The RAM and XP question

[frogbeastegg]

Froggy, if you're lucky, you'll see 3GB at the most if you install 4GB. Personally, I don't think 4gigs of RAM on a 32bit system is that good an investment. I guess if you have no plans of any future upgrades and want to squeeze everything you possibly can out of your current system, go for it. But I wouldn't expect any big performance gains.

I can neither justify or afford a big upgrade. I'm looking for a smaller, cheaper way to give the machine a bit more oomph and keep it a solid gaming machine for another year or so. It's mainly for civ 5 and a couple of forthcoming games; I'm slipping towards the middleground between recommended and minimum in memory and CPU.

CPU, er not keen. It's a more expensive option, it's a harder DIY upgrade and I don't want to get involved, and it doesn't seem like moving to a faster core2duo or a quadcore would really give that much oomph in return for the cost and pain. Plus my current CPU is meant to be great for overclocking so I can get extra power without spending.

RAM. Cheap, easy, a doddle to fit, would relieve the main bottleneck. There's the 32bit memory limit which makes it a less straightforward move than it otherwise would be.

I hoped a combo of extra memory and some overclocking would provide a decent bit of oopmh. If not, I'm kind of left looking at rebuilding half the machine and that's too expensive and too much bother to be worthwhile right now.

Assorted

I don't know if my board will take DDR3. I might as well post the beast's entire specs rather than just posting the mobo. Here they are, copied and pasted from the order confirmation email:

1 x BB-C2D6PB Barebones Bundles Intel E6600 Core2Duo Heatsink and Fan, 1024mb DDR2 667 Ram, MSI Intel 975X PCI Express motherboard (NB: I removed the RAM listed here; too slow to work with my corsair stuff)

1 x BFG-88GTS BFG GeForce 8800GTS 640MB HDCP Enabled Dual DVI PCI Express (500MHz Core Clock) (1600MHz Memory Clock) (1200MHz Shader Clock)

1 x CSR-X642G Corsair XMS6400 2GB DDR2 (2x1GB) 800Mhz Non-ECC

Beast because I dubbed the machine froggy's beast when I built it 3 1/2 years ago. It was beastly indeed; still plays everything I throw at it on higher settings and smoothly. Everything except civ 5. Some future game specs look concerning.

The prices come from novatech's site; I've used them for most of my PC parts for years and their prices have always beaten the other sites I looked at. They also come out ahead in other areas such as delivery and customer service. Their 4GB 2x2GB kits is £74.99; I can't see the point of spending extra on 4GB when I can save a bit of money and not have parts left over with no use.

Here's a dumb question: Why not migrate the machine over the Windows 7 64-bit and use all the RAM you like?

Two reasons:
1.It's £95! I don't have any way to get a cheap or free version; I know no one else who uses it, and no students either. It's full price or nothing. I then wouldn't be able to get the RAM until the next month; I'm very boring about making sure I budget well.

2. I have a lot of programs which would have been broken by Vista and so I assume they would also be broken by 7. Some would definitely be broken by a directx version above 9. I could dual boot; it's a pain in the rear and I don't want to go through the slog of wiping my current setup and having to rebuild everything .... in duplicate.

[Husar]

Uhm, I've tested it myself(sort of, many, many moons ago with DDR1 or so), and I have seen tests that suggest the performance "boost" of DDR2 800MHz over DDR2 667MHz is negligible(thus smaller and faster is not better than more but slower), around 2% or so. If you still have that 1GB stick lying around I suggest you try whether you can plug that in and see what that feels like. Both RAMs would work at the lower speeds then I guess, but I did that back when I still had DDR1 and it worked. That's if your mainboard accepts the two different RAM sticks of course, there may be mainboards that don't, and it wouldn't cost you anything, if there is no gain that way you can still buy new ones.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I can neither justify or afford a big upgrade. I'm looking for a smaller, cheaper way to give the machine a bit more oomph and keep it a solid gaming machine for another year or so. It's mainly for civ 5 and a couple of forthcoming games; I'm slipping towards the middleground between recommended and minimum in memory and CPU.

Then another GB of RAM/ a better socket 775 CPU (i.e. Core2Duo or Core2Quad)/good SSD best bets. That's listed in terms of decreasing “cheap” and increasing “long term improvement”.

Out of those only RAM is truly the “cheap” option. A CPU is quickly about as expensive as Windows, and a good SSD is easily more expensive than that.

CPU, er not keen. It's a more expensive option, it's a harder DIY upgrade and I don't want to get involved, and it doesn't seem like moving to a faster core2duo or a quadcore would really give that much oomph in return for the cost and pain. Plus my current CPU is meant to be great for overclocking so I can get extra power without spending.

There is more to CPU upgrades than just a faster clock setting. Some things cannot be overclocked out of your existing one. Improvements in actual hardware for instance.

Cache size is something to eyeball here: the bigger it is the more data will fit, and a CPU cache miss means a round trip to RAM which is easily a factor of 1000 or so more time consuming. All Core2Duo's seem to offer lush pastures for those who would attempt overclocking, and all such components come with similar TDP ratings (65W) which means they ought to produce roughly the same amount of heat.

I'd agree with Hussar in saying that it is better to have more RAM than to have less but more fancy RAM (unless that fancy happens to be ECC). RAM running at lower than its maximum performance is still better than a round trip to disk, and 2GB is simply not such a lot of RAM anymore. I'd go for 3GB if you don't want to run a 64bit OS and want to upgrade now. Either a 2x512MB kit or a 1x1GB one.

[Lemur]

[Windows 7] £95! I don't have any way to get a cheap or free version; I know no one else who uses it, and no students either. It's full price or nothing.

As the local plumber would say, there's your problem, lady. You need some geek friends. There's nothing quite like being able to pick up the phone and ask a buddy if he's got a spare hard drive, 120mm fan or Acrobat license. It is imperative that you socialize with some full-time network/IT/hardware geeks and become buds. You'd be amazed at the benefits that you reap from buying a system builder a few beers.

This is much more important than a RAM upgrade. You must cultivate some geeks, and quickly.

[frogbeastegg]

AFAIK this board will support the two different speeds of RAM. I was tempted to leave the other stick in when I built it but was advised to remove it for better performance. I'm not much of a techie so I follow advise. I still have the stick; it's amongst the stuff I left behind at my parents' house when I moved out. I can get it and try it out, maybe next weekend.

There is more to CPU upgrades than just a faster clock setting. Some things cannot be overclocked out of your existing one. Improvements in actual hardware for instance.

True, and I know a better cache is always good. Is it £140 plus pain of installing good? As far as I can see by reading some processor benchmark comparisons it isn't. For something like the E8400 it's around an extra 5FPS on most benchmark tests, on average. Swapping my current core2duo for another doesn't feel like a good investment. I'm quite sure I could go core2quad on this board; again it doesn't feel like a good return for the investment. So few games use all 4 cores I doubt I would see much benefit.

Processors scare me. Other components are like lego. Slot and click, done, maybe a bit of wiring to plug in. Get it wrong and nothing much happens. Easy and I have no problems doing it provided someone warns me of any pitfalls before hand, such as which RAM slot colour needs to be done first. CPUs need thermal paste, are delicate, need fans and heatsinks setting up - all sorts of fiddly things which can go ever so slightly wrong and result in a burned out unit. Extracting the old one doesn't sound like a walk in the park either.

You must cultivate some geeks, and quickly.

It's hard to find geeks, and harder still to get most of them to take me seriously. Most of the time, on hearing that I'm a gamer, they give me this flat look, pointedly turn away and start talking to someone else about games, deliberately blanking me. Everybody knows girls don't play games, and if they did they would be about babies, cleaning and dancing, not real games for real gamers. It's only on the internet that I'm able to mix freely. Out of the three who do treat me like any other gamer, none are the PC tinkering type.

[Lemur]

I always forget about the different flavor of sexism of Britannia. Here, you'd be swarmed with geeks who adore the fact that you game. You'd be just as irritated, probably, but for different reasons.

Still think a couple of geeks who owe you favors would sort this out instantly. Anybody who builds systems has extra licenses. They buy 'em in bulk, and give away the overage to their peeps.

[frogbeastegg]

For the sake of future information - I'll have to go windows 7 eventually - does it have the same effect as vista and break nearly everything that existed prior to its launch? Or did they include decent backwards compatibility this time? Also, would I be able to use directx9 in it?

[Husar]

For the sake of future information - I'll have to go windows 7 eventually - does it have the same effect as vista and break nearly everything that existed prior to its launch? Or did they include decent backwards compatibility this time?

Vista didn't break that much/anything for me so I cannot really comment on this, but 7 has generally been received much better as far as I'm aware.

Also, would I be able to use directx9 in it?

Why wouldn't you?

Not sure how well it runs older games as I don't usually play them anymore, but the higher versions (professional and ultimate I think) come with an XP mode that might help in that regard, haven't tried that though, you may want to look around on the web if that's a big concern for you.

[frogbeastegg]

Why wouldn't you?

Because it comes with directx11 and reverting to an older version of directx has, in my experience, historically proven impossible.

It's a concern because directx10 was the first version to make a conscious break with previous versions. Prior versions were all backwards compatible; 10 was not. That's why I don't have it, despite having a card which supports it and gains extras features if it is present.

I don't know anything about directx11. It's not available for XP.

Not sure how well it runs older games as I don't usually play them anymore, but the higher versions (professional and ultimate I think) come with an XP mode that might help in that regard, haven't tried that though, you may want to look around on the web if that's a big concern for you.

That's the real concern. I have a lot of older games that I like to play, and I know many of them were left broken or glitchy in vista or directx10. Since windows 7 postdates them I expect it has the same issues unless microsoft deliberately paid more attention to getting older programs working. That would be a complete turnaround of attitude; when making vists and 10 they were all about focusing on the future and let the past be damned.

I did a quick google on the XP mode. Seems it's useless for gaming as it's intended for business use. Lots of resource bloat and it will not let you utilise your video card.

[naut]

For the sake of future information - I'll have to go windows 7 eventually - does it have the same effect as vista and break nearly everything that existed prior to its launch? Or did they include decent backwards compatibility this time? Also, would I be able to use directx9 in it?

It's does break a number of programs. Howeve, get Win7 Pro x64. It comes with an XP mode that enables greater compatibility.

[Lemur]

A bit late to the party, Psychonaut; she already bought and installed her version of Win7.