512 to 1Gb, is it worth it?

[chizu]

Right now I have a 512GEIL and planning on to upgrade to 1GB. So I was wondering if it worth it? Can I tell a difference? And what if I upgrade from 1GB to 2GB can I tell a huge difference performance?

[ballistic]

I'm planning on upgrading from my single stick of 512mb pc3200 and getting a matched set for a gigabyte of dual channel goodness.

[mulpsmebeauty]

Recent games will definitely respond to having 1Gb RAM. Loading times will be quicker and your OS will have much more available for RAM cache. I went from 512Mb to 1Gb and yes it's worth it.

I don't know if going to 2Gb gives much additional benefit at the moment. I don't have 2Gb so I can't comment further.

[BlindedByScience]

....a few threads lately on this subject. Only discussion seems to be how much improvement you get; IMHO - it's a no lose upgrade with any of the modern OS's.....:cool:

Regards - B.B.S.

[AuDioFreaK39]

2GB doesn't make all that much difference unless you are running your games at optimal quality and are overclocking your processor at high speeds

[Laforge]

Recent games will definitely respond to having 1Gb RAM. Loading times will be quicker and your OS will have much more available for RAM cache. I went from 512Mb to 1Gb and yes it's worth it.

I don't know if going to 2Gb gives much additional benefit at the moment. I don't have 2Gb so I can't comment further.


I do have 2 gigs, and while it's only marginally better for games.. -- it's incredibly better for video editing, etc..

[Nobody]

I am currently running 1GB of Corsair matched memory, the improvement from 512 to 1GB was dramatic. :eek:

[somecallmeTim]

If you would have used the handy dandy "search" feature, you would have found several screens worth of topics on exactly this subject.

The answer is "YES" 512 to 1 gb will improve your performance in gaming, going to 2gb barely except in other heavy memory apps like vid editing, for now anyway

we need to add this as a sticky or in the memory FAQ... <sigh>

[DeepFreeze]

Right now I have a 512GEIL and planning on to upgrade to 1GB. So I was wondering if it worth it? Can I tell a difference? And what if I upgrade from 1GB to 2GB can I tell a huge difference performance?


yes.

D e e p F r e e z e

[CRXican]

If you don't have 1GB of memory by now you need to sell your cat or something. There really is no excuse.

[>WP< $lipKnot]

You will notice a dramatic increase in performance. Just having 512mb of ram sucks.

[hawk82]

i noticed a performance increase in farcry when i went from 512mb to 1gb of memory.
game loads about 2x as fast. and i got a few additional fps increase, i guess due to more memory to cache game data.

[Trepidati0n]

The biggest benefit I got was my games no longer gltiching/hitching/hiccuping (choose your word). To me that was worth almost everything.

-tReP

[TheFury]

I'm guessing it would, with 512mb ram all the new games I play take horrendously long to load, even though the framerate once loaded is fine.

[poach]

I tryed my system (usually 1gb) at 512mb just to see the difference and it is very noticable. Games run soooooo much smother and faster with 1gb.

[Bullitt]

Right now I have a 512GEIL and planning on to upgrade to 1GB. So I was wondering if it worth it? Can I tell a difference? And what if I upgrade from 1GB to 2GB can I tell a huge difference performance?

No, not worth it.....











who fell for it? :D

[Patman]

My load times are like 1/5 what they were with 512mb than what I have now with 1 gig DC. Funny thing is I actually made my timings more agressive to stabilize it in DC. Crazyness

[ScHpAnKy]

I've had this question asked to me several times, and it really depends on what you do.
The only time you can justify purchasing a gigaybte of memory is when you are hardcore bent on editing photos and video, and rendering. Otherwise, you will NOT see a performance increase if the rest of your system is up to snuff.

In games... forget it, you're never going to see any magical performance increase apart from loading levels a *little* bit faster.

The only time that 1GB is actually going to be substantially faster is if you have a dual channel P4 or A64 setup, otherwise, it's just money in the wind.

[ScHpAnKy]

My load times are like 1/5 what they were with 512mb than what I have now with 1 gig DC. Funny thing is I actually made my timings more agressive to stabilize it in DC. Crazyness

That tends to happen on an athlon setup because of the way the cache system is set up.
On my 2400+ it really made a difference to run 1GB, but on my 2.4B is offered no performance boost at all, on my FX-53 it mattered only a little, and on my temporary current rig it offered no performance boost if I had 512, 1GB or 2GB! :cool:

[distr0]

Upgrading to 1 gig for me eliminated all stutters in all games, drastically reduced all load times, and gave me a few extra fps.

Plus if im just on the forums or checking email or anything like that in windows, my hard drives have almost no activity! They used to be reading all the time (virtual memory i guess?)

Anyways, yeah 512 to a gig was night and day difference for me, definately worth it

[(cf)Eclipse]

seems like everyone is comepletely astounded by how much the extra 512mb os memory helps.
i'd like to take a different tone... it really didn't help out my system too much (check sig).

the most noticable thing that sped up was computer usability after closing a large program.

loading didn't change too much, cause things are still being loaded off the hd to the memory.
running programs didn't change too much because most programs and games are still meant to use just 512mb, even doom3 at high quality wasn't effected
it's just when i was closing things and the virtual memory isn't trying to swap out anymore that i really noticed a difference.

now, with all that in mind, i'm gonna recommend you definitly go for a total of 1gb, cause someday we will need the ram. not quite yet, but we're getting there.
2gb? completely worthless for now. wait till the prices of 1gb sticks of ram come down a bunch first.

[Huan]

Definately worth upgrading to 1gig.. No clue on 2gigs, but after reaching 1gig maybe check into rest of your system for any possible bottlenecks if still needing a boost

[krizzle]

I know that games such as Battlefield Vietnam can truly benifit from such a memory increace. 512 just isnt enough for BFV on moderate settings. Even on the lowest settings available, 512mb stuttered.

It is also a great advantage when working with 3d design apps e.g. 3dsmax, video editing e.g. adobe premiere, and massive photoshop tasks. Oh, and not to mention DVD ripping. More ram never hurt. Besides, generic 512 sticks can be found for less than $50 nowadays. Quite a worthy upgrade.

[Frallan]

Right now I have a 512GEIL and planning on to upgrade to 1GB. So I was wondering if it worth it? Can I tell a difference? And what if I upgrade from 1GB to 2GB can I tell a huge difference performance?

Now its a good upgrade but only if Ure OS can handle it...

[ballistic]

Well I know I definately need another 512mb of ram... not for performance in games although I bet that wouldn't hurt but because I have so many damn programs open that my computer slows right down. A lot of times I will have under 70mb free and then it gets into the swapfile.