Memory and sound card questions...

[TurtleCrusher]

In my system I have 4GB of Patriot DDR2 PC6400 ram at 5-5-5-15. Would upgrading to 8GB with the same or similar ram help with gaming and overall system responsiveness? I ofter get to 3.75GB of memory usage while gaming and maybe it's holding me back. I literally have very little money and am starting a job next week so I cant just go out and buy new parts. I am offering trades on craigslist which one will probably go though. Is it worth it with my system? I have Win7 Pro 64-bit.

Also, I have an Audigy 1 PCI card installed for my sound. I heavily favored it over my Realtek sound in my old s939 system due to sound quality and input latency. Is it still providing hardware acceleration in Windows 7? Or is it practically a dummy card at this point and I should stick on on-board Realtek "HD" audio? I don't know much about Vista/Win7's audio layers.

Odd questions, but I'd like to know before I start accepting trades for components. Thanks in advance.

Full System:
Q8200 @2.8GHz, 400FSB
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L ATX
4GB Patriot DDR2 PC6400
Sapphire Radeon 6870 1GB DDR5 @ Stock
Audigy 1 PCI
Linksys PCI Wifi N 300Mb w/ tri-winged antenna
WD 640GB Black 64mb cache (OS and primary apps only)
WD 1TB Blue 32mb cache Blue (Apps, media and games)
Generic DVD-RW Sata Drive
Antec Truepower Trio 550w
Antec P180 Silver
Acer 22" 1680x1050
Mx 518 mouse, Gbyte Kboard, Xbox 360 pad, multiple Logitech pads for multipalyer, etc.

 

[krnmastersgt]

I'm curious as to what you're running that causes your system to utilize all the available RAM but that aside, seeing as how you have a strong video card for your resolution and a quad (while a neutered one, shouldn't matter much aside from load times) I can only imagine that the memory is whats holding it back (unless the game is crazy CPU intensive).

More RAM couldn't hurt you the way I see it, though I have to wonder how slow your load times are with a Q8200, only 4 GB of ram when you run other things (I'm assuming) that run you at or over your RAM amount, and a 5400 RPM low power drive (don't those also have really small cache sizes?).

Out of curiosity, what games are you running?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

My drives are 7200rpm, pretty fast mechanical drives IMO.

Usually I play Starcraft 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, NBA 2K10, DiRT 2, Grand Theft Auto 4 (my real ram killer besides SC2 and BFBC2), and I'm starting on Dead Island.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Oooo sounds like it might be a combination of RAM and CPU for most of those games, SC2 takes a lot of power to run without much slowing down (though slower framerates are easily playable). I never picked up DiRT 2 but from what I remember the first DiRT also took a lot of CPU power to play seamlessly. Not really sure where BFBC2 or GTA4 fall in terms of CPU requirements but yeah I'd saw a combination of RAM + stronger CPU (maybe at least try higher clocks?) would be the way to massively up the responsiveness of your games.

As for the drives, my bad, thought the Blue was akin to the Green which I know is a 5400 RPM low power drive, I guess the Blue is supposed to be just under the Black then.

Since you're on a budget, I think 8GB should be easily manageable once you get a bit of spare money put to the side since you can get 8 GB for under $40 these days. Real issue would be how to beef up your processor power without buying a new one as that would take a bit more money for a better CPU from the S775 lines, or even more money to try and platform upgrade. What kind of spare parts do you have lying around that you were planning on trading with?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I am selling a Sandy Bridge i3 from a working laptop, and my posting was flagged on CL. Here's the specs:
http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SR/SR04J.html

Trades I've been offering:
Motorola Cable Modem, Encore Wifi n 300mb router/repeater, Netgeat PCI Gigabit Adapter, Wifi G PCI adapter, Geforce 5500 256mb 128-bit PCI (non-gimped memory for that card), Radeon X850 AGP, , quite a few long ethernet cables, mini to DP adapters, Street Fighter 4 for PC, and a few other misc things. Nobody has bothered with a trade yet, which kind of sucks. I did offer a combo of money and trade and people didn't respond.

I'm almost thinking of taking this to the FS/FT forums now that I'm thinking about it. I'd still rather to deal locally.

 

[mfenn]

How are you determining your memory usage?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Windows task manager.

 

[mfenn]

Windows task manager.

Right, but which fields did you use? Total - Available is the true amount of memory in use by programs.

 

[thelastjuju]

You definitely still want a good dedicated sound card.

Realtek HD is decent for onboard sound, but man.. nowhere even close to what a dedicated card can do because of the DAC and DSP.

I popped an old Audigy 2 in there and disabled the RealtekHD forever.