2GB of RAM vs 1GB of RAM

[latrosicarius]

Hey guys, this is not really a question, just an FYI.

I know people often ask "how much RAM should I get?". People always know enough to reply "512 is not enough", but it's widely unknown whether 2GB is better than 1GB simply because of the fact that not many people spring for the second gig so they never find out.

Well, I just bought an extra gig and stuck it in (different brands even) and I can say with 100% certanty that 2GB is like 10000% better than 1GB!

Getting in and out of games and programs is soooo much faster with 2GB. BF1 used to take like a whole 30 seconds of chugging to exit before I could really use the computer again. Now, it instantly exits and I'm back in Windows ready to multitask (just one example... maps load faster too, etc).

Another benefit is that my Raptor (which is VERY loud) is used 90% LESS now so the overall effect of the extra RAM is a MUCH quieter system. I guess a lot of the Raptor's constant chugging when opening and closing programs was due to it swapping data in and out of the system page file because 1GB was just not enough.

Well, I hope you all know now, and I didn't offend any of the smart people who already knew this. Bye

[arthurleung]

Depends on what you do with your machine.
If you multi-task a lot then 2GB is better.

Though I see 2 machines with 1GB each is faster than a single 2GB machine in terms of multi-tasking

[teachmech]

I agree with latrosicarius the move to 2Gb made a huge differnce to my system and would recimend 2Gb to anybody who asks.

[sawyen]

Originally Posted by arthurleung

Depends on what you do with your machine.
If you multi-task a lot then 2GB is better.

Though I see 2 machines with 1GB each is faster than a single 2GB machine in terms of multi-tasking

Ehehe.. obviously..

But 2GB helps alot on certain scenarios but little on others..

Then again, most of the gains are fairly apparent..

[MantisCSS]

personaly not much difference noticed in gaming but multitaskign yes.

[pr0p4g4nd4]

Definately rocks to have 2gb

[chuckskull]

I can second that, makes a huge difference on the latest games, especially FPS, they seem to chew RAM like no-ones business

[Smokey21]

Agreed. What anoys me is hardware sites like toms and anandtech, etc benchmark the difference in games, and it's obviously less than 2fps difference. Thats not what the extra ram does, it's the speed at which things open close, levels loading, etc.

You can't bench the difference, but you can feel the difference.

[chuckskull]

Originally Posted by Smokey21

Agreed. What anoys me is hardware sites like toms and anandtech, etc benchmark the difference in games, and it's obviously less than 2fps difference. Thats not what the extra ram does, it's the speed at which things open close, levels loading, etc.

You can't bench the difference, but you can feel the difference.

Waiting for games like F.E.A.R or BF2 to load on 1 gig was torture. 2gig is a breeze.

[GoNz0]

XP was designed to run on 2GB of RAM...

as a BF2 owner, i was so glad to go from 1GB to 2GB, loading times slashed..

BF2 loves a RAID0 array as well !

that verifying client data part used to take upwards of 1min b4 i went to SATA2 RAID0 drives...

as for hard drive usage, paging file usage will drop a lot, even though the size of the paging file will double when you double the ram..

[TheVoice]

Originally Posted by GoNz0

XP was designed to run on 2GB of RAM...

Eh? It runs fine on 512MB, I fail to see why it would be "designed" for 2GB, when even these days 2GB of RAM isn't common on most PCs (other than those playing games or doing other system-intensive stuff).

[MantisCSS]

i heard the max windows can use is 3GB am i right?

[chuckskull]

Originally Posted by MantisCSS

i heard the max windows can use is 3GB am i right?

Yeah something to do with the virtual memory allocation table IIRC.

Pretty sure x64 allows for up to 8GB.

[GoNz0]

Originally Posted by TheVoice

Eh? It runs fine on 512MB, I fail to see why it would be "designed" for 2GB, when even these days 2GB of RAM isn't common on most PCs (other than those playing games or doing other system-intensive stuff).

its been a few years since i was involved in the thread over at osnn.net, infact the website was under a diffrent name its so long ago.
basically, microsoft designed XP to run at its best when using 2gb of ram, im not saying anything less/more and it will run bad, as it's not true, thats why microsoft use a paging file to take the load off the memory, even with 2gb of ram installed the paging file is still used to some extent.

XP at the end of the day will run from 64mb up, i think 3gb is all it can cope with, my motherboard has some setting for systems over 3gb, maybe that will allow XP to read and use 3GB+ but i dont have that much so i dont know

afaik when you put 2gb in a XP machine it will load up more files into memory, responce times are cut due to this.

(BF2 also loads in a decent time with 2GB, that being the only reason i installed 2gb )

[Smokey21]

XP was not designed for 2GB of ram, lol.

[chuckskull]

Do you really think the worlds largest software company would lack the foresight to know, systems would get faster over time and decide to build their software around a hardware configuration that would be defunct after 6 months?