512MB To 1024MB Is it worth it? & 3DMark Becnhmarking results

DJSilverBack · Oct 6, 2004, 04:24 PM

Hiya,
ive got a P4 3.2Ghz, 800MHz FSB with 1MB Cache, 512MB 400DDR Ram, 60GB 7200Rpm, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB, and some other stuff. Ive just bought 1GB of 400DDR Ram, should be here tomorrow, have people found through experience it will make a big difference to FPS in games? At the moment, Im getting 3517 marks 3DMark03 and Im hopeing to try and break the 4000 barrier. I will let ppl know the results tomorrow.

Just wondering what experiences ppl have had upgrading their laptop ram to 1GB, has it been worth it? What improvements you had? And at what DDR speed? (i.e. DDR333/DDR400)

Post your benchmarking scores here, so we can compare.

SilverBack

Shinjikun · Oct 6, 2004, 04:27 PM

It's not going to give you more FPS, it'll just balance out gameplay and make everything a lot smoother (not to mention faster load times). I saw a HUGE performance increase with the games released this year like UT 2004, Far Cry, and BF: Vietnam for example once I upgraded from 512 MB to 1 GB.

Again it wasn't in max FPS, it just helped the games out a lot in the sense that my hard drive isn't accessed nearly as much so game play is much smoother than it used to be. Having 1 GB of ram now isn't entirely required, but certainly highly recommended.

DJSilverBack · Oct 6, 2004, 04:39 PM

Would you say that it got rid of lag? Which at the moment I get every so often in games like doom 3 and far cry. Also have you got any 3dmark scores?

SilverBack

Geminiwave · Oct 6, 2004, 05:45 PM

yes.

it will get rid of lag.

and btw it will improve FPS if you're having problems with loading textures. Its better to have more RAM on your vid card but system RAM can ONLY help things out.

DJSilverBack · Oct 6, 2004, 06:04 PM

I dont have problems with my textures, just ever so often the fps goes noticably low in games like far cry and then catches up, only lasts for a second though so Im hopeing 1GB 400DDR Ram will solve this.

What do you mean btw?

And also do u reckon it will improve 3DMark benchmarks or is this pureply 3d card based?

SilverBack

Geminiwave · Oct 6, 2004, 06:36 PM

it should help in everything

btw means by the way

Texture loading is the problem for you. When it dips noticably for a second and then catches up a second later, thats the RAM loading textures.

eggs420 · Oct 6, 2004, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJSilverBack

I dont have problems with my textures, just ever so often the fps goes noticably low in games like far cry and then catches up, only lasts for a second though so Im hopeing 1GB 400DDR Ram will solve this.

Make sure you have no spyware/adware/other things running as well, but yeah that should help you out a lot there. bf:vietnam would lag here and there, especially the first time I went into an area of the map, for a few minutes and eventually smooth out. I went from 512 to 768 and saw a huge smoothing happen with today's larger games. Yeah I'm cheap, but hey this works great for me. I'll get 1gb ddr400 as well, just once the price goes about half that.

DJSilverBack · Oct 6, 2004, 06:53 PM

Thats good to hear, cause I cant wait for Half Life 2.

Did you get an improvement in score from 3DMark?

SilverBack

Shinjikun · Oct 6, 2004, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJSilverBack

Would you say that it got rid of lag? Which at the moment I get every so often in games like doom 3 and far cry. Also have you got any 3dmark scores?

SilverBack

I agree with Gemini's posts. To reitterate it did definetely get rid of A LOT of lag I had in the titles that came out this year. The main components that will affect your FPS and benchmarks scores will be the video card and CPU; but memory also plays an important role as well. It won't affect your max FPS nearly as much as the CPU and video card, but it will definetely help out smooth out your frame rates any avoid frequent HDD accessing which results in FPS drops.

Upgrading your ram might not result in a 15 FPS boost per se; but it will prevent your performance dropping those 15 FPS when the software has to access the hard drive to load data mid-game.

Geminiwave · Oct 6, 2004, 11:10 PM

Yeah. Basically it will raise your average FPS. not your max. Though I know that when I upgraded from 64mb to 256 on my old K6-2 333mhz it made such an enormous difference as far as framerates that it wasnt even funny.

If you got the cash, get some man. Ram prices are growing rapidly so buy now before it gets too much higher.

Bruuce · Oct 7, 2004, 12:11 AM

Say you play alot of memory intensive games. If the reccomended system requirements are 1gig and the minimum requirements are 512mb, would it hurt your HD or lower it's life expectancy if you stay at system requirements? I have some trouble with EQ2 beta and am considering upgrading to an additional gig, but would like to know if I should do it asap or if I can take my time.

Geminiwave · Oct 7, 2004, 09:20 AM

I dunno if it'd LOWER the harddrive life. I mean whether you have 1gb of RAM or 512, it still has to load the textures one way or another.

Harddrives wear out. Dont worry too much about it though.

Upgrading now is a good idea because the price of RAM keeps going up.

WisMerHill · Oct 7, 2004, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruuce

Say you play alot of memory intensive games. If the reccomended system requirements are 1gig and the minimum requirements are 512mb, would it hurt your HD or lower it's life expectancy if you stay at system requirements? I have some trouble with EQ2 beta and am considering upgrading to an additional gig, but would like to know if I should do it asap or if I can take my time.

No you can take your time , don't worry. Just like people thinking that formatting or defraging is gonna lower lifetime expectancy this isn't true as well.

DJSilverBack · Oct 7, 2004, 10:16 AM

Well it 4.15 and Im still waiting for my ram, up till 6pm Ive gotta wait!

Lets hope it gets here today

SilverBack

Shinjikun · Oct 7, 2004, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruuce

Say you play alot of memory intensive games. If the reccomended system requirements are 1gig and the minimum requirements are 512mb, would it hurt your HD or lower it's life expectancy if you stay at system requirements? I have some trouble with EQ2 beta and am considering upgrading to an additional gig, but would like to know if I should do it asap or if I can take my time.

Well in THEORY it can lower a hard drives life as having a lower amount of ram would increase the HDD accessing during loading and game play... and more HDD accessing would wear down the drive faster but realisticly speaking it's unlikely. Your hard drive won't 'die' faster due to having less ram (at least not enough for you to notice).

It's not about life expectancy, it's about minimizing the HDD accessing during game play as that's what will degrade your experience while playing a game. With the games that have come out this year (and the titles to follow) having 512 MB should be the minimum for decent game play but I'd really recommend 1 GB or more for any gamer. The increase I saw from 512 MB to 1 GB was pretty significant.

Bruuce · Oct 7, 2004, 01:45 PM

thanks for all of the responses.

Geminiwave · Oct 7, 2004, 03:57 PM

the problem with that idea is that really harddrives have more like a lifetime expectancy. Its more like it'll live for say...5 years or something...rather than "if you dont use it it'll live longer"

i mean thats true too...but it has more of a timeline for its life.

DJSilverBack · Oct 8, 2004, 04:38 AM

Ok so my RAM's got here at last.

Wont have a chance to do anything till this evening but I will be posting results

SilverBack

DJSilverBack · Oct 8, 2004, 08:14 AM

Ok So Ive got my RAM, installed it and am now running 1GB 400DDR RAM!

First off all when I open up Dxdiag it says Ive got 1022MB RAM, rather than 1024MB RAM, Im not really fussed about 2MB just wondering if anyone knew why it does this.

Secondly I ran 3DMark03 again, but only got about 100point increase and I would of thought I would of got more.

In BIOS Ive changed AGP apeture from 64MB to 128MB

Actually playing games?

HUGE Difference. Its much more smooth now, I can even play Doom 3 with High specs, all of the advanced options inc AA at 1024x768 and its great!!!, but I havent tried AF on yet.

When playing Far Cry it lags for a second right at the very start and that doesnt seem to load much quicker than before, but everything else inc windows applications are so much faster!!

P.S. Im still running stock drivers, I need to test the Omega 2.5.9.0 Again now Ive upgraded my RAM, However I had a problem with doom 3 where the text was blurry so I might just wait for the next driver.

SilverBack

eggs420 · Oct 8, 2004, 10:25 AM

Make sure you defrag too, that will help load times all around. I use raxco's perfectdisk, which seems to work great. Right click the drive and select aggressive free space consolidation before you do a 'smartplacement defragmentation'.

Shinjikun · Oct 8, 2004, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJSilverBack

Ok So Ive got my RAM, installed it and am now running 1GB 400DDR RAM!

First off all when I open up Dxdiag it says Ive got 1022MB RAM, rather than 1024MB RAM, Im not really fussed about 2MB just wondering if anyone knew why it does this.

Secondly I ran 3DMark03 again, but only got about 100point increase and I would of thought I would of got more.

In BIOS Ive changed AGP apeture from 64MB to 128MB

Actually playing games?

HUGE Difference. Its much more smooth now, I can even play Doom 3 with High specs, all of the advanced options inc AA at 1024x768 and its great!!!, but I havent tried AF on yet.

When playing Far Cry it lags for a second right at the very start and that doesnt seem to load much quicker than before, but everything else inc windows applications are so much faster!!

P.S. Im still running stock drivers, I need to test the Omega 2.5.9.0 Again now Ive upgraded my RAM, However I had a problem with doom 3 where the text was blurry so I might just wait for the next driver.

SilverBack

Yes the small increase in benchmarking was normal, but that's not important. The important thing is that you saw a massive performance increase in games themselves. The AGP aperature of 128 MB is just fine in most cases, expecially with your 1 GB now. Congrats.

PS - I second the Perfect Disk 'motion', it's awesome.

Prototype_F · Oct 10, 2004, 10:50 PM

im thinking about upgrading too (512mb to 1gb) how much would be a reasonable price for two sticks of 512mb pc2700 (currently have 2x256) thanks!

petri1 · Oct 11, 2004, 03:43 PM

Hi guys

i am as so many before me thinking of upgrading RAM i ma on a ABIT AI7 mainboard it has 4 dual-ddr slots so i was thinking if i mix twinmos with OCZ will it get instable or should i sell my twinmos first and the get the OCZ if so i still end up with 2*256mb dual kit but a bit faster so more twinmos like 2*256-2*612=1.5GB of ram should speed my P¤ NW 3Ghz PC

but will it run smoothly with twinmos+OCZ??

Geminiwave · Oct 11, 2004, 04:10 PM

it should. I dont see why not. Mixing ram isnt always the best idea but it also isnt anywhere near the worst.

unfortunatly if they have different timings, they will default to the slow timings. So if one set is at CAS latency 3 and the other set is at cas latency 2...they'll ALLL run at 3.

So getting the faster OCZ ram may not help speed any(more ram is always good though)

petri1 · Oct 11, 2004, 04:23 PM

so if i run PC4200 OCZ 2*256MB only and not with my Twinmos

does the Ocz speed things up if i compare with Twinmos?

i tryed something called GAT on my mainboard and i can´t use that option with these twinmos mems at all

so should i sell the twinmos and go for ocz´s mems and then later if they are available add more ocz because 2*512 ocz paltinum edition is rather expensive

eggs420 · Oct 11, 2004, 05:52 PM

Just check the timings as said above. If you can run decent timings on something other than cas 3 it would be worth upgrading. Otherwise, no. I really don't think anyone needs 1.5gb of ram yet, but games after hl2 (think bf2, etc) will probably make good use of the extra 512. Slowing down the timings though will degrade any gains you get, more or less depending on what timings and what the real bottleneck of your performance is.