TheDrag0nReb0rn
n00b
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2006
- Messages
- 55
Does having 2 GB of RAM improve game performance drastically, or is it really just overkill?
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Swapping is far more expensive than "tighter timings" (whatever you specifically mean by that).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.
mikeblas said:Swapping is far more expensive than "tighter timings" (whatever you specifically mean by that).
Where can I read the results of your testing?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.
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.
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..mikeblas said:Where can I read the results of your testing?
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%.
Isn't that exactly what I said in post #8?(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
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. sorrymikeblas said:Isn't that exactly what I said in post #8?
It depends on your application(s).Chowder Head said:What about 3GB? Would that be overkill at this time?