Is 2gig of RAM really needed?

[S2G]

Most tech sites are recomending that you need at least 2gigs of RAM to play such games like Half-life2 and Doom3. Consider this... I bought Half-life2 and Doom3 when first released (2yrs ago approx) and the rig I was using at the time had these specs.
Athlon 2700
MSI K7 N2 Delta Mobo
Corsair Ram 512 2x256 (dual channel 333mhz)
ATI Radeon 9600
Raid SATA Samsung Spinpoint 2x 160GB
Both games were very playable and didn't seem to suffer from lack of FPS. In fact when I upgraded the grafix to a 9800 pro the improvement wasn't that huge. So is this just a way for the manufacturers to get us to spend our cash?

 

[skyguy]

Half Life 2 and Doom 3 are "old" games. You don't need 2 gigs to run them.

Newer games don't "need" 2 gigs, but they run/load better and faster with 2 gigs. Upcoming games in the next year will benefit from 2 gigs.


The question isn't whether GAMES need 2 gigs RAM. It's whether your SYSTEM needs 2 gigs. Windows processes, spyware scanners, Teamspeak, Xfire, blah, blah running chew up RAM. It's not just the game that does. So the problem isn't the game causing issues, it's all the other stuff needed to run Windows AND games smoothly, not to mention whatever else you run too.

So the more stuff you run, the more that games will benefit from more RAM. And if you move to Vista, it's even worse. I have 2 gigs RAM, and Vista chews up 65% more RAM at idle than Windows XP for me. OUCH. So start up a browser, load some pages, run Teamspeak and Xfire, and try running an upcoming game as well......watch out if you don't have 2 gigs RAM

So is it NEEDED? No. But neither is a car....you can walk everywhere too. But you'd rather have the car because it's faster, wouldn't you? Well, same thing: 2 gigs is better, faster, stronger.....just like the 6 Million Dollar Man lol. <--older pop culture reference joke, maybe you're too young to know


And there ya go! Question answered

 

[HotFoot]

When I upgraded from 1 to 2 gigs of RAM, I turned off Window's virtual memory function so that it doesn't ever write a page file on the HDD. This reduces wear and tear. I don't know why Windows continues to use the page file on the HDD no matter how much RAM you have unless you disable it.

Also having the extra RAM, whenever I install a Linux distro I do not allocate a swap partition. I've never run out of memory at the 2 GB level. My next computer will probably have much more RAM, so long as the prices come down. RAM prices are still higher now than they were 1.5 years ago.

 

[Detson]

From what I've read, Vista has much better memory management than XP. It should use all of your RAM, all the time...this is perhaps why Skyguy's computer reports such high usage; Vista's Superfetch continually loads the most used programs in memory on the off chance they'll be used. As for games, the only game I've ever played which really required 2gb RAM under XP to be playable was Battlefield 2...that's the exception, though. Most games run just fine with half that.

 

[mad_murdock]

That's a yes and no question. But Skyguy answered it best. Games like Doom3 and HL2, just start to touch on the greater than 1GB need.

Games that do tend to make you want 2GB is LOTR:Battle for Middle Earth 2, Battlefield 2 and 2142 and Fear. All those games push my memory usage to 13-1.4GB. So 1.5GB would probably be enough, but why not buy 2GB. I epxect games like Crysis, Suprememe commander C&C3 will all gobble up ram.

If you plan to run Vista in the Next 6 months (or before you next hardware upgrade) then you'll see more demands for ram, I think FEAR and Vista had me at 1.6GB in use (and I run vista in stripped down mode)

Hot Foot, did you try Company of Heros ? It's the first game I ever played that required me to have a 768MB swapfile before it would even let me install it.

I will say, if you have 2GB of ram, windows doesn't really use the swapfile very much, if at all. I normally run a small 512MB pagefile on a seperate harddrive and I seldom see any activity from it.

On the last part of your question, the 9800 Pro was kick ass when it was first released, but I found it to be a dog when playing with it under Doom3. Plus, you're memory was about half of what you wanted, so your graphics speed may have been hindered by your pagefile usage. I first noticed this when playing Battlefield Vietnam. At 512MB, you would get skips and stutters, but at 768MB and above it was smooth. At 512, I could just watch my pagefile disk steady flicker, at >768 nothing

 

[HotFoot]

No, I've never played company of heroes. One game I did play that had big memory requirements was Civ IV. I think there was a major memory leak in that game before a certain patch number, however.

I just like having a lot of RAM available since I was doing a lot of work in Matlab for my master's. Since I graduated I'm not actually using it all.

 

[cisco]

HL2 and Doom3 don't really need 2gigs but games like BF2, Fear, and Oblivion run smoother with 2gigs. Especially if you are running high resolutions with all the bells and whistles turned on. It will be even more critical in the upcoming games like stalker, crysis, UT3, stuff like that. If you switch to Vista I would definitely recommend a minimum of 2gigs, Vista loves ram.

 

[enewmen]

Once I tried running FarCry (in 2004) with 512 megs. Big mistake.
Get 2 gigs. OSs and Applications arn't getting any smaller.
You will quickly notice a benifit now.
More than 2 gigs will have diminishing returns unless running specialized applications. (At least this year)
Vista will USE lots of RAM if you have it. But still, wait until 64bit is normal, then 4+ gigs will be common.

 

[JuiceJones]

I would say that around right now is the dawning of the 2Gb standard age, as apps ever increase their appetite for memory and games need to load up all that glossy new content.

A couple years ago I remember people pushing for 2Gb like it was the greatest thing sinced sliced bread, and frankly found them rather asanine. Mid-high systems nowadays should have 2Gb, as more and more circumstances begin to actually use it.

Budget and Mid-low gamings systems should do fine on 1Gb for at least a few more months until DX10 becomes more prevalent.

 

[S2G]

Thx for the info, found it very interesting as I've upgraded to a new machine and altho' cost is a major factor, I really can't afford 2gigs initially.
Athlon 64 3800+ x2
Gigabyte-M51GM-SG2
ATI x1900
Corsair XMS DDR2-800 2x512
Seagate 40gig HD
Some componants are still in the upgrade stage eg HD and I'll get another gig of ram when I can afford it... By the way I too played Far Cry with 512 and didn't have a prob, apart from the 'odd' stutter.

 

[Natarian]

when upgrading RAM from 256MB or from 512MB to say, 1GB, there will be a great difference. But if you have 1GB RAM, and upgrades after that won't be that noticeable.

 

[LordPope]

Play Battlefield 2142 on 1 gig of ram

then play on 2 gigs of ram


You will know 1 gig isnt close to enough

and with VISTA and coming games like CRYSIS and ALAN WAKE

Todays 1 gig is like 512 megs on XP or worse...

 

[Datman]

2GB of RAM: Do We Really Need That Much?

 

[slashzapper]

2gb is a minimum for todays games.
I stuttered and lagged badly in games like BF2, BF2142 with 1gb.
When I added another gb, all that went away.

i am sorry but i cant agree with this !!! i have played battlefield on a xp system with 1 gig of ram and its absolutly smooth with everything turned on . 8O

so i dont know what your talking about , its just stupid to get more than 1 gig instead you should use the money on a raptor hard drive or a better graphics card :idea:

 

[Kurz]

You sir are foolish...
Battlefield 2 and all other games based on the engine have horrible coding. Which makes it a bit bloated.

I found it takes about 50% less time to load a map with 2 gigs of memory.
I have less chance of a hickup on the framerate department. Plus you've probably killed off one of the oldest upgrade advises, "get more ram to speed up your system." This saying still has revelance today with all these hungry OS's Hungry Apps...

Getting a raptor to speed up performance?!
I consider a raptor a waste of money, what does it speed up?
Mostly load times on apps... But once the game is loaded the Raptor just pretty much sits there doing hardly anything maybe loading up different parts of the map... but a Regular harddrive still loads other parts of the map pretty fast!
Plus the Price hike and the smaller space on the drive makes me shutter.

Now on the graphics card I can somewhat agree, however if your computer is memory starved... you will still see some crappy performance.

 

[LordPope]

2gb is a minimum for todays games.
I stuttered and lagged badly in games like BF2, BF2142 with 1gb.
When I added another gb, all that went away.

i am sorry but i cant agree with this !!! i have played battlefield on a xp system with 1 gig of ram and its absolutly smooth with everything turned on . 8O

so i dont know what your talking about , its just stupid to get more than 1 gig instead you should use the money on a raptor hard drive or a better graphics card :idea:

Yeah i bet those LONG load times were smooth as well on 1 gig of ram

 

[djgandy]

I've got a 1.5gig, I don't think i'd like going back to just the 1.

It's easy to say "I Don't need 2 gigs" but if you had 2 gigs and went back to having 1gig, you'd want to throw your computer out the window.

 

[mad_murdock]

i am sorry but i cant agree with this !!! i have played battlefield on a xp system with 1 gig of ram and its absolutly smooth with everything turned on .

so i dont know what your talking about , its just stupid to get more than 1 gig instead you should use the money on a raptor hard drive or a better graphics card

.

Have you tried running performance monitor and such ? I have the G15 keyboard, which among other things, has a perfmon for CPU and memory. I'm running 2GB of memory and for Battlefield 2 and more so for BF2142, I can hit up to 65% memory usage. And that's not running anything else. For those that run stuff like Teamspeak, X-fire and mail in the background, you could really dog out 1GB of ram.

If you are playing with everything on Max settings, I don't see how you are not hitting that page file and getting some stuttering. And what possible sense does it make to buy a Raptor drive so you can have a faster pagefile ? The raptors speed is nothing compared to memory speed (milliseconds vs nanoseconds) The goal is to never hit the pagefile at all ! So a faster hard drive is just treating a symptom not the root problem.

Plus you're paying double the price for half the space (and not double the speed) with Raptor drives (which I do have one). I bougt a Seagate 400GB 7200rpm drive for $99. You're suggesting paying $220 for 150GB. That $120 difference gets me another 1GB of ram. So I get more than double the HD space and 1GB of ram for the same money, where is the logic in your argument ?

 

[JuiceJones]

i wouldn't mind seeing another such test with newer games such as oblivion bf2 or such things. games which are very open and not just FPS in small rooms.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147127/p-7.html

Framerates are the same, but with a little less stuttering. I wish they hadn't done it at 1024x768 though.

Not worth the extra 100+ dollars to me up until this point. I can't argue however that 1Gb is starting to become borderline, and 2Gb is a wise future decision.