Hardware Question

[Swirsk]

I have a Ram Question
Is upgrading from 1Gb to 2Gb of ram worth the money or will the improvements be negligible?
I am currently using a 3.0GHz P4 and an ati X600pro

[Fenix]

Its really depends on the type of RAM that you get, is it high quality or low quality, is it dual channel RAM or not. Generally speaking any kind of RAM upgrade is worth it, if you post your current RAM and the type that your going to get I might be able to tell you or somebody else.

Edit: I need to know your motherboardand isn't that a picture of the counter-strike grill that you can buy for fans???

[Swirsk]

My motherboard is a Intel 915GAV(dont tell me i already know it's crap)
I current have 1Gb of dual channel PC3200 Kingston ram, i will take suggestion as to what kind of ram i should get.
And yes that is the counter strike fan grill, i just thought it looked cool.

[Mr-Me-II]

For future reference this thread belongs in the "Ask a tech" section.

If I were you, I would worry more about that Video card than your ram. I have heard bad things about X600's. For the price of another gig of ram you could get yourself a video card that would increase your FPS much more than the gig


Are you sure that motherboard supports Dual Channel memory? Run CPU-Z and make sure it is in fact rulling Dual Channel

[Fenix]

ORIGINAL: [PHXX]Mr_Me_II

For future reference this thread belongs in the "Ask a tech" section.

If I were you, I would worry more about that Video card than your ram. I have heard bad things about X600's. For the price of another gig of ram you could get yourself a video card that would increase your FPS much more than the gig


Are you sure that motherboard supports Dual Channel memory? Run CPU-Z and make sure it is in fact rulling Dual Channel

Ding, he pretty well said it... most games that are out right now such as Oblivion, and all the other next gen games require only 1 gig of ram. The ram that you have is pretty good so I would make sure that you have a good GPU and make sure that your mobo supports Dual Channel

[fallen1]

1 Gig should be plenty of RAM for most games.

2 Gigs is commonly considered the "sweet spot" right now because you never have to worry about Windows suddenly deciding to start hogging RAM for no reason. I upgraded my RAM and video card the same day (went up to a nVidia 7800GS and 2 Gigs of RAM) and I ran a series of benchmarks and usage tests when I was doing it. The video card alone gave me a major boost in gaming performance when I didn't have anything else running in the background, but the added RAM really helped out the most with "normal useage"stuff, like when I have a dozen or so programs running in the background while playing CS. The combination of the 2 is all sorts of kick-ass

[XTR3M3]

<--------agrees with Fallen about being plenty.... but if you do upgrade, try to match the ram as close as possible to what is already in the machine.(especially if it is dual channel)

[Dirty-Bird]

Well at one point recently I got a soundcard and 1 more gig of RAM and the performance upgrade on some of my high end games like FEAR was very significant. 1.5 is probably more reasonable for most people than 2 gigs though.

Also as fallen said, it helps a lot if you run a lot of programs. I.e. I have xfire, ventrilo, trillian, itunes, and mirc running all day and all night.

[MikeHawk187]

haha all day and all night? that sounds like a convenience store lol

But yeah birdy is right 1.5 will be beyond sufficient. But more is always better!

=D

[Fugazi]

Yeah I guess 2gb of memory wouldnt be a bad idea. Just keep in the that the maximum xp home can handle is 2gb and pro edt. can handle 4gb but then it can still be unstable.

[Swirsk]

Thanks for all your input guys and in the future i will post this stuff in the ask a tech section

[fallen1]

just wanted to add one more post...

Windows XP (and 2000, and technically 95/98/ME, but thier memory ustilization is so terrible than between 512MB and 1GB there is little performance improvement, and over 1GB is a waste of money) can recognize up to 4GB of memory in total. However, the total is made up of more than the sticks of RAM you have. Even though it doesn't show up in your system stats as such, Windows also counts the RAM on your video card and memory allocations for certain input/output functions and controllers. If you but 4GB of RAM in your computer and have a 256MB video card, Windows will only recognize about 3.5GB of RAM because it counts the 256 of your video card and around 256 more in overhead that is dedicated to certain controllers and processes. Windows XP 64bit edition with an Intel Itanium processor solves this problem by upping the supported memory limit to 16TB (as in TeraBytes). but good luck getting your hands on that (and that kind of hardware). Also, as of now the memory limitations of the upcoming Windows Vista will depend on the particular version, with the basic version having the same 4GB limit as XP, and the Business, Enterprise, and Ultra versions supporting up to 128GB of RAM.

Now back to the "how much is enough and how much is too much?" part of the discussion. 1GB will run XP and most applications just fine, so long as you don't over do the multitasking. 2GB is the "sweet spot" beause it allows you to fill all the RAM slots of your computer with matching sticks of RAM so that you get the best dual-channel performance possible, without going over the 3.xGB limit of what XP can actually utilize, which would result in a decrease in how efficiently your system can utilize the RAM. for example, if you have 2 RAM slots the most you can put in without going over the 3.xGB limit is 2GB (1GB in each slot). if you have 4 slots you would use either a pair of 1GB sticks or 4 512MB stick of RAM to keep everything running in optimal dual channel mode. You could put 3GB in by using a pair of 512 sticks and a pair of 1GB sticks, but most motherboards don't support dual channel mode unless all the sticks are matching (and those that support such seperate matching pairs tend to not do a great job of it).
If you install 1.5GB of RAM you are either using mismatched RAM (a 1Gig stick and a 512 stick or two 256 sticks and two 512 sticks) or an uneven number of sticks (three 512 sticks) in which case you loose the benefits of dual-channel mode and will actually have lower performance than with a matched pair of 512 sticks running in dual channel mode.
One thing about dual-channel mode to keep in mind is that the sticks have to match bothe the sixe and the timings (CAS latencies) to run properly in dual-channel, so it's a good idea to get the same model of RAM for both if you're not buying it as part of a dual-channel kit. You can usually use RAM that has matching sizes and CAS latencies from different maufacturers, but some people have run into problems with certain models of RAM from on manufacturer not wanting to play nice with certain models from other manufacturers.