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General discussion

Gaming RAM 2 gigs Better?

May 20, 2005 10:43AM PDT

I heard before that if you add any more memory over 1gig it will not improve performance e.g. games. and that it is usually used for servers. would going from 1 gig to 2 gig make a difference in games like doom 3 hl2 bfv and rtcw:et?

Discussion is locked

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yah it wont make a difference
May 20, 2005 11:43AM PDT

today for most games 512 mb is enough. 1gb is excellent and 2gb is basically unnecessary right now and a waste of money.

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yeah
May 21, 2005 8:30AM PDT

Currently 2gbs is useless for gaming. But your money would be best spent on other parts. What parts do you have now?

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short specs
May 21, 2005 9:06AM PDT

p4 3ghz intel 915g mobo, 512 x 2 dual channel 400MHz, i want to upgrade the ram to corsair xms pc3200 512 x 2, with lower latency. would this improve performance over stock ram?

Thanks

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Just a stupid question. . .
May 21, 2005 9:32AM PDT

With your hardware, how can it get any better?

As was mentioned, over one Gig is overkill unless you're producing, ripping, converting, and burning DVDs.

Maybe your monitor is not up to the task. Most people never consider upgrading the monitor. If the pitch is .28 or above, a Terabyte of ram won't help. How about your graphic card? A bare bones card is the easiest to replace, and with a good monitor the results can be spectacular.

Just some thoughts.

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He can do much better
May 21, 2005 12:15PM PDT

3 ghz is pretty low by today's standards. It's the second lowest speed for intels p4s that run on that chipset.

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It's low for Intel...
May 21, 2005 12:39PM PDT

but not AMD, whos processors are all under 3Ghz. Even though it's the second slowest P4 it's more than adequate in today's world. Once again we are accustomed to the American ideal that more is better! But its not. Even Intel has realized that now.

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ps
May 22, 2005 1:47AM PDT

not everything is soley dependant on the cpu. i really dont care that i have an intel. my games run fine with everything on high settings and high resolution.(over 60 fps) EVEN WITH AN INTEL CPU. i have a very good graphics card(ati radeon x800xl) and my monitor works just fine for games. so i really dont care for amd. because i just bought my pc and i am not going to go run out and build an amd system just to get a few more fps.

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ummm ok.....
May 22, 2005 6:37AM PDT

Did i say everything? No. Anyway you cant always look at the clock speeds, a 2.6 ghz athlon 64 will give you more frames per second than a 3.8ghz pentium 4. Athlon 64s also run much cooler and quieter.

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woww
May 22, 2005 7:05AM PDT

sry but heat isnt an issue for me. BTX case and mobo = 2 120mm fans. anyway, i can always upgrade my cpu to a faster p4 with the new 64 bit support. it just is useless now

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ok
May 22, 2005 1:40AM PDT

x800xl pci express graphics card and sony 17 in flat panel monitor

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Switch to amd
May 21, 2005 12:14PM PDT

on intel lower latencies barely affect performance. On an amd processor (which is much faster than an intel on nearly all games in existance) they benefit from lower latencies. Fortunately if you have 2gbs on an amd you will not have any lower performance. An athlon 64 processor has such a high bus speed (thanks to hyperthreading) that it would take many sticks of ram to for it to bottleneck your ram. For example the FX-55 has a clock speed of 2.6GHz, the bus speed would also be 2.6GHz. Perhaps you would also be thinking of a new video card?

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(NT) (NT) RE: Hypertransport
May 21, 2005 12:41PM PDT