4x512 vs. 2x 512 not 2x1gb!

[joe_967]

I was hoping what you folks think of this. I currently have 2x512 od decent ocz ram. I want 2gb, but its expensive to get 1x1gb. I see some chopiness in BF2 on high settings, mostly, the hard drive starts to spin and suddenly it chokes, I'm guessing I need more ram. What kind of performance difference would I see adding 2 more 512 chips?

 

[choirbass]

well, the hard drive churning and choking like that during gameplay is your 'virtual memory' being accessed on the hard drive, because you dont have enough system memory installed in your computer... 2 GB of system memory should remove that stuttering because your hard drive isnt being accessed due to lack of system memory, which BF2 is eating up with the settings you have

 

[AngelDeath82]

Just a thought, if the price of a 2GB kit is too much for you, and you already have 1GB of good RAM, consider obtaining a 74GB Raptor (WD740GD) and using it as your system drive, and putting all your data on the 200GB Maxtor.

In addition, it is well known that 4 stick configurations with AMD chips typically require looser memory timings, meaning you may gain quantity, but you would loose speed.

As such, I believe you would see a roughly equivalent gain by moving to having OS, BF2 and Swap on a 10K RPM drive than moving to 2GB.

Another thing to do, try using Diskeeper to defragment your hard drive and then check to see if you need to extend your MFT. Likely if you're only using one drive, it may well need the MFT extended. This really does help with performance.

 

[IRanNaked]

does anyone know exactly what MTF is? I have 2x512 of 3200 RAM and have Virtual memory at 1.6gb and i get a littlel bit of slow gaming with bf 2

 

[joe_967]

I've used diskeeper to the above, still choking. I was told going to 2t is only like a 2-5% loss in speed. So you think going to 4 chips will not help my pc?

 

[choirbass]

even a fast raided hard drive array... is not as fast as your system memory would be... a faster hard drive setup would help some, especially with map loading times... but wont really decrease the bottleneck of not having enough system memory when youre actually playing the game... you could even decrease the memory speed from 200 down to 166, possibly 133... and it would be faster than just depending on virtual memory from a fast hard drive... the hard drive is by far the slowest component in your computer... with everything always having to wait on it, and additional memory alleviates alot of that

 

[joe_967]

so I'm leaning towards getting 2 more chips right now, am I right in thinking this?

 

[choirbass]

4x512MB memory modules is overkill for most applications... some games aside... ...if you try lowering BF2s graphical settings down to minimum resolution and details... you should notice your hard drive being accessed alot less... ...and that in itself would mean more memory would help, because your hard drive wouldnt be the issue... 2GB is abit much for all but the most demanding applications, in which case, youll see a benefit

 

[chuckshissle]

I agree, you can by another 2x512 Mb of additional ram. The BF2 is known to choke/stutter a system with 512 Mb to 1 Gb of ram. This happended to me with BF2 and now I have 4x512 and it's running smooth.

 

[KingLoftusXII]

Y'up it's the RAM. BF2 needs 2gb to run smoothly.

 

[IRanNaked]

Good to see that you found a solution for the problem and reply'd back.