Upgrading RAM, Tough decision

[Fishy007]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
He was referring to the PF usage?

Page file is your RAM and the virtual RAM on the hard drive together.

Ok I'm a little confused. By the words 'page file' I took it to mean the FILE that windows uses as virtual memory. The file called 'pagefile.sys' which is usually hidden in the root of your C drive unless you've told it to hide elsewhere.

If I am right, that graph in Task Manager shows how much of that pagefile you are using. The lower the number, the better off you are. Or am I completely off the mark here?

When I moved 1gb out of my system, my PF usage went from around 800mb to around 850mb and things were sluggish. When I put the 1gb back in to get a total of 2gb, my PF usage when back to around 800mb and things were speedier.

 

[BlueEcho]

Ive found that while running my regular tasks and games I am at 800MB or so Page File usage, using BF2 or FEAR (Especially FEAR) and I cant really run more apps than those games alone. it chokes sometimes and often ill find my processor is running @ 100% usage. For some damn reason I -cant- overclock my system past 1950mhz (Default is 1836) or it will reboot randomly. The big question is what would be the best way to speed up my comp for gaming without breaking $200-220, I would love to OC my comp but I cant figure out why its randomly shutting down... I can provide my dxdiag or w/e, id really like to figure this out.
Thanks again for all the help guys~

Beau

 

[corsa]

To the OP....If possible try getting a lend of 2x 512 sticks just for experiements sake, i definatly think u will see the benifits with how u use ur rig.
Also you shouldnt upgrade to dual core unless u have atleast 2GB of RAM.

 

[BlueEcho]

Im not planning on going dual core, I was looking at upgrading from the 3000+ to the 3700+ , but its either that or get another gb of ram and overclock my system, trying to decide which

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Im not planning on going dual core, I was looking at upgrading from the 3000+ to the 3700+ , but its either that or get another gb of ram and overclock my system, trying to decide which

op - when i was running a single core and gaming with bf2, i always was at 100% cpu usage regardless of whether i was running my opteron144 @ 1.8GHz(stock) or 2.5GHz and am sure if i set the game up so it only utilizes 1 core now it would be 100%. when i game all i have on is my a/v, a firewall, teamspeak and the game regardless of what my machine is.

you need to read the link i sent a couple threads up about o/cing - it is the anandtech page. more than likely what you need to do is slow down your memory, make sure your agp and pci is locked in the bios and start slowly moving up the fsb without raising V. you also need to see what version of the 3000 you have so you can better now what to expecte - use cpu-z

read the link in my sig about bf2 ram usage on setups to keep your ram usage a lean as possible - you can keep the game to ~720MB without too much trouble and if you keep the machine to ~250 you are under the 1GB limit.

from what i have seen in benchmarks you gpu is ~ in between 6800gt and a x800xl so if you use my page as a reference for bf2, set yours up to the setup that is labeled 'Ram Usage ~960MB" but turn the AA down to 2 or 4 and maybe any where i had "high" use "medium"

also, what does our peak commit charge say in the performance tab of the task manager after you have ran the computer like you normally would with gaming and all?

and not saying you should or shouldn't go dc (as a x2 3800 is only ~$150 now), but corsa saying you shouldn't go dc unless you have 2GB is kind of an ignorant statement as a dc doesn't mean you are going to always use a lot of ram. there are many insances when the extra core would benefit you more than the ram, as in times when you are not fully utilizing your ram.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fishy007

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
He was referring to the PF usage?

Page file is your RAM and the virtual RAM on the hard drive together.

Ok I'm a little confused. By the words 'page file' I took it to mean the FILE that windows uses as virtual memory. The file called 'pagefile.sys' which is usually hidden in the root of your C drive unless you've told it to hide elsewhere.

If I am right, that graph in Task Manager shows how much of that pagefile you are using. The lower the number, the better off you are. Or am I completely off the mark here?

When I moved 1gb out of my system, my PF usage went from around 800mb to around 850mb and things were sluggish. When I put the 1gb back in to get a total of 2gb, my PF usage when back to around 800mb and things were speedier.

i have looked into this in the past and what i found was that basically taskmanager labels it incorrectly. what it shows is actually ram and pagefile usage, and the number is the same as the commit charge that you can see at the bottom right.

this is easy to verify with the performance monitor - just add paging file/%usage and you will see the actual pagefile.sys is not really used that much at all if you don't go over your ram.

just for a quick test to verify my memory was correct, i loaded up about 50 firefox pages, adobe illustrator and photoshop and then bf2. total ram usage came out to ~1.5GB but pagefile moved very little.

 

[corsa]

Originally Posted by: bob4432

and not saying you should or shouldn't go dc (as a x2 3800 is only ~$150 now), but corsa saying you shouldn't go dc unless you have 2GB is kind of an ignorant statement as a dc doesn't mean you are going to always use a lot of ram. there are many insances when the extra core would benefit you more than the ram, as in times when you are not fully utilizing your ram.

So u can run Dual cores to multi task, and amazingly u will use less RAM than when u had a Single core.....are u for real?
...everytime ur cpu does something it needs RAM to do it, a second core will now be stealing half the memory bandwidth from the original core!
The OP would be much, much better off adding more RAM, so he can game at Ultra realistic graphic settings
Why not take 1G out of ur system bob, its not like its necessary huh

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: corsa

Originally Posted by: bob4432

and not saying you should or shouldn't go dc (as a x2 3800 is only ~$150 now), but corsa saying you shouldn't go dc unless you have 2GB is kind of an ignorant statement as a dc doesn't mean you are going to always use a lot of ram. there are many insances when the extra core would benefit you more than the ram, as in times when you are not fully utilizing your ram.

So u can run Dual cores to multi task, and amazingly u will use less RAM than when u had a Single core.....are u for real?
...everytime ur cpu does something it needs RAM to do it, a second core will now be stealing half the memory bandwidth from the original core!
The OP would be much, much better off adding more RAM, so he can game at Ultra realistic graphic settings
Why not take 1G out of ur system bob, its not like its necessary huh

You seem to be confused in several areas.

1: Doubling your RAM from 1GB to 2GB does not increase your bandwidth at all. (in some cases it will reduce your bandwidth, we're ignoring going single channel to dual channel of course)
2: RAM useage varies from program to program but does not vary depending on the number of cores in use.

3: If the two programs you're using (like for example a game and DVD shrink) use less than 1GB of RAM then adding another gig would do nothing.
4: From above, the second core would improve speed notably.
5: Ref 2 and 4, the dual core would make more difference in this case than another GB of ram.

6: You CAN game at max details with less than 1GB of RAM, but you get the ~ 1 second long pauses as the PF is accessed on the hard drive. The graphics card is more significant (and in this case it's not clearly going to require another gig).

Trying to help is a good thing, but may i recomend you read up a bit more on how RAM is used in a computer and the performance implications before trying to debate the topic.

 

[corsa]

Bobthelost says : If I'm wrong, please tell me why, if you can provide links then that's even better.

You CAN game at max details with less than 1GB of RAM, but you get the ~ 1 second long pauses as the PF is accessed on the hard drive. The graphics card is more significant (and in this case it's not clearly going to require another gig).

The OP plays Fear, it needs more than 1G at less than MAX levels....~ 1 second long pauses ...watching your program stutter as it has to page to virtual memory is beyond torture.

He also plays BF2.....MAX levels comes to 1.1/1.2G ....i hope ur still listening
I've experiemented with this b4, he needs 2G of RAM!

Fishy007 once said

When I moved 1gb out of my system, my PF usage went from around 800mb to around 850mb and things were sluggish. When I put the 1gb back in to get a total of 2gb, my PF usage when back to around 800mb and things were speedier.

and he has a dual core, omg!

Trying to help is a good thing, but may i recomend you listen to the what the OP is saying before trying to debate this topic.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: corsa
Bobthelost says : If I'm wrong, please tell me why, if you can provide links then that's even better.

You CAN game at max details with less than 1GB of RAM, but you get the ~ 1 second long pauses as the PF is accessed on the hard drive. The graphics card is more significant (and in this case it's not clearly going to require another gig).

The OP plays Fear, it needs more than 1G at less than MAX levels....~ 1 second long pauses ...watching your program stutter as it has to page to virtual memory is beyond torture.

He also plays BF2.....MAX levels comes to 1.1/1.2G ....i hope ur still listening
I've experiemented with this b4, he needs 2G of RAM!

Max levels with a X850 Pro? You're a funny man. I take it that you accepted your errors about other RAM issues then?

 

[corsa]

Just to refresh your memory a little..

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Oops, I get your meaning im usually running WoW + 2 browsers + limewire + itunes and some other stuff, ive seen my PF usage at or around 700 - 850mb most of the time.

Thats his usage....not his peak

Fishy007 also once said..

I disagree with Bob. I run the same as you. WoW + browser + itunes + random app.
I currently run with 2GB of RAM in 4 sticks of 512mb. In a recent experiment, I removed 1GB of the RAM to experiment a bit with memory timings. Before I even changed anything on the system, I noticed a difference.
Tabbing out from WoW to go to the browser took longer. iTunes was slightly sluggish and starting up another program (Adobe Acrobat at the time) took much longer than usual.

I would say that going to 2GB of RAM would help you. Esp with WoW running.

I agree with the Fish ...the end.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: corsa
Just to refresh your memory a little..

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Oops, I get your meaning im usually running WoW + 2 browsers + limewire + itunes and some other stuff, ive seen my PF usage at or around 700 - 850mb most of the time.

Thats his usage....not his peak

Fishy007 also once said..

I disagree with Bob. I run the same as you. WoW + browser + itunes + random app.
I currently run with 2GB of RAM in 4 sticks of 512mb. In a recent experiment, I removed 1GB of the RAM to experiment a bit with memory timings. Before I even changed anything on the system, I noticed a difference.
Tabbing out from WoW to go to the browser took longer. iTunes was slightly sluggish and starting up another program (Adobe Acrobat at the time) took much longer than usual.

I would say that going to 2GB of RAM would help you. Esp with WoW running.

I agree with the Fish ...the end.

You don't read the threads before posting do you?

In which case you won't see any improvement by going to 2GB, then again it's possible that you're peaking over 1GB at times, which would benifit from the added RAM. Check the peak useage after a day or so of use, if it's over 1GB then you would benifit from more (hell, maybe just 2x256 if you're on a budget).

But since you're not going to admit you're wrong and/or wasting time i too will draw a line under it. Feel free to reply but the lack of a reply is not going to be due to your superiority .

 

[Fishy007]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
3: If the two programs you're using (like for example a game and DVD shrink) use less than 1GB of RAM then adding another gig would do nothing.

Pissing contest aside, I'm just trying to understand how Windows usese memory. What I understand (and it could be wrong) is the following:

Let's say you have 1GB of memory and you run what the OP is running. Windows isn't going to max out the entire 1GB of memory when the apps are running. It'll use maybe 60-70% of available memory and shunt the rest into the pagefile. Why? Because if it maxed out the memory, when you tried to run something else while the memory was maxed, Windows would fall over it's own ass trying to shunt things into the pagefile as the application is loading. It has to keep a portion of available RAM free for use.

Now, let's say that the OP popped in another 1GB to go to 2GB of memory. Since Windows will still want to behave the same way it will be using 60-70% of the 2GB which is more than 60-70% of the 1GB. That means less pagefile usage and more items can stay in RAM.

That's just the way I seem to think it works. If I'm wrong, let me know.

 

[BlueEcho]

Judging from the replies here I think my best option would be adding this to my current rig :

The New Proc

and

The New RAM (2x256)

I can do both of those for under $160, taking me from a 3000+ to a 3700+ and from 1GB (2x512) to 1.5GB (2x512, 2x256.. I have 4 slots and my board is dual chann.) Do yall think that is worth the money, and will the RAM im looking at have any conflicts with my current stuff? (2x512 of Centon) ... I appreciate all the help guys, thank you

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Judging from the replies here I think my best option would be adding this to my current rig :

The New Proc

and

The New RAM (2x256)

I can do both of those for under $160, taking me from a 3000+ to a 3700+ and from 1GB (2x512) to 1.5GB (2x512, 2x256.. I have 4 slots and my board is dual chann.) Do yall think that is worth the money, and will the RAM im looking at have any conflicts with my current stuff? (2x512 of Centon) ... I appreciate all the help guys, thank you

i would go a x2 3800 or read and learn how to o/c your current cpu. o/cing is not hard but at first if you have issues like you are having then reading will only strengthen your knowledge and ability to o/c - my first attempt at o/cing got me a bsod because i didn't know all that needed to be changed, after reading more it became second nature. stay at it because getting a 3000 to 2.2GHz is nearly guaranteed as long as you have a decent psu and set the ram timings correctly, but remember you need to also make sure the pci an agp bus don't change or if they do manually set them to their perspective speeds. running a pci bus higher than 33MHz is not good for it and will give you data corruption issues - hell you may be able to do it on stock V. imo i think the 3700 is not worth a $100 upgrade because if you read the instructions on o/cing you can more than likely get your cpu to the same speed as the 3700.

again, as i have said from the beginning unless you are exceeding 1GB you can put in 3GB and it will have basically no effect. unless your peak commit charge exceeds 1GB you will not gain anything except a lighter wallet.

but, if you do decide to go that route, depending on which 3000 you have you may need to lower the fsb to 166 instead of 200 and you will definately need to run it at 2T command rate. also, you may need to set the ram values like latencies and such manually setting it to the slowest ram (highest numbers - if the slowest timngs are 3-3-4-8 then manually set it to that)

corsa - the only reason i went 2GB is because when i switched over to the x1800xt (was going to get a 20" lcd - 1680x1050 or 1600x1200 - wasn't sure on ratio, but atm due to some extremely serious health issues the lcd upgrade is on the back burner) from the x800xtpe for some reason that many people suffer from but can't really expain, using the exact same in game graphics settings the system used a lot more ram, putting me well over 1GB while gaming. in fact my gaming with 1GB with the x1800xt was unplayable because it was accessing the hdd all the time and even at the time this was happening i was running a newer gen 15K scsi hdd, but that didn't matter as hdd is so much slower than ram. i am still trying to figure out what the cause is and it may be the ati calyst control center - either a memory leak or the fact that it needs the .net framework to work. i have recently uninstalled the ati drivers and put in the omegas and have noticed a 300-400+MB difference in ram usage for the better (as in less ram used) but since i am running all on high @ 1280x1024 i am still over 1GB. with the ati software i would 1.5-1.7GB using the same settings as i am with the omega drivers and so far have only hit ~1.2GB in bf2. in all reality if i would not have switched gpus i would still be using 1GB of ram because i don't exceed it unless gaming (now). and i really don't understand your attitude as i have shown to myself and now you peeps i use more than 1GB so taking it out would be dumb, if i only used 800MB then i wouldn't have bought it

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fishy007

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
3: If the two programs you're using (like for example a game and DVD shrink) use less than 1GB of RAM then adding another gig would do nothing.

Pissing contest aside, I'm just trying to understand how Windows usese memory. What I understand (and it could be wrong) is the following:

Let's say you have 1GB of memory and you run what the OP is running. Windows isn't going to max out the entire 1GB of memory when the apps are running. It'll use maybe 60-70% of available memory and shunt the rest into the pagefile. Why? Because if it maxed out the memory, when you tried to run something else while the memory was maxed, Windows would fall over it's own ass trying to shunt things into the pagefile as the application is loading. It has to keep a portion of available RAM free for use.

Now, let's say that the OP popped in another 1GB to go to 2GB of memory. Since Windows will still want to behave the same way it will be using 60-70% of the 2GB which is more than 60-70% of the 1GB. That means less pagefile usage and more items can stay in RAM.

That's just the way I seem to think it works. If I'm wrong, let me know.

i am not exactly sure about amounts or percentages, but in the past my expericences have been when i was running 1GB the machine would be fine at 960MB - no skips at all and the machine was butter smooth, but as soon as i made it cross over the 1GB mark then at that time the hdd light went steady and the machine was stuttering and slow to respond. so from what i have experienced is that it will use up all the ram it needs then go to the pagefile on the hdd at which time you will notice a huge lag. again, if the op is @ 800MB he will not benefit from 2GB, or even 1.5GB. i don't know if this is used or peak, if his peak is over 1GB then obviously he would benefit from more ram.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Judging from the replies here I think my best option would be adding this to my current rig :

The New Proc

and

The New RAM (2x256)

I can do both of those for under $160, taking me from a 3000+ to a 3700+ and from 1GB (2x512) to 1.5GB (2x512, 2x256.. I have 4 slots and my board is dual chann.) Do yall think that is worth the money, and will the RAM im looking at have any conflicts with my current stuff? (2x512 of Centon) ... I appreciate all the help guys, thank you

No. Get another 1GB of RAM. Read the links and advice that people give you in this thread and learn how to overclock your CPU. Oh, and it would be pretty useful if you could give us your actual physical RAM usage.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb

Originally posted by: BlueEcho
Judging from the replies here I think my best option would be adding this to my current rig :

The New Proc

and

The New RAM (2x256)

I can do both of those for under $160, taking me from a 3000+ to a 3700+ and from 1GB (2x512) to 1.5GB (2x512, 2x256.. I have 4 slots and my board is dual chann.) Do yall think that is worth the money, and will the RAM im looking at have any conflicts with my current stuff? (2x512 of Centon) ... I appreciate all the help guys, thank you

No. Get another 1GB of RAM. Read the links and advice that people give you in this thread and learn how to overclock your CPU. Oh, and it would be pretty useful if you could give us your actual physical RAM usage.

from what i have read i believe his is 800-850MB, but am not sure if that is all sustained or peak

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

800-850MB is page file usage, not physical RAM usage. I'm pretty sure page file is just virtual RAM, not virtual + physical. I'm using up 643MB of physical and 566MB page file right now.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
800-850MB is page file usage, not physical RAM usage. I'm pretty sure page file is just virtual RAM, not virtual + physical. I'm using up 643MB of physical and 566MB page file right now.

where are you seeing this at? also what is your machine doing?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Trillian Performance Stats plugin. My computer is running 54 processes, including Firefox, Trillian, Winamp, Spy Sweeper, ZoneAlarm, and a bunch of other things. You can also see this in the task manager. PF and RAM usage are both there...

 

[Bobthelost]

I'm open to correction on the PF vs RAM readout, but i think i'm right in that the graph in task manager gives PF useage as = Physical RAM + any space used on the swap file. Taking into account the 1k != 1024 the numbers match pretty closely comparing the Commit Charge value and the PF Usage graph readout, i did a bit of googling but it was inconclusive.

Why a computer running WoW and a few other minor programs would be using 1.85GB of RAM (It's not going to use the swap file unless the physical RAM is all allocated) i have no idea.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
I'm open to correction on the PF vs RAM readout, but i think i'm right in that the graph in task manager gives PF useage as = Physical RAM + any space used on the swap file. Taking into account the 1k != 1024 the numbers match pretty closely comparing the Commit Charge value and the PF Usage graph readout, i did a bit of googling but it was inconclusive.

Why a computer running WoW and a few other minor programs would be using 1.85GB of RAM (It's not going to use the swap file unless the physical RAM is all allocated) i have no idea.

i am in the same camp as you bob, and with 39 processes running @ 330MB (65MB beig firefox) i couldn't understand why there would be any use of the pagefile at this moment consider the machine has ~1.65gb of ram to use up.

i found a couple places that said pf usage was pf+ram but i can't find anything official, yet.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I'm pretty sure the computer still uses virtual RAM even if you still have free physical RAM. I have 2096616 kb (~2GB) of total physical RAM. I have 1398796 kb (~1.4GB) available. 2GB - 1.4GB = 0.6GB, which is how much RAM my Trillian plugin reports I'm using.

 

[Fishy007]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555223