Does Vista demand 4gb for gaming?

[netjack]

Slowly building a new rig and can't pass up on the latest price drops in ddr2 ram. Thinking about buying 4gb to future proof for Vista's dx 10 games.

God I remembered when my friends thought I was crazy to run 2gb just for BF2 over 2 years ago...and now 4gb!? crazy..

 

[Smilin]

No. It's really the game that requires the memory. Same as in XP. You know how it is. Most games are fine with 1gig but there are a few big titles that give a touch of thrashing if you don't have 1.5. I've not seen anything yet that really gained by moving from 1.5 to 2 (when I was in XP). I'm running 2gig in Vista and games are smooth as silk.

Future proofing is never bad if the price is right though.

 

[SoulAssassin]

The price will fall further before you will notice any significant difference in game play. Don't bother.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
The price will fall further before you will notice any significant difference in game play. Don't bother.

True. For now buying larger sticks to be sure you have some open slots for future upgrades is probably a good call.

 

[netjack]

so you're saying stay away from a 4x1gb arrangement? The corsairs are really hard to pass up at $167/2gb

 

[Sureshot324]

Vista manages memory much better than XP. It's true that your mem usage will be much higher than XP at idle, but if you start up a game that needs that memory, Vista will free most of it.

Most games out now that need 2gb to run smoothly are just badly programmed games that were intended to run fine on 1gb but ended up using slightly more than 1gb, resulting in HD thrashing (BF2, FEAR, Gothic 3). Any game with a good engine runs fine on 1gb (all games on Source engine, Unreal Engine, Doom 3 engine, Oblivion). There is no game that uses anywhere near 2gb right now and won't be for a long time because there are too many 1gb systems out there right now.

To go 4gb now would be a waste IMO. DDR3 is coming out later this year so to buy all that DDR2 Ram would be a bad investement.

 

[Piuc2020]

I noticed a big jump in performance in games going from 1GB to 2GB, but when I went all the way to 4GB (not for gaming mind you) there was not a difference.

Save your money for when RAM is even less expensive, 1GB is yesterday's 512MB and 2GB is yesterday's 1GB, if that made any sense. The point is all new games will run fine on 1GB but they'll surely like to have an extra gig in there, any more than that and you are wasting your money for the time being.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: netjack
so you're saying stay away from a 4x1gb arrangement? The corsairs are really hard to pass up at $167/2gb

Yeah.

I would do 2x 1gig for now but that's me. What would suck is if prices drop and 2gig single sticks become available but you don't have any free slots.

I run 4GB on my 2nd box but I use it for VMs a lot. I only run 2GB on my main Vista gaming rig You don't seem to be flinching at spending the extra money so if you want go for it.

 

[LintMan]

Vista doesn't support 4GB of physical RAM, unless you're running the 64-bit version.

I know this because I have 32-bit Vista and 4GB (1GBx4) in my system and Vista only shows <3GB total ram. I can remove any one stick and it remains the same.

The problem is that PCI bus stuff like vid card memory is mapped into the lower 4GB address space, so it can't be used for RAM. MS could support the remapping of memory above the 4GB line (yes, even with a 32-bit OS) and apparently did at one time in XP (but disabled it - google for PAE), and now doesn't support it in Vista 32-bit.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: LintMan
Vista doesn't support 4GB of physical RAM, unless you're running the 64-bit version.

I know this because I have 32-bit Vista and 4GB (1GBx4) in my system and Vista only shows <3GB total ram. I can remove any one stick and it remains the same.

The problem is that PCI bus stuff like vid card memory is mapped into the lower 4GB address space, so it can't be used for RAM. MS could support the remapping of memory above the 4GB line (yes, even with a 32-bit OS) and apparently did at one time in XP (but disabled it - google for PAE), and now doesn't support it in Vista 32-bit.

One of the reasons why I went with 64 bit version of Vista ,so that all my ram is seen and being used,when I was on XP(32 bit version) only 3.25gb was seen.


At the moment Vista does not demand 4GB for gaming,I would say 1GB is a minimal start I would aim for in Vista,2GB is fine at the moment,but sooner or later down the road I'm sure some games will need 3GB plus.

 

[netjack]

I defintely don't want to be spending money willy nilly but I only upgrade every 2/2.5 yrs so I want to future proof. I do have the 64bit Vista so I could run 4gb. But with your advice, I probably will stick w/ 2gb. And that comment about games being coded bad? I play mostly bf2 and bf2142 So a bad engine is a neccessary evil.

As always thx fellow techers!

 

[Nothinman]

The problem is that PCI bus stuff like vid card memory is mapped into the lower 4GB address space, so it can't be used for RAM. MS could support the remapping of memory above the 4GB line (yes, even with a 32-bit OS) and apparently did at one time in XP (but disabled it - google for PAE), and now doesn't support it in Vista 32-bit.

No, they've never supported addresses over the 4G mark in 32-bit XP or Vista and PAE is still usable but only for the NX stuff and not the higher addresses.

 

[LintMan]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The problem is that PCI bus stuff like vid card memory is mapped into the lower 4GB address space, so it can't be used for RAM. MS could support the remapping of memory above the 4GB line (yes, even with a 32-bit OS) and apparently did at one time in XP (but disabled it - google for PAE), and now doesn't support it in Vista 32-bit.

No, they've never supported addresses over the 4G mark in 32-bit XP or Vista and PAE is still usable but only for the NX stuff and not the higher addresses.

I'm no expert - I'm just going by what I've read here and elsewhere, so I don't know what NX is.

But this MS link says Windows Server 2003 (which I believe is descended from XP and from which Vista descends) supports >4GB. I thought I read elsewhere that XP did at one point but SP2 removed it. But I also thought I read that it was removed from Server 2003 as well, but this article is fairly recent. My main point was that MS *could* support more than 4GB in x86 Vista, but chose not to.

Maybe I'm just bitter because some pre-release Vista hype said 32-bit Vista would support 4GB+, and I bought it. :disgust:

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: netjack
I defintely don't want to be spending money willy nilly but I only upgrade every 2/2.5 yrs so I want to future proof. I do have the 64bit Vista so I could run 4gb. But with your advice, I probably will stick w/ 2gb. And that comment about games being coded bad? I play mostly bf2 and bf2142 So a bad engine is a neccessary evil.

As always thx fellow techers!

If you game, hold off until DX10 games are actually out, Vista will probably have decent drivers and a service pack by then. You can go ahead and get kickass hardware, but Vista is *NOT* ready for prime time. Gamers are the worst possible users of Vista at the present.

 

[Nothinman]

But this MS link says Windows Server 2003 (which I believe is descended from XP and from which Vista descends) supports >4GB. I thought I read elsewhere that XP did at one point but SP2 removed it. But I also thought I read that it was removed from Server 2003 as well, but this article is fairly recent. My main point was that MS *could* support more than 4GB in x86 Vista, but chose not to.

Win2K3 Server and XP are based on the same code base so yes it's technically possible for MS to support much more memory in XP, but virtually all of the limitations present in Windows are artificially put there by MS to seperate the SKUs and charge more for the higher versions. And the client SKU has always been limited to 4G at least partially to protect users from crappy drivers. A good example that I've heard from a pretty reliable source that the nVidia drivers like to BSOD a Win2K3 machine that's configured like that.

 

[BD2003]

Gaming is just fine with 2gb, but if you play the same game often, having 4gb could decrease load times significantly if the game files are superfetched.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: netjack
I defintely don't want to be spending money willy nilly but I only upgrade every 2/2.5 yrs so I want to future proof. I do have the 64bit Vista so I could run 4gb. But with your advice, I probably will stick w/ 2gb. And that comment about games being coded bad? I play mostly bf2 and bf2142 So a bad engine is a neccessary evil.

As always thx fellow techers!

If you game, hold off until DX10 games are actually out, Vista will probably have decent drivers and a service pack by then. You can go ahead and get kickass hardware, but Vista is *NOT* ready for prime time. Gamers are the worst possible users of Vista at the present.

Are YOU running Vista?

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: netjack
I defintely don't want to be spending money willy nilly but I only upgrade every 2/2.5 yrs so I want to future proof. I do have the 64bit Vista so I could run 4gb. But with your advice, I probably will stick w/ 2gb. And that comment about games being coded bad? I play mostly bf2 and bf2142 So a bad engine is a neccessary evil.

As always thx fellow techers!

If you game, hold off until DX10 games are actually out, Vista will probably have decent drivers and a service pack by then. You can go ahead and get kickass hardware, but Vista is *NOT* ready for prime time. Gamers are the worst possible users of Vista at the present.

Are YOU running Vista?

Not on my main box anymore. I still have it on one of my notebooks and my 2nd internet workstation.

 

[hardcandy2]

I run Vista, I bought 2 1GB sticks and 2 512mb sticks to fill the 4 slots and run everything in dual channel. Then If I need more I can upgrade the 512mb to 1GB each.