More RAM or another Video Card?????

V

VolvoR

Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2004
Messages
878
I have:

A8N-SLI Deluxe
3500+
160 gb SATA II HDD

2 x 512mb Kingston Value Select PC 3200
1 x BFG 6600 GT OC

The question is...

I want to upgrade, what would you do for better in-game performance for BF2, get a second VC or 2 more sticks of the same RAM?

Or, the other possibility, get rid of my RAM that I have now and get some really good RAM, like Corsair Platinum? (instead of the above options).
 
BF2 is one of the first games that will benefit from having the 2 gigs of memory. Course you'd probably see a bigger performance jump by getting a new video, like a 6800 GT or adding in another 6600GT.
 
I wouldn't suggest ditching your current RAM for "Platinum" level RAM. You won't see as much benefit (especially in BF2) as you would if you slapped in another gig.
 
Ok, so upgrading RAM is out of the question, thanks...That answers that. Now then, down to the decision of RAM vs another VC...anyone else?

I know that when I run BF2 I'm using 900 mb of RAM when I'm not in the game playing (i'm alt-tabbed to the desktop and the game is running). So my guess would be more RAM, but I'm still not sure. Where would I get a better performance gain. Also, when I'm in the game with FRAPS running, I'm getting on average 35 fps, but sometimes it dips below 20. Is that video card related or RAM related?
 
Looking at your specs, the dip is definitely graphics card related. I run a 6800GT, with a 3.4 ghz P4 and 1 gig of Crucial Ballistix Tracers PC4000. I have yet to have it dip below 40 fps running 1280x1024 @ max. (monitor doesn't support higher).
 
Here's my thought:

RAM prices are pretty low. You can get another GB for <$100.

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=140435&AFFIL=pg&NR=1

Also, if you upgrade your RAM now, you don't have to worry about RAM technology changing so much in the next 6 months that your RAM will be outdated (other than DDR2 and the M2 socket, but that's a different story).

My point is, if you spend $250 on a new 6800GT-level video card now, it will be somewhat outdated in 6 months. AND, you will probably have to buy another GB of RAM anyway (BF2 wants 2GB, and so does HL2: Lost Coast).

Buy RAM now, enjoy the benefits. Save your money. Overclock your video card. Buy a 7800 or X1800 level graphics card when you can afford it.

Also, you might keep your eyes on the FS/FT forum. I'm sure you could pick up another 6600GT for relatively cheap, and have a SLI setup hold you over long enough to get a 7800 or something.
 
Or he can spend $125 on a 6600GT and SLI his current one together, for roughly the same price as another gig of memory.
 
VolvoR said:
I have:

A8N-SLI Deluxe
3500+
160 gb SATA II HDD

2 x 512mb Kingston Value Select PC 3200
1 x BFG 6600 GT OC

The question is...

I want to upgrade, what would you do for better in-game performance for BF2, get a second VC or 2 more sticks of the same RAM?

Or, the other possibility, get rid of my RAM that I have now and get some really good RAM, like Corsair Platinum? (instead of the above options).
Click to expand...


I'd sell the current vid card & grab at least a 6800GT....
 
its hard to decide.

You could use both, since both are just barely cutting it for playing BF2.

My answer is both.

Add 2x512 for about $85-120 depending on what you get.

And sell your videocard for $100 and buy a 7800GT!
 
I have a 6800GT, 3.2E and 1GB ram. No problems playing BF2 at high detail. I only play at 1024x768 usually. :D

 
bf2 is a ram bitch,yoo will get a huge performance boost if you have 2gb, however if you want some eye candy in upcoming games you might want to get x800xl/xt or 6800gt/u
 
I would say get another 6800 because I only have 1GB and Dual 6800GTs and I run BF2 full spec at 60FPS
 
ugp said:
I would say get another 6800 because I only have 1GB and Dual 6800GTs and I run BF2 full spec at 60FPS
Click to expand...

he only has a 6600, not 6800.

Getting a new/better videocard will help with all games.

Getting more ram will only really help with BF2, since you already have 1Gb and thats sufficient for almost everything.

Getting BOTH would be GREAT!!
 
jebo_4jc said:
Here's my thought:

Buy RAM now, enjoy the benefits. Save your money. Overclock your video card. Buy a 7800 or X1800 level graphics card when you can afford it.

Also, you might keep your eyes on the FS/FT forum. I'm sure you could pick up another 6600GT for relatively cheap, and have a SLI setup hold you over long enough to get a 7800 or something.
Click to expand...

These are good thoughts. This is what I would recommend.

Your goal should be to upgrade both, eventually.
 
DNA Doc said:
jebo_4jc said:
Here's my thought:

Buy RAM now, enjoy the benefits. Save your money. Overclock your video card. Buy a 7800 or X1800 level graphics card when you can afford it.

Also, you might keep your eyes on the FS/FT forum. I'm sure you could pick up another 6600GT for relatively cheap, and have a SLI setup hold you over long enough to get a 7800 or something.
Click to expand...
These are good thoughts. This is what I would recommend.

Your goal should be to upgrade both, eventually.
Click to expand...
I agree with this. Get more RAM because that will benefit BF2 plus future games more than a second 6600GT instead. Ultimately, you will want to upgrade both. BTW - what resolutions/settings do you play BF2 at?

You could: Sell the ram you have now and buy a decent 2x1gb set. You won't need anything fancy-shmancy. A good set of PC3200 for under $180 or so will serve well.

Then, a little ways down the road, you have the option of 1.) getting a second 6600GT, 2.) sell your 6600GT and get at least a 6800GT or 3.) sell it and get something to the magnitude of a 7800 (if you want to play at a fairly high res + eye candy).
 
What benefits are you going to see with more ram? You won't be increasing your video quality at all. You probably won't dip below 20 fps, hopefully. It'll help when you decide to play on the large BF2 maps.

Personally, I'd go with a 2nd 6600GT. Increase video quality in all games. The 2 gigs of mem is only going to help in BF2 for now and probably not much else, for now. So I feel the mem upgrade can wait.

I've had zero issues running any game with a gig of mem. Even the F.E.A.R. demo ran smooth. I doubt games like Quake 4, Sin, or UT2k6/7 (or whatever it was meant to be) is going to make full use of the 2 gigs.
 
krotch said:
I've had zero issues running any game with a gig of mem. Even the F.E.A.R. demo ran smooth. I doubt games like Quake 4, Sin, or UT2k6/7 (or whatever it was meant to be) is going to make full use of the 2 gigs.
Click to expand...

Me too, but I play at lower res and I have a similar system to you (not oc'd as much ;) ).

 
BF2 at 1280x1024 32ppl maps is enough for me and i dont need the extra 2 gigs of ram and probably would never play on those overpopulated 64player servers.
 
The bottom line is, games are starting to need 2GB to work well, and will continue to do so. There is more benefit to wait to buy video card than there is to buy RAM, since VC's improve so rapidly. So the smarter option is to buy RAM now, and video card later.

I'm not saying you will get more of a fps increase with RAM now than you would by upgrading to a new video card. I'm saying, you really need both, and you can get a better video card later for the same amount of money.
 
2 gig of ram will only be noticed in BF2 & nothing else on the horizon...

A vid card upgrade, either dual 6600 gt's or better will show improvement in EVERY game.

its a no brainer.
:p
 
GOd, people are so picky, I remember when a 9800 was enough, my 6800 le runs BF2 fine @ high/max settings (fine meaning ALWAYS over 30 fps) a 6600 gt is fine, heck i could game on a 5200.
 
ZigZagZeppelin said:
2 gig of ram will only be noticed in BF2 & nothing else on the horizon...

A vid card upgrade, either dual 6600 gt's or better will show improvement in EVERY game.

its a no brainer.
:p
Click to expand...
Oh good lord.
http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/tech/AN506_1GB_vs_2GB.pdf
^^^Big increases in BF2 with a 6600GT
Ensemble Studios strongly recommends 2GB for Age of Empires 3:
Dave from Ensemble Studios had the following to say on that thread:


Quote:
I'm not going to 'approve' everyone's specs... Sorry if trying to do that once was the wrong thing.

That said, an X800 card and 1GB of RAM isn't a high end system. 2GB of RAM and a better video card would be required.

The game looks great in shader model 2, but it just doesn't look as great as it does in 3.0. 1GB of RAM will run the game fine, but 2GB will run with more details on and less swapping.

The minspecs will be coming out soon; I'll prolly just let those speak for themselves.

dave

SM3.0 and 2Gb Ram huh? Yowza!

Some more...


Quote:
As we've said countless times, that gen of ATI card (e.g. X800) doesn't fully support the things we need for our HDR solution, thus it's not a high end card by our definition. The newer ATI cards and the 6800+ cards from NVidia would be higher level cards by this defn.

1GB will run the game just fine. But, if you turn on all the bells and whistles and 8P DM, you may not be happy with the perf.
Click to expand...
Also FEAR, and UT2k7 will need 2GB. I would consider all these games to be "on the horizion."
 
jebo_4jc said:
Oh good lord.
http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/tech/AN506_1GB_vs_2GB.pdf
^^^Big increases in BF2 with a 6600GT
Ensemble Studios strongly recommends 2GB for Age of Empires 3:
Also FEAR, and UT2k7 will need 2GB. I would consider all these games to be "on the horizion."
Click to expand...

A recommendation to buy more ram from a ram manufacturer!!! GO FIGURE!!! LOL Notice Doom3 shows no (noticeable) improvement.
And they didn't show any other games with a large increase.

Talk about skewed / bias!! :eek:

Also NOTICE THE NOTES ON THE BENCHMARK. Its a special BF2 map that CORSAIR created!! Flight map.... means its probably a HUGE map that you're flying around and needing to load up nearly 2Gb of map as you fly around.

BF2 does benefit from more than 1Gb of ram. (given)
Nearly nothing else does benefit from more than 1Gb of ram. (very limited set of apps)

A new videocard (either for SLI or sell current & upgrade) would help in your frame rate go up NEARLY every game unless its CPU bound and then you can still add things like higher AA/AF levels if you're CPU bound.

So of the 2 choices... videocard is the better choice for alocating his financial resources. Now if he has enough for both upgrades that would be awesome.

Personally, I think save up some $, then sell your videocard & buy a 7800GT or 7800GTX. Then later on possibly get 2Gb of ram if feasible.

I have 2Gb of ram, and a 6800GT. I would have upgraded to a 7800 GT or GTX if I had a PCIe platform. But a 6800GT with my set up pretty much plays everything I want already at good settings! :)
 
Here's the funny part. He could go spend his money and buy another 6600 or sell his and get a 7800GTX. That's all understandable. Except up to the part when now with his ubber video card(s), he maxes out his settings, and what do you know, the game, such as BF2, needs more RAM to work with higher level of graphics.

These two items, RAM and Video Card work complementary with one another as far as graphics would go. In the end, you'll wind up upgrading both.

Just remember, 4x512 on that 3500+ may bring you down to DDR333 (don't know which core you're running).
 
krotch said:
What benefits are you going to see with more ram? You won't be increasing your video quality at all. You probably won't dip below 20 fps, hopefully. It'll help when you decide to play on the large BF2 maps.
Click to expand...
Good point there, krotch. I think the best course of action would be to sell the 6600GT and get at least a 6800GT. Unless you can get a real smokin' deal on that second 6600GT. Then upgrade the memory soon afterwards. The Kingston Value Select you listed will be fine, just put more quantity of it in there! ;)



krotch said:
I've had zero issues running any game with a gig of mem. Even the F.E.A.R. demo ran smooth. I doubt games like Quake 4, Sin, or UT2k6/7 (or whatever it was meant to be) is going to make full use of the 2 gigs.
Click to expand...
They might not make full use of 2GB, but they're probably going to want more than 1GB to load all those high-res textures and what-not. And dumping all of that on the swap file because physical memory is low means shitty performance..... :(
 
jebo_4jc said:
Oh good lord.
http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/tech/AN506_1GB_vs_2GB.pdf
^^^Big increases in BF2 with a 6600GT
Ensemble Studios strongly recommends 2GB for Age of Empires 3:
Also FEAR, and UT2k7 will need 2GB. I would consider all these games to be "on the horizion."
Click to expand...

Hmm...17 fps in BF2 with 2 gb of memory. Wow, that's a whole lot of worthless, in my eyes. As opposed to...

(SLI with 1 gb of mem)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284&p=1

Guess what? A lot more gain now with a pair of 6600GTs. Another gig of mem can definitely wait, considering those games won't be out for a couple months, at the least. Also, that's an old article and Nvidia has optimized their drivers a lot since then.

I'd rather have playable framerates at 1280x1024 with SLI, then unplayable framerates at 1280x1024 with 2 gigs of memory.
 
My brother is a digital photographer, has 2 Intel rigs both with 2 gigs of memory in them. One pc is a Northwood 2.4 clocked to 3.2 Ghz the other is a Prescott 3.2 Ghz (or thereabout) not clocked.

My pc PWNS both in any game, including BF2.....

BTW, he has a Radeon X850XT in each rig too.

So 2 gigs of ram is a total waste, IMO. Unless u work with photography.

And a review from Corsair? WTF? YA mean they don't wanna sell more ram?
:p
 
You're going to need both eventually... but it would be better to get the RAM now as others have said. You will see immediate benefits (in BF2, windows will be more responsive) and it will last you a while (before the M2/DDR2 switch). The 6600 is already on its way to being outdated, so it would be better to wait until the full next generation is out from both nvidia (7600) and ati (x1800, x1600) and upgrade the video then.

Btw, the RAM upgrade for 2x512 Kingston PC3200 ValueRAM is pretty cheap as well. You can get it for $80-90 shipped new, and around 60-70 used in the for sale forums.
 
How is Windows going to be more responsive? Windows doesn't care whether it has 1 gig of free memory or 2 gigs of free memory. Only when you use the memory, is when you'll benefit. Windows is going to be responsive on his system exactly as it was before if he adds another gig.

Course the same arguement can be said about DDR. It's on it's way out the door, with DDR2 coming in. A pair of 6600GTs is at the same power as a 6800GT/6800Ultra.

With a 2nd graphics card, you will see immediate benefits in every single game on this planet that is available on PC. 2nd gig of memory...oh...BF2 and Windows might actually be more responsive (What a load of bull!).

Graphics artist? Ya, I would go for a 2nd gig of memory. Gamer? Ya, I'd go for the vidcard.
 
Well, I recently upgraded both the RAM (1GB to 2GB) and the GPU (9700 to X800XT-PE) in my system. So going by experience I can say that the increase in RAM does make windows seem more "responsive" in some cases, mostly when you're multitaksing and are used to running several programs at once. This usually also helps in gaming, since there is very little need to access the HDD for paging purposes.

In the OP's case, getting both the GPU and RAM would be ideal. But since DDR is so cheap now (~$75 for 1 GB), it may be worthwhile to get the RAM first and then get the GPU once the new generation is out from both ATI and nvidia. DDR being on its way out doesn't really matter as much for AMD since the M2 socket is still a year away... whereas the 7600/x1600/x1800 are weeks away.
 
ashen_shugar said:
Well, I recently upgraded both the RAM (1GB to 2GB) and the GPU (9700 to X800XT-PE) in my system. So going by experience I can say that the increase in RAM does make windows seem more "responsive" in some cases, mostly when you're multitaksing and are used to running several programs at once. This usually also helps in gaming, since there is very little need to access the HDD for paging purposes.
Click to expand...

Ya, Windows is going to seem more "responsive" with 2 GBs if you are encoding 10 videos and rendering a movie. I run 1 GB and Windows is perfectly responsive when I encode 2 videos and ripping a cd.

Most games also don't need over a gig of mem to run. BF2 currently is the only one. It swallows 700 megs on it's own.

In the OP's case, getting both the GPU and RAM would be ideal. But since DDR is so cheap now (~$75 for 1 GB), it may be worthwhile to get the RAM first and then get the GPU once the new generation is out from both ATI and nvidia. DDR being on its way out doesn't really matter as much for AMD since the M2 socket is still a year away... whereas the 7600/x1600/x1800 are weeks away.
Click to expand...

Getting an upgrade for both is definitely ideal, but the user here can't do that. Also there is no 7600 right now or even talked about. I did assume that Nvidia has something like that in the works, but that's just me coming up with rumours.

ATI, well. What can I say? When have they ever released their product in mass for release date? You will end up spending a lot for it when it first comes out and after a couple months, the product becomes widely available and the prices finally level out.

If DDR being out is a long way away, that's just a better reason to hold off on the memory. Might as well hold off until the M2 comes out and swap to that. Video card will still be of use, as opposed to 4 sticks of DDR which will rot away into nothing.
 
I think you'll still be able to buy new/faster A64 CPUs for a while.... who cares about M2. Think about a dual core 2.8-3.0Ghz A64 dropped in to your current board. (you've already got PCIe / SLI)

They're just now FINALLY ramping down Athlon XP production.
 
chrisf6969 said:
I think you'll still be able to buy new/faster A64 CPUs for a while.... who cares about M2. Think about a dual core 2.8-3.0Ghz A64 dropped in to your current board. (you've already got PCIe / SLI)

They're just now FINALLY ramping down Athlon XP production.
Click to expand...

Sure, like how you can still buy new/faster A64s on s754?
 
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