think i need more ram

problem is this, i'm playing burnout for the pc and after a while (say 30 min) the game goes all laggy and my hard drive light is on perment, i play it for a while longer (say 10 min) and the game is still a bit laggy and now the hard drive light is out, is this a sign of a faster cpu or more ram,
i do run the game at 1360x768 with 8xaa but even if i turn off the zz it still happens.
my system specs are
a-bit ib9
ati (his) 4850
intell c2d 2ghz
2 gig ram
4 hard drives
dvd rw
and vista 64
none of this is over clock, but i do have the gpu fan on full becaues the card runs hot

It probaly is down to a lack of RAM then but bumping the CPU up my help a tad.

You may as well by some more as with the RAM being so dirt cheap you'd be silly not to.

Stock up on RAM. It's the easiest and cheapest performance upgrade money can buy. Especially with how cheap DDR2 is atm. It wont last for very long though. Prices are already starting to go up slowly but steadily.

This is a pretty good deal atm :)

Just to note that I think a lot of P965 board have very poor 2GB stick support. CL=6 memory (most of the cheap one you can find) wouldn't boot at all even at the most relaxed setting I used.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arthurleung

Just to note that I think a lot of P965 board have very poor 2GB stick support. CL=6 memory (most of the cheap one you can find) wouldn't boot at all even at the most relaxed setting I used.

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I thought that was because P965 doesnt support 2Gb sticks, max on the chipset is 4GB or 4x1Gb only, thats what I thought anyhow, its been my experience that P965 wont work with 2GB sticks either, best bet is to get 2x1GB kit to add to his current hardware.

Hawker

My 975X works fine with 2gb sticks!! According to the spec page the Abit IB9 does support 8gb of RAM:

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/mothe...&fMTYPE=LGA775

IMHO the CPU maybe the major bottleneck in the system. I assume that the OP has a E4400??
I would personally try overclocking it to at least 2.5ghz or get a processor upgrade.

Also there is the possibility that the system maybe overheating after a few minutes of gaming. The first thing would be to make sure that the case has adequate cooling and also to make sure that the graphics card is also not running too hot. If the graphics card starts overheating it can cause problems in games. I have used aftermarket coolers on most of my graphics cards and it has helped greatly reduce temperatures and noise. Also try moving the case to a place where there is a better airflow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

My 975X works fine with 2gb sticks!! According to the spec page the Abit IB9 does support 8gb of RAM:

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/mothe...&fMTYPE=LGA775

IMHO the CPU maybe the major bottleneck in the system. I assume that the OP has a E4400??
I would personally try overclocking it to at least 2.5ghz or get a processor upgrade.

Also there is the possibility that the system maybe overheating after a few minutes of gaming. The first thing would be to make sure that the case has adequate cooling and also to make sure that the graphics card is also not running too hot. If the graphics card starts overheating it can cause problems in games. I have used aftermarket coolers on most of my graphics cards and it has helped greatly reduce temperatures and noise. Also try moving the case to a place where there is a better airflow.

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yep it's an E4400, i did try and overclock it last nite (with some help from the hexus.net irc channel) and got 2.5ghz (strange i got it set to 300X10) its deffentley not over heating, i got the gfx card fan on full and cpu temps are in the 50's it did imprve things alittle bit as in it did slow down for a sec did see the hard drive light on but then it went back to normal.
EDIT : this over clock is a bit confuseing, http://twitpic.com/1iq20 as you can see. is windows telling me i'm runing a 2ghz at 2.5 or is one core running runing at 2ghz and the other at 2.5 ??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hawker1986

I thought that was because P965 doesnt support 2Gb sticks, max on the chipset is 4GB or 4x1Gb only, thats what I thought anyhow, its been my experience that P965 wont work with 2GB sticks either, best bet is to get 2x1GB kit to add to his current hardware.

Hawker

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My P5B prefers 2x2GB sticks as opposed to 4x1GB :confused: In fact, I couldn't get my board stable when I tried 4x1GB dimms and had to buy a 2x2GB kit.

You should check the temperature of the graphics card using ATITool or GPU-Z when it is under load.

Also try defragging the hard disk. Have you disabled indexing in Vista??

http://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-d...indows-search/

http://www.bioteck.net/2009/01/15/di...windows-vista/

Check this thread out too:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...m/196001399831

Indexing runs in the background and slows your computer down. It also means that your hard disks are continually being accessed by Vista. Disabling it will slow down searches but make your computer faster.

When overclocking your CPU run 25 iterations of Intel Burn Test and a few hours of OCCT to check stability under load. If your temperatures are under 60C with Intel Burn Test you are doing fine!! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dagwoood

My P5B prefers 2x2GB sticks as opposed to 4x1GB :confused: In fact, I couldn't get my board stable when I tried 4x1GB dimms and had to buy a 2x2GB kit.

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Yep, my 975X does not like 4x1gb RAM if it is above 533mhz!! :censored: 2x2gb of 800mhz RAM it was fine with though!! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Also try defragging the hard disk. Have you disabled indexing in Vista??

Indexing runs in the background and slows your computer down. It also means that your hard disks are continually being accessed by Vista. Disabling it will slow down searches but make your computer faster.

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thats my thought too, infact it might be a hard drive simply getting old, or maybe too full?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elspuddy

EDIT : this over clock is a bit confuseing, http://twitpic.com/1iq20 as you can see. is windows telling me i'm runing a 2ghz at 2.5 or is one core running runing at 2ghz and the other at 2.5 ??

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Basically the CPU is rated for 2ghz and this info is in the CPU. However the motherboard has detected that the CPU is at 2.5ghz. Basically Vista is saying that your 2ghz processor is at 2.5ghz!

You probably also have EIST enabled which means that the CPU cores clock down when not under heavy loads. This makes the CPU run cooler and reduces power consumption! :)

A useful application to have running is RMClock which gives you a realtime indication of CPU core frequency,temperature,voltage and usage!!

I would also run an anti-spyware scan and anti-virus scan too to make sure your computer has not caught anything.

Things I would do before buying some RAM:
1.)Defrag the hard disk
2.)Disable indexing
3.)Disable aero
4.)Check that your GPU is not overheating
5.)Make sure that you have the newest or most stable drivers for your graphics card
6.)Run an anti-virus and ant-spyware scan

Also disabling superfetching may also help as it will increase the amount of available RAM:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

http://www.technipages.com/vista-ena...uperfetch.html

I have done all of these things and my Vista installation runs much smoother for me IMHO.

superfetch is off, the hard drive is a 160 maxtor with 85gig free i defrag with jkdefrag every sunday, i'v just turned off indexing all all the drives and turned off system restore, as for areo i think it's off because i'm got a vista system score of 1.0 hate runing that thing. as for antisypware, throght nod32 did that ? but installiing spybot.

I'd be surprised if it was the RAM. I've got it running silky smooth with 2Gb of ram (in single channel! Don't ask) and a 8800GTS and all settings maxed out at 1280x1024. Mind you, that is with XP.