How much RAM is TOO MUCH

[steppinthrax]

OK this is the deal. I have a AMD XP 3200 + system with about 1gb of ram. I know it's an older system but it serves my needs and I'm able to play almost all games with my ATI x1950 XT video card. I'm planning to put another stick of 1gb ram in there totaling 2gb of PC3200. would it make any improvement to system perfomace esp for gamming. I'm running an XP pro system right now...

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Not really worth it if your PC has thouse specs. Your CPU is way to slow and the video car is to slow to need any more ram than 1gb.

You PC will benefit from a total workover (new system) than anther 1gb of ram.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Totally the wrong thing to say. Moving from 1GB to 2GB is a VAST improvement across all areas. The difference is really outstanding. Beyond that you may not necessarily notice going to more than 2GB. Especially running on a 32bit os.

The X1950XT is not really a slow card at all, whoever thinks that needs to take a look at the performance it offers for people who don't need to stretch their epenis out for all to see.

 

[JustaGeek]

Get another Gig - you won't be disappointed.

@cmdrdredd,
How does the new 2900XT compare to your old 1950XT (if I remember correctly...).
Is it "mind-blowing", or just a good improvement?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Get another Gig - you won't be disappointed.

@cmdrdredd,
How does the new 2900XT compare to your old 1950XT (if I remember correctly...).
Is it "mind-blowing", or just a good improvement?

I had an X1900Xt and the difference is pretty mind blowing in a way. Cranking up pretty much any game with 8xaa and 16xaf running faster than my old card could handle 4x/8x. It's a big difference to me. If I ran 4x/16x I would be getting on average 20-30fps more than my X1900 at the same settings using 4x/8x depending on what game we're talking about. 3dmark went from just about 6k to over 11k.(although lots of ppl don't care about 3dmark).

 

[JustaGeek]

Cool!

 

[steppinthrax]

Well I was doing further research after making this question and found it actually to be true. They have a lot of old (I mean before the 3200 XP) benchmarking results of 1GB v.s. 2GB and in every case there is a slight performace increase. But the increase is much larger for gaming. For some reason games take good advantage of those 2gb.

 

[leexgx]

it mite be that the games maps and textures norm are bigger then 512mb+ (BF2 eats 1gb + ram on my setup)

 

[WildHorse]

steppinthrax,

It might make a difference HOW you add another GB of RAM.

If your current 1GB is on just 1 stick, there's no issue, just add another like it.

If your 1GB is made up of 2 X 512, then the question is: whether to add another 2 X 512 sticks bringing your total to 4 sticks, or to instead replace them with 2 X 1024 sticks.

For the (aging socket 939) motherboard I have, OCZ warned that it's really better to not fill all 4 memory slots.

OCZ said that to go up from 1GB to 2GB, it's better (for this 939 mobo) to replace the 2 X 512 MB sticks with 2 X 1024 MB sticks instead. Reason: so only 2 of its 4 RAM slots will be occupied.

QUOTE
Your best option is a 2GB DDR1 kit by itself. At times the memory controller of the 939 processor can have problems with four sticks of memory. END QUOTE
by "Praz" on The Official OCZ Support Forum

Please understand, I'm not making a recommendation to do the 2 X 1024 route, but I'm just bringing it up as a possible issue (or non-issue) you might spend a few minutes looking into.

edit: added quote notation

 

[msi1337]

I would not spend extra $$ for DDR PC3200

for about $100 you can get a AM2 X2 3600+ Dual Core Processor, Motherboard (ECS 6100sm-m is a great cheap motheboard)...add $70 for 2GB of memory and you are talking about $170 for an amazing upgrade.

Then sell off your current components and you will probably either break even or come out ahead