]

What you should do is buy a stick of 512mb then as you see ur games NEEDs a gig buy another 512. Should make the pricing seem a bit better.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: JBTele
What you should do is buy a stick of 512mb then as you see ur games NEEDs a gig buy another 512. Should make the pricing seem a bit better.

I agree.

I was pondering getting 1 GB, but I still have 512 MB, simply cause my rig still runs every game I play great.

 

[JammingJay]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: JBTele
What you should do is buy a stick of 512mb then as you see ur games NEEDs a gig buy another 512. Should make the pricing seem a bit better.

I agree.

I was pondering getting 1 GB, but I still have 512 MB, simply cause my rig still runs every game I play great.

I also agree. I was running Win XP with 512mb of memory and recently upgraded to a 1 gig of PC3200 Hyper X memory. Honestly, not much difference in terms of performance in the games I play, NBA2k3, Tiger Woods 2k4, UT2003, Warcraft 3, Max Payne 2, etc... 512mb seems to be a the sweet spot, for XP with most games right now. I'm sure there are games that will benefit from the additional memory, but I don't believe there is enough performance difference to justify the purchase unless the game you're going to play will definitely notice the increase.

 

[Ausm]

I think 1 gig of Ram is ideal when it comes to heavy gaming.

Ausm

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

Can you think of a reason why you should NOT buy 1gb of ram? I can't. So go buy 1gb and be prepared for the future.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: TheBoyBlunder
Can you think of a reason why you should NOT buy 1gb of ram? I can't. So go buy 1gb and be prepared for the future.

You can buy beer for the money you saved?

 

[optimistic]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
With RAM prices what they are, there's really no reason NOT to get 1 GB for a gaming machine. You'll be much better off with 1 GB of PC3200 than if you spent a ton on faster PC4000 and only got 512.

Hmm, I thought we were on top of the mountain as far as ram prices are concerned. So, are you saying that we're more likely near the bottom of the mountain and now is a good time to buy ram because ram prices are more likely to go up?

 

[Jeff7181]

Well as DDR2 becomes the standard for system memory, current DDR prices will drop until it's not being manufactured by many places, then prices may go back up because the supply isn't as great... kinda like the way PC133 often costs more than PC2100 right now. When you can get 1 GB for $160-180, that's not bad at all.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: mangled
I play mostly first person shooters:

Call of Duty
BF1942
Day of Defeat
UT2k3

And of course Half Life 2 and Doom 3 whenever they come out.

i have played all those games (minus BF1942) with 512 of ram @ 1280*1024 4X AA/8X AF and i get no lag so for me 1gb is not necessary

 

[mangled]

well I've seen 512mb of Crucial pc3200 memory for $93, and 1gb of Corsair pc3200 memory for $173. Unless there's serious problems with Corsair, that's the better deal.

 

[Megatomic]

Of the games you listed I only play UT2003. The only benefit I see to 1GB of RAM with UT2003 is when you exit the game. With 512MB my hard drive was thrashed as the page file was being hit heavily. When I upgraded to 1GB I didn't see this behavior anymore.

 

[0roo0roo]

search forum for 1gb, loads of threads.

and yes. its started, and soon it will be evenmore important.

 

[yhelothar]

i always have a bunch of things open.. I saw a HUGE performance improvement from 512MB to 1GB... Mostly when I switch to an old internet explorer window, it would used to freeze for like 5 seconds because it would load everything from my virtual memory, now it's always instant

 

[Megatomic]

Of course there are many cases where 1GB of RAM makes a big difference over 512MB. But he was asking about his games specifically here.

In the future, many more games are going to be RAM limited, 1GB will become a standard before too long.