It's better to have 2x1gig than 4x512 for timings and compatibility (less physical chips to access/power/cool) so if buying all-new-memory go for that. Is it noticable? No first hand experience TBH of the latter but probably not a whole lot. It's very hard to quantify small differences IMHO. I'm sure you could benchmark it and point at 0.11114 of a FPS difference tho
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
Yep - if buying new RAM then 2 x 1gb sticks would be the best for you.
Currently the good stuff is Crucial Ballistix Tracers. Seem 'em go above 300FSB at 3-4-4-8
Just bought an Alienware sytem and decided against the 2Gb option to cut costs. It eats most games for breakfast even at the highest settings, but the lack of RAM does mean a slight slowdown in the most graphics intensive of my games collection, most notably Everquest 2 (what with all that cloth simulation, specular lighting, rediculously detailed shadows etc). Half Life 2 doesn't come close to slowing it down, FRAPS recorded around 70-80 FPS at 1280x1024 with all settings to max. Even though the system as it is chews most games up and spits them out, I intend to upgrade to 2Gb in the near future to prepare for more graphics intensive games.
AMD Athlon FX-57 (soon to be overclocked), A8N SLi-deluxe, 2x PNY Ge-force 7800 GTX (also soon to be overclocked), 1Gb PC3200 (and all the other stuff).
FPS differences aren't really the point (well not usually) it's more about feel, loading times and overall smoothness of the experience - that's where 2 gig makes a difference _on some games which use a lot of memory_. Half Life 2 will happily chew a further 200-300mb of memory over that of a 1 gig system (at least in my experience of both) presumably because it can cache a heck of lot more stuff at the same time. Perhaps i should log a typical session?Originally Posted by Mikey2005
BTW i'd overclock your CPU not your graphics - as is, with SLI, they'll be waiting on the CPU most of the time anyway.
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
I just upgraded to 2GB of Crucial DDR500 (3-4-4-8)ram. I just finished confirming stability at 2.7v, 250mhz @3-4-4-8 so now I'm switching back to 240Mhz and now I'm going to look to see how much I can lower the timings.
My X2 4400+ will run 2400mhz @ 1.375 volts.
On my system bf2 was unplayable with 2gb of ram (10minute map loading times etc)
I stuck in 2gb of corsair and it runs much sweeter
My lcdc stats tell me its using 1.4gb of ram in game ! !
It seems clear that 2gb is better if you can afford it. I play BF2 regularly, and found the upgrade from 1gb to 2Gb worthwhile.
My question is...
Is it better to have 2 x 1Gb sticks, or 4 x 512Mb sticks?
I have currently have 4 matching Corsair 512Mb with Silver heat spreaders (I bought 2 pairs).
My mobo does run 2 dual-channels I believe. Its an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (NForce3 chipset)
Cheers
2x1GB is better
6014 3DMk 05
2gig is better because you can do away with a pagefile for most things..... Simple!
If you can afford single sticks do it, if you can afford multi-dual channels do it.
if you can't, go to plymouth docks and learn what its like to be a real man.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
I added another 1Gb stick of memory to my box recently, namely for BF2 and it did indeed smooth things out. Incredible to think that we now have games that will eat > 1Gb of RAM, compare that to the glory days of the spectrum et al when games had to fit into ca 48K.
Last edited by noTHINGface; 01-09-2005 at 06:43 PM. Reason: typo
What we share with everyone is glum, and dark...
we had Vampire the Masquerade, released late last year, which doesn't run pretty much at all without 2gb - the specs call for "384mb ram plus 1.4gb swap file", you can imagine how smooth that isn't
Did someone just say they bought an Alienware and didn't get 2gb to CUT COSTS????
Are you mad? I didn't buy an Alienware cause they cost a bloody fortune. Plus for that money I could build an awesome pwning rig!!
kempez, everything needs a poser brand.
ie, been "into" it for about 1 year, alienware.
want to pretend its longer, mac.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Of course 2 x 1Gb Sticks are better but 4 x 512Mb Sticks would give you the same performance but use up all the slots. Hence why 2 x 1Gb is more desirable, if you've already got 2 x 512Mb there is no reason why you shouldn't get another lot of 2 x 512Mb. In fact I might be doing that soon.
Has anyone managed to run 4 by 512 on an amd venice system with decent timings? I am not sure if i am just asking too much of my system or my memory is sub-par but i needed to use 3T timings and apparently that really hurts performance... :/
Well the Venice memory controller should be able to run 4 x 512mb sticks at 2T timings: but its not idea
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