worth upgrading from 1gb to 2gb?

Intrepid408

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Hi. Here is my situation: I have $160 worth of bestbuy gift cards to spend and I have been debating what to spend it on. Here are my comp specs:

asus a8n5x mobo
amd x2 3800
bfg 7900gt
1gb (2x512) ocz copper

I mainly use my computer for gaming. So here are my options:

1. buy another 2x512
2. sell my 2x512 and buy 2x1024
3. save or buy something else cause its not worth it

If you could just tell me which option is best or if you have another otpion please tell me.

Thanks
 

choirbass

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i dont know if this has been resolved yet... but the downside to using 4*512mb dimms, is that youll automatically be using a 2T timing, instead of just 1T (thus resulting in reduced performance)... so, by going with 2*1024mb dimms instead, youll be allowed to use 1T timings also... its the same memory amount, but its a faster performing memory configuration also... so if you can, i would trade out the 2*512mb dimms you have, and get 2*1024mb dimms instead
 

sirheck

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i thought about posting about 1t and 2t timing.
mine is 2t becuase of 4 512s, (corsair xms) on a 939 3700 sandy core

i can get better oc (2730mhz) with 2@1t timminmg
and (2630mhz) with 2t timmings and 4 512s

(to interpid) choirbass knows what i talking about.
dont know if you do and im not saying you dont.
im just saying more memory is better.

if you do oc(overclock) then 2 1gigs would be better

EDIT; anyway more memory always helps.
if you go with 2 more 512s try to get ones that match
what you have now
 

p90m16mp5a4

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I upgraded from 1gb to 2gb a few months ago when playing bf2, didn't notice a huge difference. It definately lets me alt tab and mutlitask faster. Programs are more responsive when I'm playing a game and doing something else like checking a scoreboard for the server im in. 2gb is going to provide more smooth play at really high res's and detail levels.

In my opinion, 1gb is plenty for lower resolution gaming around 10x7. If you bump a game up to 20x15 You will most likely notice occassional or frequent jerks. Just for kicks I played oblivion at max settings at 12x9, about two weeks ago with only 1gb of my 2gb of ram (I was bored and wanted to play inside my computer) I was surprised that I didn't notice much of a difference, everything seemed to be just as smooth. I was a little dissapointed cuz I wanted to think I was uber cool having 2gb ram even though it's been popular and standard as of late :X ( I also underclocked my processor to 800mhz and tried playing games )

If you aren't having any random jerks where the screen freezes for a split second, then you aren't going to notice a huge ( or any ) difference in 1 vs 2gb in-game. Getting 2gb of 4x512mb would decrease your performance depending on the game you are playing, 2t timings are bad. I would only assume getting in a 64 player server and having ur settings at max at 16x12 on a modern game would be laggier with 1gb.

That article is very misleading. The avg fps might be similar, but the minimal is going to be much worse. With 256mb, you will spend alot more time in the low fps and you will have alot more jerkiness even when you are getting 50fps. in a 512mb vs 1gb scenario, having more ram will result in smoother gameplay for certain games at certain detail levels. Obviously quake 1 isn't going to jerk or lag with 512mb ram.
 

p90m16mp5a4

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I think you would be better off saving it and buying a good pair of headphones or a soundcard, that would give you a better experience than 2gb of ram. If you dont already have a great mouse like a logitech mx510 or razer diamondback then you should stop there first and pick that up. A good computer witha crappy mouse is useless, and vice versa :D A monitor would be a good choice as well, that is if u are stuck witha 17"er.

You couldn't pick a worse place to buy ram, and the prices are really high now as well. Spend your money on something that will give you a better fun factor for your money, unless you are noticing lag with only 1gb ram then u should get it fo sho.


P900000
 

Intrepid408

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thanks everyone. Thanks p90. I noticed the samething too with the prices. My ozc ram I bought a year ago is still the same price. I think it would be best to wait till ram prices go down again. I think I'll buy a sound card and save the rest for something else.
 

enforcer22

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Defanitly get 2 gigs of ram ;) in the 1 gig stick variation. I play games litteraly almost at the max res 1920x1200 aot of games i have wont even go that high and a couple would actualy go higher. When i went from 1 gig to 2 gigs it was a massive improvment no more disk reads while playing alot faster load times less problems with mem leeks course the new video card and cpu helped alot to liked it better when i had 3 gigs but i moved 1 gig of that to another comp ill probly be getting 2 more 1 gig sticks later when i get a dx 10 card or maybe a scsi 320 adapter. (basicly when i get more spendable money)
 

aequalsb

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I like to stagger them out. 2 x 1GB. When there's 4 sticks of RAM all bunched together they get hot. I guess if you have good cooling it's okay, but i dont like too many fans in the puter....
 

p90m16mp5a4

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Thats cuz ur playing at 19x12 and 2gb of ram becomes more important. You really have like.. 0 need for 3gb of ram.. You play games ever at all at 4000x3000? Then you probably don't need 3gb of ram to play current games. You are actually taking away performance by running ur memory at second tier wich is like 5-15% slower than first tier. Two sticks > four sticks



To intrepid.
Ram prices had dropped for a while, I got a kit of G.skill 2x1gb ddr 400 2326 for 120$. Hell, maybe you should spend your money at bestbuy on actual GAMES since hardware is so much cheaper online.
 

enforcer22

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More ram> faster ram. since i could care less about my benchmark speed i see way way more increase (actualy i see a increase at all) with more ram appose to faster ram. i dont just use my computer for gaming its not a console. Allthough its vary small but i noticed a slow down taking out the extra gig of ram i had in here. I use to play a mmorpg called lineage2 ran 3 accounts at a time trust me the 3 gigs helped alot. not to mention the stuff i always have running in the background. so my sysmark scores will suffer from having 4 sticks big deal but my computer is faster. Course i believe its running in 2T anyways since i havent tweaked my memory settings for this board yet other then the typical 2-3-3-5 settings.
 

p90m16mp5a4

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I typically play games and do research and stuff (by research i mean looking up x rated pics of motherboards and cpus) But no I'm no huge multitasker, I'm not painting a picture in Photoshop while mixing a song in Logic Pro while attempting to play a game at the same time with my feet, all while burning dvd's, defragging my hard drive and streaming HD porn of an s-video cable getting it on with a composite video plug simultaneously. I think I would need 8gb of ram to do all that with any kind of speed.. Oh well, I'll have to add four sticks of 2gb to my list of stuff to buy ~~
 

enforcer22

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x rated pics of motherboards and video cards? :eek: i have actualy done photoshop a couple web page editers while burning a cd and ripping a cd at the same time while having a game running. I dont however defrag im sure that would need alot of ram and alot of cpu power to do all of that and not get slow down :eek: but defragging while doing some of the rest would create some errors :D also i let scans run in hte background while i do whatever im doing because it doesnt really make my system slow down anymore. I like to do everything at once im not much of a waiting person. i look forword to teh scsi drives but i do agree 4 gigs of ram probly wont show much if any gain most of the time. Did i mention im also all about over kill? Baislcy i dont like stopping what im doing when something else needs to be done or i get a idea to do something.
 

p90m16mp5a4

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Is there somthing wrong all of a sudden with being attracted to computer parts? God what is this world coming to when a guy can't love his computer the way it *needs* to be loved!

***cuddles with monitor***

Overkill would be buying a server motherboard and putting 16gb of ram in it as well as 2tb of scsi drives. Plus you get the PCI-x slot wich means ur data transfer will be faster than shtty pci 2.2. (or so says my friend
 

enforcer22

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:eek: my putur is sexeh to!

Anyways yeah i did look into a dual cpu server board with built ind ual channel scsi XD just didnt like any of them. only wanted to put 8 gigs of ram on it though :-/ but hell from what i saw hte pci e 4x contolers have vary vary nice transfer rates :eek:
 

thechristopher

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More ram is always useful.

I have servers at work with 32GB that could use more!!! And this is super fast best money can buy.

Believe it or not - Get a few apps running and the system can still page out with 2GB
 

enforcer22

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i believe it. With just my normal programs running before i actualy start doing anything my computer is using between 500 and 700 megs of ram. thats just windows messengers and things like that. then there are virus,spyware scanners blah blah. that leaves typicaly between 1.5 to 1.3 gigs for anything else which for me can be from just a game which normaly uses between 500megs to 1 gig of ram so my free ram is down to 500megs to 300megs now if something else needs ram i think at this point im already at the point my system has started using page memory to store things which as we all know slows computers down. dont think ill go on. however xp was only made to run i believe 4 gigs of ram unless you have hte 64 bit version which i think runs up to 8 gigs. server OS's obvioulsy can use up to 64 gigs.