Some RAM questions

[Boohugh]

Right my fellow Orgahs, I'm in need of some help regarding RAM.

A little background to start with:
- I'm running Vista 32-bit
- I've currently got 2 very good Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066Mhz 1gb ram sticks sitting in my PC.
- I'm running an Athlon64 X2 6400+ with a GeForce 8800GT running under the hood.

As I'm sure many of you know, 2gb is basically the minimum nowadays and I'm fairly sure increasing the amount of RAM I have is probably the most cost effective way of increasing performance, especially with RAM dirt cheap currently.

However I'm sure you'll also know that my version of Vista will only be able to use somewhere between 3 and 3.5gb of any RAM I put in (seeing as my graphics card alone will use up 512mb of the 4gb address space).

So onto my questions:

1) Am I correct in saying that any RAM I put in needs to be installed in pairs? i.e. I can't just add another 1gb stick to bring it up to 3bg in total, I'd need to add 2x512mb sticks?

2) If I'm correct in question 1, it leaves me with 2 options: I can either add another 2x1gb sticks to bring the total up to 4gb (as I can't get 512mb sticks for my ram type and I want to keep it all the same for stability) OR I just get 2x2gb sticks and replace the existing ones. So, what are the performance differences between have 2 or 4 memory sticks in my motherboard?

3) What problems am I likely to run into that I haven't considered?

4) Am I talking out of my backside and 2gb is enough currently and I should go cry in a corner instead?

Many thanks, answers on a postcard please!


a reply to this thread will also be acceptable

[ICantSpellDawg]

Right my fellow Orgahs, I'm in need of some help regarding RAM.

A little background to start with:
- I'm running Vista 32-bit
- I've currently got 2 very good Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066Mhz 1gb ram sticks sitting in my PC.
- I'm running an Athlon64 X2 6400+ with a GeForce 8800GT running under the hood.

As I'm sure many of you know, 2gb is basically the minimum nowadays and I'm fairly sure increasing the amount of RAM I have is probably the most cost effective way of increasing performance, especially with RAM dirt cheap currently.

However I'm sure you'll also know that my version of Vista will only be able to use somewhere between 3 and 3.5gb of any RAM I put in (seeing as my graphics card alone will use up 512mb of the 4gb address space).

So onto my questions:

1) Am I correct in saying that any RAM I put in needs to be installed in pairs? i.e. I can't just add another 1gb stick to bring it up to 3bg in total, I'd need to add 2x512mb sticks?

2) If I'm correct in question 1, it leaves me with 2 options: I can either add another 2x1gb sticks to bring the total up to 4gb (as I can't get 512mb sticks for my ram type and I want to keep it all the same for stability) OR I just get 2x2gb sticks and replace the existing ones. So, what are the performance differences between have 2 or 4 memory sticks in my motherboard?

3) What problems am I likely to run into that I haven't considered?

4) Am I talking out of my backside and 2gb is enough currently and I should go cry in a corner instead?

Many thanks, answers on a postcard please!


a reply to this thread will also be acceptable

I don't think so. I just think that you need each ram stick to match - like if you have 1 gig sticks, you can only add more 1 gig sticks or replace all of the 1 gig sticks with 2 gig sticks. You can't have a 2 gig stick, a 1 gig stick and two 512 sticks in the 4 slots. I could just be making all of this up due to my ignorance.

EDIT - it seems as though I am wrong - you can mix and match. who would have thought?

[Whacker]

Couple of things.

First, you are running Vista. Vista is a piece of crap (stay out of this thread bunny frogger! ) and it runs slower with games that XP does. Benchmarks prove that repeatedly, google if you are curious. If you want an instant 1-8% improvement in gaming performance , go back to XP.

Second, faster ram is generally better than more ram. If you can overclock your ram safely and get a few more megahurts (har) out of it, then that will do you worlds of good. Just be careful that you don't cook both your RAM and your northbridge.

If you can do both of those, you will notice some performance gains for free. Given that I'm guessing your rig is 1-2 years old, I would not advocate you spending any money on upgrades for it. Tweak what you have to get a bit more out of it, and then when the time comes in another year or two get a nice shiny new machine that's faster.

[pevergreen]

If you want an instant 1-8% improvement in gaming performance , go back to XP.

I did...E:TW goes about 20% faster. best option.

[Lemur]

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly Vista is, but it sure ain't a gaming OS. Ditching it is the easiest speed boost you can get.

Why don't any of us use XP 64-bit? Is it compatibility hell? I figure there must be some outstanding reason why we never even bring it up ....

[Husar]

Vista is a great gaming OS, it also has a new extra games menu for quick access to your games.
I also don't have any problems with gaming in Vista.

The talk about it running games a lot slower is pretty outdated, if only people had such good memories when it comes to what politicians say....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Boohugh]

Thanks for the responses so far, but switching back to XP isn't really an option. Firstly, I don't have an XP CD lying around so I'd need to buy a new copy and secondly I really can't be bothered with all the hassle switching operating system entails (needing to reinstall everything again), so that's off the cards.

I've been considering the overclocking option, the RAM I have is designed to allow some overclocking so I'm confident I can push it a little without frying anything. Is that likely to produce a bigger performance increase (really I'm only concerned about Empire as that is the only game I play that has even remotely pushed my PC) than more RAM?

If I were to get 2x2gb sticks to replace my current ones I could just overclock those too of course, but I'm not sure my northbridge could handle overclocking 4 sticks (i.e. if I were to just add another 2x1gb sticks rather than replace anything). Which brings me back to the question of what is the best way (and what possible ways) are there to add more RAM? Does it have to be in pairs? Will 2 larger RAM sticks be better than 4 smaller ones?

Keep the answers coming!

[Xiahou]

Were I building a new system, I'd go with 4GB of RAM... I mean, why not?

But my current desktop PC has 2GB of RAM and it seems to be more than adequate. The biggest performance killer when you don't have enough RAM is from paging- what you computer needs isn't in memory and it has to pull it from the disk and it needs to make room for that by writing part of what's in memory to the page file. It doesn't take much of this writing back and forth during a game to cause noticeable lag or hitching.

A real low-tech way to check for paging is if you're playing a game and you notice stuttering, glance at your PC case and see if the HD light is flickering. Obviously, this is normal when you're on a loading screen ect, but in game it should be less common. Of course, HD activity could be caused by other things too (is your Anti-Virus program doing a scan?), so use some discretion. An additional, yet still simple way to check available RAM would be by doing a Ctrl+Alt+Del within a game, pulling up Task Manager, and looking at the Performance tab. If Available physical memory is low and if the page file usage history is spiky looking, you could probably use more RAM.

For example, my PC with Firefox running, has about 1.6GB of RAM free and a nice flat line for the PF history (460MB). If you want to get more technical than that, you could start creating log files from Performance Monitor, but I don't think we really need to go down that road.

[Boohugh]

Just to let you know, I decided to just go out and buy 4gb of ram to replace my current setup. Played an ETW campaign for a few hours the other night and it ran perfectly, not a single CTD (the Huron even declared war on me and it didn't crash this time, a problem that plagued my previous 2 campaigns!) so best purchase ever!

Computers are random