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Memory 8gigs of ram

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Frohicky1, 18 Feb 2010.

  1. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Hi all,

    I've started using my old 19" monitor to monitor temps etc while I game on my 24" :D I've noticed that when playing Modern Warfare 2 and Crysis Wars it measures 90% of RAM used (I have 4gigs). This makes me think, would more RAM make a difference, contrary the popular "only if you use CAD, photoshop, etc" wisdom? In crysis wars on the Mesa level, for example, the draw distance is actually quite noticeable, maybe more ram would help this.
     
  2. Big Elf

    Big Elf Oh no! Not another f----ing elf!

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    Won't some of the RAM be cached after boot up with Superfetch? If you do increase it I'll be interested in the results.
     
  3. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest

    When I had my pc before I sold it, I was running 8gb memory and playing games like crysis in 64bit mode I would be using 4.5gb memory the same as gta iv.

    Simon
     
  4. MarkW7

    MarkW7 Total Noob

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    The more the merrier, if you can get 8 gigs in there - do it.
     
  5. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    4.5gb eh? Interesting. Does windows 7 use superfetch btw?
     
  6. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    I had 3gb of ram on this machine and it wasnt enough for gaming at 1680 x 1050

    I would say 4gb could also be cutting it fine at a higher resolution.
     
  7. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest

    I don't know, never looked for it to turn it off as my memory wasn't all cached like in vista.

    Simon
     
  8. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest

    and yes 4.5gb running 2560x1600.
     
  9. D-Cyph3r

    D-Cyph3r Gay for Yunosuke

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    Considering a decent 2x2GB kit of 1333-1600Mhz DDR3 can be had for under £100 nowadays I would absolutely consider 8GB worth it, regardless of how you use your PC....


    Man, it was only 2-3 years ago I paid £180 for 2x1GB of OCZ DDR3. :S
     
  10. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    go for it, i cannot imagine living with less than my current amount of RAM. even eagerly waiting for 16GB to be made available.

    playing MW2 12 players, being the host used up just over 6GB of RAM (with 1.9GB RAMdisk) so 4GB really isn't enough, 6GB is just about acceptable on i7 920 platforms.
     
  11. javaman

    javaman May irritate Eyes

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    I just took out 4gb of ramand moved it to my backup pc. at 1050 gaming I was only hitting about 3gb and only ever went over 4gb if I was pushing it.
     
  12. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    In the first custom pc i ever bought, there was a grouptest on DDR2. Dominator 1000MHz was £400 for 2x1Gb! And these was this crazy company called A-Data with claims of 1066MHz!
     
  13. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    you kinda need 6gb for i920 anyway

    its what i use never had any ram issues

    highest ram usage was sup com with 12 players on it with 2k units each about 4gb
     
  14. D-Cyph3r

    D-Cyph3r Gay for Yunosuke

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    God yes SupCom devours RAM in large, late game scenarios. With 4GB I regularly get memory leak crashes. :S
     
  15. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Agreed, supcoms a killer. Wonder how much worse the sequel will be . . .
     
  16. [KNIGHT]

    [KNIGHT] What's a Dremel?

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    Somewhere i read that there is something called virtual memory in a computer. It is some space on the HDD allocated incase your RAM isnt enough to do your work. In such a situation the computer would use the virtual memory.
    This is how to access it it win 7.
    Right click my computer>properties>system protection>advanced>Performace settings>advanced and you will find how much you need to allocate for virtual memoey.

    So rather than upgrading from 4GB to 8GB of RAM why cant he keep the 4GB of RAM and increase the space allocated for virtual memory? Pls let me know as im also curious about this virtual memory.
     
  17. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    because your hard disk is a LOT slower than your RAM.

    read/write speed of hard drives: in 100MB/s
    read/write speed of RAM: in 15,000MB/s.

    virtual memory is just there so that when you run out of RAM, your computer will not freeze and throw up errors, it will use those and make your computer feel like a snail.
     
    Last edited: 20 Feb 2010
  18. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    Part of the annoyance is that, at least as far as I am aware, we can't force a program to use RAM instead of virtual memory. If this were possible, we could force the whole program to run off the ram and hey presto, amazing speed! :D
     
  19. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    I don't know about other 8gb users here, but I've rarely seen high RAM usage - And that was with Maya, Zbrush and PS open together, with active files, I topped out about 7gb.

    I did see ~5gb with the Crysis editor, though, while importing a height map into a populated scene. Silly idea, yes, but funny.
     
  20. Frohicky1

    Frohicky1 Awaits his moosey fate . . .

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    I've got a feeling Windows caps the use automatically, assuming most people wont have that much RAM. Not sure if there's any way of changing this.
     

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