Do I need 2Gb System Mem. with 256Mb VIdeo Mem.

cbecknet

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2005
Messages
181
Building a new system. Have a question?

I plan to get the new 7900GT when it comes out. I play at 1280x1024. I like to max out all my IQ settings. My question is if I only run a video card with 256Mb of memory is it worth it to buy 2gb of system memory. I understand that you can't play some ultra high quality settings with out 512mb of video memory and 2Gb of system mem. But if I don't have 512mb of video mem. will 2Gb matter.
 
Negative, save your money. 2 gig of system ram won't help your performance. 1 gig is enough ;)
 
Some games just run smoother with 2gigs of ram (BF2 for example).. But 1gig is still adequate for most games at very high settings..
 
I know BF2 will play better with 2Gb but I thought that was with ultra high settings, and that those settings require a card with 512mb mem.
 
Eh, it's your call, but if you are going to play the advanced future games, you are most likely going to want to upgrade to 2gb somewhere along the road.
 
Ghandi#1 said:
Negative, save your money. 2 gig of system ram won't help your performance. 1 gig is enough ;)
i hope that's a "just kidding" wink, 'cause after a bit of research i found that a handful of today's games benefit measurably from 2GB of ram over 1GB. it's also pretty much a given that tomorrow's games will certainly benefit from the extra memory.
 
Firebat's right, most of the new games coming out will all want 2GB of ram, along with dual-cores. If you have the money I would do it...in fact I did do it. Even with one video card I think it will help you.
 
No, you don't -need- 2gb of ram to run BF2. However it does tend to eat up 1GB of ram all to itself, i find my memory usage around 65% (of 2gb) when running BF2 high detail (15-20% idle). Which is generally why people say 1.5-2GB system ram is the sweet spot, you have enough for the game plus whatever background apps don't have to be swapped in/out of ram. BF2 is kind of a worst-offender among games in terms of memory usage tho, but memory requirements aren't going down for other new titles either.

If you have to cut costs going with 1gig of ram won't have a big negative effect with most games and its relatively in-expensive to add more memory later compared to upgrading your Video card or Processor.
 
squeezee said:
f you have to cut costs going with 1gig of ram won't have a big negative effect with most games and its relatively in-expensive to add more memory later compared to upgrading your Video card or Processor.
i agree with that. if your CPU or GPU is going to suffer, then absolutely stick with 1GB. for myself it came down to 1GB of fast OC'ing ram or 2GB of "pretty good" ram. i went with the latter.
 
Thanks for all the opinions. I can afford 2Gb just wasn't sure if the performance was worth it if you didn't have a Video Card with 512Mb of memory. This will be my firsy pc with more than 1Gb of memory, so I will get 2Gb and see if it makes that big of a diffrence.
 
cbecknet said:
...This will be my firsy pc with more than 1Gb of memory, so I will get 2Gb and see if it makes that big of a diffrence.
you and me both. i'm also going with the 7800GT (pretty soon anyway), and this will be my first PC with 2GB of ram. actually, it's gonna be my first PC with more than 512MB!! i think we'll really be glad we chose 2GB sooner rather than later.
 
2 gigs does help alot in FEAR with a 256 mb gpu and max textures. Runs pretty seamless.
 
You're probably not going to notice a big difference, but depending on you use your system you might. The main reason why 2GB comes in handy is simply the amount of RAM that's consumed by the average PC for all the stuff that runs on it.

Even on a 1GB system, look at how much free memory you have after booting Windows XP. For a lot of people, half the memory in a 1GB system is already consumed before launching you first "interactive" app. Virus scanners, spy ware scanners, device drivers and apps for you iPod, this little doo dad, that little quick starter, it adds up to a lot of resources.

However, when you do have a lot of RAM, a dual core CPU, and and a RAID, and boy, things are just so much more responsive. It does make the overall computing experience much nicer.
 
I have 2gb of gskill
My friend has 1gb of xtreem

Both overclocked

He is at 3ghz (opty)
same video card at 535/1.2 (7800gt) 256mb
1gb

I am 2.8Ghz (4000+)
Same video card stock (470/1.1) 256mb
2gb


I run on all full settings 1024x768 with aa at 2x BF2
he runs on med/high with no aa

I NEVER skip EVER, I cannot say the same for him.

I would highly urge you to purchase 2gb of decent memory, its one of the best upgrade I have ever made for my gaming.
 
essi1553 said:
I NEVER skip EVER, I cannot say the same for him.

I would highly urge you to purchase 2gb of decent memory, its one of the best upgrade I have ever made for my gaming.
that's an interesting comparison. thanks!
 
I would go with 2GBs. It's not only games that benefit. Everything else is so much smoother, like opening programs and folders or just alt-tabbing to desktop. There might be no big difference in FPS but there's zero swapping and loading times are much shorter with 2GBs of memory.
 
Just like I said, I was always ahead of the curve when it comes to memory. My old boss told me "You can never have enough memory" This was back in the day when our server @ my old job ran NT4 with 512MB of Ram (1998)

Just remember that in the VERY NEAR FUTURE, 2GB will be mainstream on a desktop machine. Not just limited to power users.

Anthony
 
You dont need 2gb right now. You will notice a difference in BF2, and maybe a tiny bit in FEAR. IMO the only reason to get 2gb NOW for general user is for BF2. I think things will be different within the year though, and soon you will be happy you got 2gb.

Really, its a worthwile investment IMO, and almost a requirement if you want to play BF2 a lot.
 
stelleg151 said:
You dont need 2gb right now. You will notice a difference in BF2, and maybe a tiny bit in FEAR. IMO the only reason to get 2gb NOW for general user is for BF2. I think things will be different within the year though, and soon you will be happy you got 2gb.
Not EXACTLY true.

You will notice differences in:
Alt+Tabbing
ALL Games (BF2, FEAR, HL2)
General Computing

It's all in the benchmarks guys

:/
 
bLaCktIGErs91 said:
Not EXACTLY true.

You will notice differences in:
Alt+Tabbing
ALL Games (BF2, FEAR, HL2)
General Computing

It's all in the benchmarks guys

:/

Im just not sure about that, as I play CSSource with 40 people and alt tab out for web browsing and instant messenging in less than a second and smoothly, with about 2-3 seconds of recovery going back into the game, which is perfectly acceptable to me. I also do "general computing" pretty often and dont use my whole gig ever.

I didnt mean to click post, and stopped it too late, so notice that I did say its a good investment, but not needed for most people at the moment.

Edit: Also I read that XBitLabs article on 2gb. I basically just disagree, and think their
"benchmarks" were not really an accurate portrayal of what a normal user does on their computer.
 
stelleg151 said:
Im just not sure about that, as I play CSSource with 40 people and alt tab out for web browsing and instant messenging in less than a second and smoothly, with about 2-3 seconds of recovery going back into the game, which is perfectly acceptable to me. I also do "general computing" pretty often and dont use my whole gig ever.

I didnt mean to click post, and stopped it too late, so notice that I did say its a good investment, but not needed for most people at the moment.

Edit: Also I read that XBitLabs article on 2gb. I basically just disagree, and think their
"benchmarks" were not really an accurate portrayal of what a normal user does on their computer.
Yeah, but CS:S is what...5 Years old?

I GUARANTEE you that your Alt+Tab times out of newer games will speed up / Go Smoother.
 
i guess to be fair, one could argue that you don't need 2GB of ram.

however, i could argue that you don't need two 7800GTX 512s in order to run games smoothly, but if you do decide to run those two fatboys, you'll find faster performance and quicker response in more ways than one.

same thing with the ram. you don't need to wear socks with your shoes, but doesn't it make things a lot more comfortable? ;)
 
killedaway said:
you don't need to wear socks with your shoes, but doesn't it make things a lot more comfortable? ;)

haha... thats a great analogy.

I agree with going with 2GB of RAM... game play really smoothes out and load times for games are cut.

I am simply waiting for the 1GB sticks that will do 300FSB before I upgrade :D
 
bLaCktIGErs91 said:
Yeah, but CS:S is what...5 Years old?

I GUARANTEE you that your Alt+Tab times out of newer games will speed up / Go Smoother.

errr cs source was released with HL2 in late 2004...
 
essi1553 said:
I have 2gb of gskill
My friend has 1gb of xtreem

Both overclocked

He is at 3ghz (opty)
same video card at 535/1.2 (7800gt) 256mb
1gb

I am 2.8Ghz (4000+)
Same video card stock (470/1.1) 256mb
2gb


I run on all full settings 1024x768 with aa at 2x BF2
he runs on med/high with no aa

I NEVER skip EVER, I cannot say the same for him.

I would highly urge you to purchase 2gb of decent memory, its one of the best upgrade I have ever made for my gaming.


Why are you running such low res/AA? Bump the AA up to 4 at least at that low res.
 
Shadow27 said:
Why are you running such low res/AA? Bump the AA up to 4 at least at that low res.

I like that resolution, everything looks good and I can spot far away objects with ease. I've ran it larger and just didn't like the seeming changes in mouse movement due to the resized screen.

The only time I ran it at 4x is when I was overclocking (Fresh install of XP) so im not sure if it skipped because it was loading up the content of the maps in bf2 while playing. But I was getting some minor skip issues when trying to aim zoomed in. I guess I could try it again, but Ive been really busy sleeving all my cables and whatnot.

I just got this new equipment and the 7800 and 2gb is such an amazing jump over my old 6800 and 1gb. I'm still trying to tweak my motherboard settings.

I also like the fact that whenever ANYTHING happens in bf2 I never even hiccup with my current settings.
 
bLaCktIGErs91 said:
Not EXACTLY true.

You will notice differences in:
Alt+Tabbing
ALL Games (BF2, FEAR, HL2)
General Computing

It's all in the benchmarks guys

:/

general computing will not be helped by 2gb of ram if youre not even using 1gb to begin with
 
I've never had a problem with 1gb and bf2 and rig in the sig. Played it for a few hours at a lan at 1280x1024 with 2x aa and everything turned up and didn't have any noticeable lagging or hitching....
 
Shadow27 said:
Why are you running such low res/AA? Bump the AA up to 4 at least at that low res.
I run Battlefield 2 at 1280x960 with 4xFSAA and 8xAniso and it runs fine on my x800GTO^2 at 600/600.
 
Ok here is the problem I see with this arguement. I think the only way you are going to get an accurate depiction on whether or not 2 gbs makes a difference in computing is to elimate the users that own 2gbs and a Dual Core processor. Many benchmarks have shown that the Dual Core makes a difference in general computing. I know when I built a system with 1 gb of ram 4 years ago that was crazy and I loved it, but now I have 2 gbs of ram and things seem smoother. What is interesting though is when things seem smoothing Windows Task Manager reports me not even using more than 1gb of ram.
 
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