2 GB: Needless or Necessity?

i'd say necessity. im havin tons of trouble on 1gb, which is why I ordered 2 more gb's. 3gb's of fun!
 
been playing bf2 with 2gigs right off the bat. Had to rma them and now using 1gb. Studders in vehicles all the time and it gets choppy. I can really tell. Hell i cant stand my work pc now with 512 just doing work.
 
necessity... even a long time ago when people said it was too much I think they were smoking crack. You honestly can't have too much ram. It is impossible. I'd only buy 1GB sticks now b/c that way you have a mode to get up to 4 eventually. I've had 3 and to be honest just that much better.
 
There's few good things and few bad things here, 2GB memory kits doesn't offer as tight timing as 1GB kits does so if you play games that doesnt need more than 1GB of memory and you have 1GB kit that offers somewhat "tight" timings you wont see improvement, actually the performance will decrease but not by much.

In other hand if you play games like BF2, GRAW, etc that needs more memory for textures then you will see improvement on the performance side but its not huge either, its only the swapping thats just goes away.

Is it needless or necessity its up to you to decide. If you have high-end/mid-end graphic card that allows you to use some more eye-candy on the screen and you play games or use apps that needs with some settings on more than 1GB of memory then yes, go for it.
 
2GB is very much worth it, especially in BF2, and probably in many other newer games.
 
Zebbo said:
There's few good things and few bad things here, 2GB memory kits doesn't offer as tight timing as 1GB kits does so if you play games that doesnt need more than 1GB of memory and you have 1GB kit that offers somewhat "tight" timings you wont see improvement, actually the performance will decrease but not by much.
Swapping is far more expensive than "tighter timings" (whatever you specifically mean by that).
 
In the near future, 1GB will be the norm and a necessity. When released, Vista will require a minimum of 1GB to operate, leaving little for running other apps simultaneously. When I build now, it's 2GB right off the bat....it's no longer considered extreme.
 
I'm another BF2 player that switched from 1GB to 2GB. Since I'm only playing with a single 6800GT, I can definitely see a difference with the extra GB of memory.
 
mikeblas said:
Swapping is far more expensive than "tighter timings" (whatever you specifically mean by that).

Let me specify some of that.

If you have 1GB of memory thats running timings 2-3-2-6 then you set 2GB of memory with 3-3-3-8 timings against that 1GB kit and you are not playing games which requires more than 1GB of ram for ie. 1280x1024res using high texture details, then you see the perfomance will decrease, not increase. Its whole another scenario if you are playing BF2 with high texture details.

I did few months backwards some testing with 1GB of mem running at DDR500 / 2-2-2-5 and I set 2GB of mem running at DDR500 with 3-3-2-8 timings against that. I used just the common benchmark apps from FutureMark to test the differences, 3DMark03, 05, 06 as well as PCMark05 ended up in favor of that 1GB kit. Of course the 1GB kit was not that much faster except for the 3DMark03 where GT1 is very mouch CPU/Mem speed bound.

For the original poster, would be easier for us to say what to buy if you tell us what kind of games you play and what stuff you mainly do with your PC.
 
Zebbo said:
I did few months backwards some testing with 1GB of mem running at DDR500 / 2-2-2-5 and I set 2GB of mem running at DDR500 with 3-3-2-8 timings against that. I used just the common benchmark apps from FutureMark to test the differences, 3DMark03, 05, 06 as well as PCMark05 ended up in favor of that 1GB kit. Of course the 1GB kit was not that much faster except for the 3DMark03 where GT1 is very mouch CPU/Mem speed bound.
Where can I read the results of your testing?
 
Its on my other harddrive which is not here at the moment since I moved and I had no original itentions to push those up to web but if you want me to put them avail then I'd be more than happy to do that once I'll get my hands on those :)
 
Zebbo said:
Let me specify some of that.

If you have 1GB of memory thats running timings 2-3-2-6 then you set 2GB of memory with 3-3-3-8 timings against that 1GB kit and you are not playing games which requires more than 1GB of ram for ie. 1280x1024res using high texture details, then you see the perfomance will decrease, not increase. Its whole another scenario if you are playing BF2 with high texture details.

I did few months backwards some testing with 1GB of mem running at DDR500 / 2-2-2-5 and I set 2GB of mem running at DDR500 with 3-3-2-8 timings against that. I used just the common benchmark apps from FutureMark to test the differences, 3DMark03, 05, 06 as well as PCMark05 ended up in favor of that 1GB kit. Of course the 1GB kit was not that much faster except for the 3DMark03 where GT1 is very mouch CPU/Mem speed bound.

For the original poster, would be easier for us to say what to buy if you tell us what kind of games you play and what stuff you mainly do with your PC.

Are you referring to Two 512 modules equaling 1 GB at 2-2-2-5, or one 1 GB module at 2-2-2-5? Because the fastest individual 1 GB module I've seen available is 3-3-2-8, while I' haven't even seen a DDR500 2 GB module ( highest I've seen is DDR400 ones).

The other thing is that the largest performance difference I think I've seen between CAS2-related timings and CAS3 timings is around 6-8%. Thus, it is noticeable, but real-world usage has shown that realistically the performance difference is more like 2-5%.
 
mikeblas said:
Where can I read the results of your testing?
he's sorta right. if you'er not taking advantage of the extra space that 2x1gb gives, having 2x512mb of lower latency ram will be faster..

however, the difference is going to be around 1-2% at the very most. i promise you that you won't notice.

but, once you start up progs that like to eat up more space than 1gb can provide, ram is much much faster than hd paging :p
 
ToastMaster said:
Are you referring to Two 512 modules equaling 1 GB at 2-2-2-5, or one 1 GB module at 2-2-2-5? Because the fastest individual 1 GB module I've seen available is 3-3-2-8, while I' haven't even seen a DDR500 2 GB module ( highest I've seen is DDR400 ones).

The other thing is that the largest performance difference I think I've seen between CAS2-related timings and CAS3 timings is around 6-8%. Thus, it is noticeable, but real-world usage has shown that realistically the performance difference is more like 2-5%.

I was refering to "kits" with both densitys. As in 2x512Mb (for 1GB) or 2x1024Mb (for 2GB).
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
but, once you start up progs that like to eat up more space than 1gb can provide, ram is much much faster than hd paging :p
Isn't that exactly what I said in post #8?
 
mikeblas said:
Isn't that exactly what I said in post #8?

Yup.
2GB are becoming the norm right now (esp. with Vista requiring 1GB) and 4GB will be the next extreme "overkill" :D
 
How is this still a question these days? It should more be like 4GB: Needless or Necessity? And you know eventually it will become a Necessity.

Its like back in the Pentium P166Mhz and P133Mhz days, when they first came out "There is no difference between the two, even the PPro 200Mhz, cause nothing can slow it down" :rolleyes:
 
mikeblas said:
Isn't that exactly what I said in post #8?
sorta.. but i expanded on it a bit.. plus, i have a tendancy to not read threads sometimes. sorry :p
 
Have to agree, 2g is a must. I just had a memory stick crap out on me last week, I went from 1gbx2 to just one 1gb stick. It's driving me nuts. Stuttering in games, alt+tab takes about twice as long, loading times in CS: S slowed........alot more problems than I expected. Some of this, I think, can be attributed to going from dual channel to single channel, but not all of it.


Honestly, can't see considering 1gb on a build now as even an option.
 
Back
Top