MEMORY and GAMING

[supergenius74]

A quick question for all of the experts out there. Does anyone have any proof that system memory over 128 megs is circumstantial for gaming, more importantly FPS games? I have 2 sticks of pc133 mushkin ram. one is older and will only do 143 mhz at 3-3-3 and the other is newer and will do well above 150 at 2-2-2 and performs much better overall. I can't see a big difference in 3Dmark when using 256 over 128 and I was wondering if anyone knew of a reason that it helped games like Q3A and UT and SS. If it does and you know it please shed some light on this poor gamer because I am not seeing a major change in frames per second under any conditions. thanks:rolleyes:

[R0BB23]

more ram is always a boost in preformance no matter what its just how much.

but its always good to have more ram then need that way your set for the future fps's like the new wolfenstien minium req. of 128mb.

now with games like ut and quake 3 and halflife there isnt mush of a boost but they also dont require much ram in the first place

uts min is 32 and 24 for halflife

[supergenius74]

I agree with the fact that more ram is always better but I want to run 128 meg just because of my current situation with overclocking. I have for days tried to get a a game to run worse on 128 than 256 and none of them will. I have tested everything frome old games like blood2 an HL up to the Return to castle wolfenstein online demo and Max Payne and Q2, Q3, UT, Serious sam, ever red alert2 and none of them are affected. what exactly does ram affect in a game ? I know that if I have more ram than 256 megs that win98 has problems managing it and I know that Lots of ram helps me mutitask better like when I ran a dedicated game server and a client on the same computer but the only definites in performance in games were these things.....Vid card....processor.....and HD speed. Ever time i've upgraded in cards i've gotten a boost, everytime I have gotten a faster processor or overclocked, I have gotten a boost and when I went with faster HD's or RAID I got a boost but once I broke the 64 meg mark with ram I have seen very little change. Oh maybe a few points in 3Dmark but nothing to make my games run better. I am willing to bet that the sweet spot is closer to 128 at least for win98 OS than 256 is. I mean c'mon up until this year and the major ram price drops 256 megs was unheard of even for a performance person. knowing this and the fact that most game engines take 2 or 3 years to build I doubt any of them use that much ram. If anyone can show me differently than please do but I tested RTCW this week and it is built on the Q3A engine (released in 99)and ram don't make no differnce above 128, However if i ran at 600 mhz as apposed to 1000 mhz then the flame thrower was really difficult to render (very cool weapon). I'm not trying to argue, just searching for the truth, thanks for the response robb... :cool:

[WyrmMaster]

Most games dont show a difference with more ram, but some do. Diablo2 for example. It doesnt require it, but you will get fewer lags while it loads from the HD if you have more ram.