RD ram

[silen]

Hi

In my spare i play a SWG mmorg, which my computer has a hard time handling the game, and a friend told me upgrading my ram would do wonders. I downloaded CPU-z to find my system specs which are.

intel pentium 4 northwood 2.66 ghz

Motherboard intel corporation model d850emv2

Memory RDRAM PC800 2x256= 512

Nvidia Ti 4200 graphics card.

Forwarded this information to my friend, who laughed at me , and said i was screwed.. Informing me rdram sucks, is expensive, and hard to get a hold of.

I called gateway ( where i bought the computer 1 1/2 ago), who informed me thay had no ram for my computer at this time... hmmm

I was wondering if anyone knew any about rdram?, is it better to rebuild my computer, with a new motherboard and cpu?, and get ddr ram.

Or is getting 1gig of rdram to make 1.5 gig, make better financial sense. Is rdram that bad?

Also will upgrading the ti4200 graphics card make much of a difference, how much difference would those graphics card make to online games like World of Warcraft and SWG.

Sorry for all the questions, any info would be appreciated.

 

[Snoop]

Plenty of RDRAM at Newegg.
One caveat of RDRAM is that I believe it must be installed in matched pairs, so you probably need to replace both 256 meg sticks with 2 512 meg sticks, I could be wrong though.

Next, your ti4200 is fine for Star Wars, you need more ram, I have 1256 megs of ram and still get lag sometimes in Cnet on peak hours.

 

[Ionizer86]

Hi, welcome to AT

Intel made a decision to go with RDRam for P4 systems a few years ago, but they've shifted to DDR (an industry standard) since then, and RDRam is now very rare and expensive. I doubt you could even find any, but if you find some at about $100 per 512, I suppose you could get some. Note that they must be installed in pairs.

As for WoW, I believe it's a pretty video card dependent game, so upgrading will help a bit.

 

[Viper96720]

512MB of ram is alright most of the time. You can still buy RDRAM. Have to be used in pairs.


$99 for one 256MB Samsung PC800 RDRAM. 512MB not in stock. So $200 to upgrade to 1GB total.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=20-151-102&DEPA=1

 

[Varun]

RD Ram is very expensive, but it doesn't suck with a P4. I have never played SWG, but the specs say they recommend 512MB of Ram, which you have. They system you have should run the game fine. Perhaps you have a lot of stuff running in the background. Be sure that no antivirus or anything is running, or spyware etc.

Turn down some of the effects and see if that helps. A Ti4200 is a great card, and should be fine for that game, but it could be the weak link in your system.

 

[silen]

Thanks for all the information, and links to newegg. $200 bucks isn't much, but still painful to spend, knowing i can't use the memory again, when i upgrade my system next year.

Plan to build my next system hopefully, so i don't get suck with hard to upgrade parts in the future.

Varum the specs for swg recommend 512 ram... but they lie!!!!! hehe, in high traffic areas, i freeze for 15 sec sometimes while my computer catches up to everytime. Turning down the graphics actually doesn't do much to help surprisingly, i think its all the data coming in at one time, when you enter cities with lots of people in it, rather than the graphics.

Thanks again for the info!!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have several friends that are addicted to that game.. Anyways, I think that your issue is a combination of things, but the RAM is the most suspect. The system requirements for that game have apparently risen substantially due to update patches, from the specs originally listed on the box. I would indeed recommend 1GB of RAM, if you are encountering lag loading levels. I know that I've seen my friends' computers lag for quite a few seconds when changing servers or areas or whatever that game calls them.

One of them runs the game on a GF2 Ti, and one a GF4 Ti4200. Even the GF2 seems to handle it alright, although it definately looks better on the GF4. I don't think that is your problem, specifically, and it wouldn't affect loading times at all. Your CPU speed is probably enough, again, one of my friends runs it on a P4 2.26Ghz, and another on an AMD XP2800. The latter also upgraded to 1GB of RAM, and it virtually eliminated the "loading lag".

The other posts in this thread are right though, RDRAM is rather kind of rare and expensive. If you can hold off upgrading immediately, you might wait and consider upgrading to an AMD64 system, and dual-channel DDR (2 x 512MB DIMMs is what I would recommend). Btw, there's another thread mentioning new chips from Crucial/Micron that will do PC3200 at 2-2-2-6 timings, those would be awesome for an A64 platform.

I don't know how much it would cost at this point to upgrade an RDRAM-based system, but it might serve you well to do an in-depth cost/benefit analysis between upgrading just the RAM, and the whole system, to a more future-proof platform. AMD seems to be universally a favorite for gamers, and more games are going to be released in the future, specifically for AMD64-based platforms. Might be worthwhile to jump on that bandwagon if you are a serious gamer.

 

[M16Grenadier]

Buy an i865PE and then some DDR.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: Snoop
Plenty of RDRAM at Newegg.
One caveat of RDRAM is that I believe it must be installed in matched pairs, so you probably need to replace both 256 meg sticks with 2 512 meg sticks, I could be wrong though.

32-bit RDRAM does not need to be installed in pairs, and some Dell systems use single 16-bit rimms as well.

 

[Snoop]

Originally posted by: John

Originally posted by: Snoop
Plenty of RDRAM at Newegg.
One caveat of RDRAM is that I believe it must be installed in matched pairs, so you probably need to replace both 256 meg sticks with 2 512 meg sticks, I could be wrong though.

32-bit RDRAM does not need to be installed in pairs, and some Dell systems use single 16-bit rimms as well.

I knew there were exceptions to the rule, thanks for the correction.

 

[So]

RDRAM was a horrible horrible sidetrip, a footnote in history that tells a tale of Intel thinking that they were powerful enough to manipulate market forces, only to be manipulated themselves by the litigous criminal company, Rambus INC.

 

[tweeve2002]

My 1.8 P4 ran faster with RDRAM than with DDR....
I ugraded my RDRAM in my Dell, which had 600Mhz RDRAM to 800Mhz RDRAM and you could tell the driffrence in the speed...but when I got a new motherboard and started using some DDR (PC3200) I had some slowdown. The RDRAM was faster even though both the DDR and the RDRAM were both running on a 400Mhz FSB.

 

[fsstrike]

rdram definitely does not suck. In fact, it is probably just as good as DDR if not better. Then again somtimes it might be worse, but RDRAM does NOT suck. It is just expensive, and DDR has a MUCH better value.

 

[So]

RDRAM, performance wise was fine, but price wise it was terrible, mostly because Rambus was trying to get a stranglehold on PC memory. Few people bit and everyone was happy to switch to DDRRAM the moment a decently performing DDR p4 chipset came out, and in the meantime, AMD helped keep the performance and volume of DDR up.

Plus, like I said, Rambus INC was and still is EVIL.

 

[Cerb]

RDRAM was expensive to begin with, and then the market never grew.
However, it doesn't suck. Your friend is wrong in that regard. It took Intel two years to manage a DDR chipset that could match their DC RDRAM one (i850E).

Thing is, for the price of 512MB RDRAM, you could get a new 865P mobo and 512MB of DDR, and be only a stone's throw away from the cost of another 512MB DDR.

 

[silen]

Thanks cerb, this is what i wondering about

the price for 2 sticks of 256 rdram, would cost 99x2 = 200

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=20-151-102&DEPA=1

The a new 865p seems to be about 65 bucks only.

I bought the computer from gateway, is it much effort to replace the mother board and put some ram in.

Also hopefully later this year hoping to build a AMD 3500 939 socket computer( if prices come down a little, would try and build it now, but hard to justify 500 for a cpu. Would the DDR ram used in the 865p board be compatible with the 3500 computer i would be build.


Thanks for the help!!

 

[So]

NO.

AMD and intel use different CPU sockets. You need a different board.

 

[M16Grenadier]

All DDR is the same, as far as design goes.

Buy atleast PC-3200 though, if you are considering using it also for an Athlon 64.

 

[CJP]

How many Rdram slots does your motherboard have, 2 or 4? If you have 2 free slots instead of forking over alot of $$ for another 512mb Rdram you could consider if another 256mb would be enough. That's what I did, I already had 512mb Rdram and I added 2x128mb to give me 768mb for alot less than another 512mb. New games like Far Cry from what I've read use more than 768mb but for the games I play it's a good amount (Battlefield Vietnam, Painkiller) and it might get you by for awhile.

Have you tried CTRL ALT DELETE - Performance - Commit Charge - Total while your playing your game to see how much ram it's using so you know how much you need?