The benefits from 1.00GB of ram or more....................

[OC-Master]

Having 1024MB of ram or more means you get even better noticeable performance than with 512MB or 256MB.

YES YES, this is how. Simple, have Windows XP and disable virtual memory so that everything is cached only through your ram. I strongly suggest you dont try this unless you have at least 768MB, or of course a GB or more of ram.

Using Quake3 V1.31, an extra 2~3FPS was gained with my configuration with all settings maxed. (Quake3 uses 128MB with all settings maxed plus XP so thats 256MB permanently gone). Youll also notice everything to be alot more smoother, especially the Baldur's Gate series. Last but not least, loading times will be cut down by at least 5% since the harddrive no longer needs to swap within its self.

Sure you could disable the swap file with 512MB or less, but look out cause when you hit 400MB which happens faster without a swap file, your computer will either become sluggish or even hang!

Ram is cheap, just remember when PC100 128MB was $330CAN in 1998, we've came such a long way!

If you got 512MB of ram or less and own or plan to own WindowsXP in the near future, upgrading to 1GB of ram will be well worth your hard earned cash!:beer:


AXIA

[BigRed]

unless you have an intel chipset that limits it to 512mb...

[WyrmMaster]

Ram may be cheap, but a gig of ram will still cost your several hundred bucks. For 3fps i think not. For that amount of cash il buy a Geforce3, and get another 40 or 50 fps.

[Ebola]

when ram was dirt cheap i bout a gig of ram from crucial for $133.

[Yodums]

Hmmm not worth it.

You realise the money of a complete 1Gig of ram costs more than like something like a Celeron/Duron and a motherboard! Or a video card the ram prices have soared so much its not every funny.

Save your cash...

Yodums

[Henry Rollins II]

Originally posted by AXIA

Using Quake3 V1.31, an extra 2~3FPS was gained with my configuration with all settings maxed.

Ram is cheap, just remember when PC100 128MB was $330CAN in 1998, we've came such a long way!

If you got 512MB of ram or less and own or plan to own WindowsXP in the near future, upgrading to 1GB of ram will be well worth your hard earned cash!:beer:


LOL!!!

If you think that investing in 1 Gb RAM in order to achive 2-3 extra FPS in Quake seems resonable, you ought to get your head checked out. :rolleyes:

512 Mb DDR cost at least $200 US for a module of resonable quality. I personally think that is a lot of money for making absolutely no difference.

regards,
Henry.

[xCarne_Asada]

i will just try to get new memory, when my brother rebuilds his comp, just say he needs this ram then take it later

[Gandalf]

Originally posted by WyrmMaster
Ram may be cheap, but a gig of ram will still cost your several hundred bucks. For 3fps i think not. For that amount of cash il buy a Geforce3, and get another 40 or 50 fps.

Great minds think alike..... :D

[Dissolved]

anything more then 512mb on a gamming system is a waste.. i had 768 and it didnt do much better then the 256 i have now

[BigRed]

Originally posted by Dissolved
anything more then 512mb on a gamming system is a waste.. i had 768 and it didnt do much better then the 256 i have now
try this:
get an insane amount of ram (like 1gig)
set up a 600mb ram drive and install quake3 on that
then try running it
you will get like a 15fps or more increase :D

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by BigRed

try this:
get an insane amount of ram (like 1gig)
set up a 600mb ram drive and install quake3 on that
then try running it
you will get like a 15fps or more increase :D

i think quake would need more memory then that... UT takes up almost 2 gigs on its own

[bigbenji]

maximum pc had an article that said that anything over 512mb is simply not worth the extra cost:
"the performance increase is insignificant"
i don't think they posted the article on the web or i would've given a link, but they didn't say anything about getting 1gig and disbling virtual memory so guess its possible

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by bigbenji
maximum pc had an article that said that anything over 512mb is simply not worth the extra cost:
"the performance increase is insignificant"
i don't think they posted the article on the web or i would've given a link, but they didn't say anything about getting 1gig and disbling virtual memory so guess its possible

depeneds on how u use your pc..
if you a video editing music making Freak, then more memory is great, if you sit here on the forums and game like me 256mb is enough... altho i may get a stick of 512mb ddr when the pc2700 sticks come out :) probly cost like 250 i bet..

[Ebola]

yup when your doing media stuff, movies, graphics, sound, the extra ram helps out. for games 512 is more than enough.

I bought a gig of ram but I got it at a good time. if ram prices drop down as far s what they did again i suggest you fill your board completely.

whan prices are high then its not worth it.

[SuperFLyJimmy]

Disabling your virtual memory with 512MB or greater isn't a bad idea. You don't need any more than this for a gaming machine. And you can benifit from disabling your virtual memory with only 512MB. Actuall it is recommended. For a basic gaming system you will never, ever, ever, use over 512MB of ram. I had 2GB of ram at one time in a system I had built with a monitor on it so I could see just how much money I wasted buying it. Found out my full system load was (drum roll please) 350MB used. SO anything over 512 for a gaming system is a complete and total waste of time and money. Now on the other had if you are a graphics editor or a Server then yes you could use a dual system with large amounts of ram.
As for the 3fps You realize this could be a number of things:
1. Your system was a few degrees cooler that the last test.
2. You rebooted prior to running the test so your system was clear
3. You disabled something using system memory on boot up.
and the list goes on. These are just basic thing that will increase your performance without spending the extra cash on ram.
Typically when you bench your system you disable anything you don't need on boot. Prior to running the bench you reboot your system to clear the ram and cache. This alone will get you 2-3FPS in any bench.

Hence 2-3 FPS isn't nothing to base a whole Thread off of. YOu got the 1GB of ram now, but what are you going to do if one day you sit down and the 2-3FPS isn't there no more. What is going to be your Theroy on that?

[OC-Master]

that extra 3fps was gained after the virtual memory was disabled and the hard drive was defragged. NO REBOOTS.

When I enabled virtual memory using 1024~3064MB, I loose those 3fps, in all cases whether I rebooted or not. XP is nice since you dont need to reboot!

Next, 512MB will cut it too close if you disable virtual memory, since Quake3A has a few levels that hit the 400MB limit with XP's 128MB gobble of course! Remeber, when you disable virtual memory with 512MB, you dont actually have 512MB of ram to toy with no more, but rather 462.5MB. You see, Windows has several application utilities that need that 50MB of ram to trick every program into thinking your ram is virtual memory (Only because most older apps dont use just ram but also VM).

On my 1.00GB system here, I got 925MB max avail memory with virtual memory disabled.

having just over 60MB of ram free isnt enough for me to take the chance disabling virtual memory with 512MB, cause remember, if your ram runs out and you have no virtual memory, your system could become unstable!

The more ram you have, the faster your PC will perform! End of story:beer:

AXIA

[SuperFLyJimmy]

Well like I said I have had 2GB of ram, and a monitor utility that told you how much ram your system was using. Since I use WINXP PRo I know how much it uses. ANd I have 512MB of ram and virtual memory disabled and my system runs fine. With the 2GB of ram my system runs the same with the 512MB of ram I have now. SO all you are saying I have been there and done that. I know the benifits of more ram and loss of less ram. As I said before my system with a large paging pool made of ram my system using the ram as cache and the virtual memory set to none. my system at full load doing everything I wanted to only used 350MB of ram. SO that looks like plenty of room to have 512MB of ram. But you are partially right the more ram you have the faster your system will go but only matters how much your system is using. If your system doesn't use more than 512MB at any giving time it is useless to have. And mine didn't so I don't need over 512. There is no performance decrease and I saw no performance increase. Programs didn't load quicker and now they don't load any slower. So to spend the amount of money on 1GB of ram still isn't justified if you are only using it on a gaming system. And as I said many things factor how your FPS will go. You said you recently defraged your system so that is where you got the extra FPS from. Still 3 FPS isn't worth the money.

[Blackearth]

okay, 1gb is not THAT much. its only a couple hundred dollars. think its a waste? ha! and you call yourselves hardcore!

[Mykex]

Disabling virtual memory is not always a good idea, some sound cards natively cache to disk and wont work without it. If your running the 9x kernal you can use the consevative swapfile and load local high tweaks to insure all of your RAM is used before any caching is done (or use cacheman if your not 1337 ;)).

I use and need over 512mbs on my 9x system and love it.

[Maximus Nickus]

I've been doing this for some time now, I have 768MB Ram, but I got al my Crucial memory for $80 about a day before the price rises!

Lucky me:p


Sorry about the image but it was to large so i had to crop it:rolleyes:

[SuperFLyJimmy]

there is no problem if you can use the ram. As I said before the average Joe won't use moere tha 512MB of ram. And some older OS don't like more than that anyway. Now the new one do. Anyway if ou want that amount of ram go buy it. If you don't have the money you aren't missing anything cause you don't really need it for a gaming system.