This post is for everyone in here that keeps recommending 1GB of RAM for new computers - Benchmarks

[0roo0roo]

eh, 100 gb avi doesn't sound like a stretch. even at 320x240 my uncompressed avi's with uncompressed sound are simply huge. capturing at dvd resolution would be mean. hdtv res would be ultra insane.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Could someone please compare 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM vs. 1024MB PC2100 DDR RAM when playing Battlefield 1942?

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
eh, 100 gb avi doesn't sound like a stretch. even at 320x240 my uncompressed avi's with uncompressed sound are simply huge. capturing at dvd resolution would be mean. hdtv res would be ultra insane.

Capturing at DVD res isn't bad, it's only MPEG-2. Depending on compression settings 60-120 minutes can fit on a 4.7gig DVD.


Lethal

 

[Cat13]

Originally posted by: oldfart
100 Gig AVIs?1?! Wow, that is a big capture file! What are you capturing? Must take a loooong time to do the MPEG encoding!

I am taking all my home video's and putting them on dvd. A completly filled VHS tape is over 100 gig. After I capture it, I run it through an editor, take out the noise and such, put in some effects like fading at the start and end, then I take it down to mpeg2. That drops it down to 1-2g's. I can then capture the rest, do the same, then merge them back together. Until my 200gig drive gets here at the end of the week I am stuck doing it like this. After I get 3 or 4 done, I make a menu and put them on dvd. They come out really nice with the motion and music on the menu, then we can just pick the movie we want to see.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Could someone please compare 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM vs. 1024MB PC2100 DDR RAM when playing Battlefield 1942?

There was a recent thread about it here in general hardware...try searching bf1942. There were lots of talk about 768MB being the magic number between long load times and stuttering in large games and BF1942 never touching your swap file.

Chiz

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, 1 GB of RAM is currently overkill for a home computer. Unless you're doing some serious video editing, HUGE Photoshop layouts, or running a dozen applications at once, it's just not worth it.

By the way, 3DMark is a useless benchmark for testing memory. It taxes the video card and the CPU, but it doesn't use all that much memory.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob


By the way, 3DMark is a useless benchmark for testing memory. It taxes the video card and the CPU, but it doesn't use all that much memory.

Kinda, its not a useless benchmark for memory bandwidth. Yeah, you won't see much difference between 256-512-1024, but you will see a difference between PC1600 at cas 3-4-4-8 and PC 3500 at cas 2-3-3-6. I still feel 3dmark2k1 is a good stress tester of north bridge subsystems, could care less about the scores.

Chiz

 

[SickBeast]

i agree, 3dmark is a TERRIBLE way to benchmark anything. and as for a gig of ram being useless...i can't wait to be able to run photoshop, autocad, opera, msn, icq, msword, powerstrip, norton antivirus, tv-wonder software, etc etc ALL AT ONCE.

if you want to bench realisitically, use something that really stresses the memory. try turning the cache in ut2003 up to 512mb, textures at max, all details at max. that might work out better. or you could try to bench doom3 if that's possible.

i'm not thread crapping here, just giving constructive criticism.

 

[pocketExistentialist]

I was using 850 MB just a couple of hours ago. Don't tell me I don't need 1 GB. Newsreaders can be large memory hogs, I run a lot of background stuff, and at any given time I am probably running either VMware or Photoshop, either of which are rather large memory sinks. I give 384 to my linux VM, that's 1/3 of my RAM right there. Tack on 100 MB for a my newsreader running in the background downloading... stuff... and that's almost 512. Okay, games don't need 1 GB. So what? I thought the whole point of buying a PC instead of a console was because it did other stuff.

 

[THUGSROOK]

1gb of ram wont give you more performance ~ itll give you more ram

its more about the ability to load and hold large files, which in turn gives performance.

wait til DOOM III ~ youll need 1 gig.....

 

[kazeakuma]

For those wondering, a clean Win2K install should use around 65mb RAM at boot and 80-80mb idle. (All pcs I configure and install run like this). I don't know about XP as I haven't played with it enough.
Agreed most games won't benefit from more than 512mb, nearly all the games I run, except bf1942 and ut2k3 don't use more than 512mb of ram. Which is great cos it reduces load times like crazy if you're playing map rotations and the like. Memory doesn't always contribute to visual performance (framerate etc,) which is what everyone tests for. Load times can also be greatly reduced by more memory/faster memory and being able to cache a whole map rotation in ram is a dream.

Just my 2c anyway

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
eh, 100 gb avi doesn't sound like a stretch. even at 320x240 my uncompressed avi's with uncompressed sound are simply huge. capturing at dvd resolution would be mean. hdtv res would be ultra insane.

Capturing at DVD res isn't bad, it's only MPEG-2. Depending on compression settings 60-120 minutes can fit on a 4.7gig DVD.


Lethal

um, no. if you want to do serious video editing with higher quality encoding in the end you don't compress on the fly to mpeg 2. that would be silly. not to mention 2 hours only fits on a dvd because of vbr. you cant do very good vbr on the fly. thats why dv cameras use even higher bitrates then dvd cuz they are cbr.

 

[oldfart]

Yes, Mpeg on the fly is not a good idea. DV is the same 720 x 480 resolution as DVD. DV uses its own compression format. I Hr of 720 x 480 x full quality DV video capure @ AVI format is only 13 Gig.