Doubled my ram but didn't really see a perfomance boost

[VegasATO]

I just installed a stick of 1GB corsair value ram which put me at 2GB. I ran 3dMark03 and was surprised to only see a 10 point increase in my score. I thought I'd see a noticeable difference by doubling my ram. I play F.E.A.R. and didn't really notice a difference in that either. I then thought that maybe it had to do with mixing brands so I bought another stick of the same memory and replaced my OCZ stick. Same results. Maybe my computer just sucks, and more memory won't help? I noticed my PC still runs in dual channel mode with mixed brands of memory. Should I return the 2nd stick I bought?

I have a Asus P5PE-VM motherboard
Intel Pentium D 925
Nvidia 6200 A-LE

Any suggestions would be great

 

[gwai lo]

Just by looking at the nature of RAM, you'd know it wouldn't increase your 3dmark scores. That's more gpu based than anything else really, unless you're benching at low res.

If you run RAM intensive tasks ( for me, it was having a crap load of apps open at once to do my homework ) then it's fairly noticeable...because instead of closing everything to "take a break", I can just fire up a game and go right into it.

Anyway, basically...doesn't matter what brands you have or what speeds. RAM size is RAM size, unless you're overclocking and tweaking, you don't need to worry about anything else.

edit: Oh yes, managed to forget mentioning the higher res == more ram needed thing

edit2: oh..hm..that reply wasnt there before

 

[JustaGeek]

Just keep the 2 Gig.

If you play games at lower resolutions, you might not necessarily see the immediate improvement.

But if you get a new monitor, and increase the Video Quality to High or Ultra in certain games, you will see a dramatic improvement. Your system will use that extra RAM, instead of the Swap file on your Hard Drive.

I play my games at (almost) the highest quality settings, and the memory use in FarCry is about 1.2GB, but in Quake 4 between 1.5GB to 2.2GB!

Long story short - keep the 2 Gig.

 

[VegasATO]

Thanks for the reply. So as long as I have 2 1gb sticks of ram, dual channel will work fine? I just thought I read somewhere that mixing brands was a big no-no. Would be nice to take the money I paid for the 2nd stick and put it towards a new video card

Edit: I mean keep the mixed 2gb vs matched 2gb

 

[Fayd]

whatever you do with your memory is your choice. you might even consider selling your original stick on fs/ft to help cover the purchase of a new video card.

but whatever you do, your video card is the bottleneck. so, change it for a better one.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Fear is one of those games that is an odd ball and anything over 512mb of ram doesn't yield much (if any) performance gain. 3Dmark is a synthetic benchmarker - not a game. You will notice a HUGE performance game in games like Battlefield 2. Both in FPS and loading times.

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: VegasATO
Thanks for the reply. So as long as I have 2 1gb sticks of ram, dual channel will work fine? I just thought I read somewhere that mixing brands was a big no-no. Would be nice to take the money I paid for the 2nd stick and put it towards a new video card

Edit: I mean keep the mixed 2gb vs matched 2gb

Dual channel either works, or it doesn't. In your case it works, so as far as your Northbridge chipset "is concerned", they are a matching pair. Keep it.

But you should try to save some money and get a better Video Card - only now I've noticed your Nvidia 6200 A-LE. I am surprised that you can even play FEAR.

Wait till November - the selection should be much greater, and the prices will hopefully come down for the 8800 series.

Good luck!

 

[manowar821]

Here's the thing about some games. Titles like F.E.A.R. don't rely so much on the RAM as they rely on the GPU. If you were playing a game with huge maps and textures rather than effects you'd notice a bit more of a jump.

I recently was playing battlefield 2 with 1 gig of 6400 ddr2 on vista x64... It was basically unplayable. Low FPS, random freezing, and terribly long load times. All because the system was using my hard disk as virtual ram (this is on a nice 10k rpm drive, too!). I put in 4 gigs of XMS2 6400 ddr2 ram and now I can play on full graphics at 2x AA at 1280x1024 with no stutter.

It really depends on the game you're playing. Keep the 2 gig, though. You'll need it once your graphics card catches up. PC gamers are always playing the back-and-forth game of moving the performance bottleneck from component to component. Install a new GPU? Now the bottleneck is on your RAM. Install 4 gigs? Now it's on the CPU. Etc etc.