Performance Improvements with Adding Memory

[jba6511]

Built my first PC about a month ago and since then have OCed and customized the OS just how I want. I currently have 1 GB of memory and saw the falling prices of DDR2 on newegg. How much of a difference would upgrading to 2GB make? I mainly use the computer for light gaming, and multimedia. Currently running XP Pro and Vista.

 

[akhilles]

List your specs.

I'd say quite big. 2 gigs will help reduce Windows caching less frequently used data & software in memory to hard disks. You can open quite a lot of sotware at the same time.

 

[darkangelism]

in Vista it will make a bigger difference then XP, due to superfetch loading programs into memory.

 

[nobly]

hard to say. What games do you play and what do you mean by "multimedia"?

 

[jba6511]

specs:
c2d e6300 OCed to 2.7
G.Skill DDR2 667 (1 GB now)
GeForce 7600GT
Seagate Barracuda 320 GB
Xclio 500W PSU
Dvd Burner
Floppy
Lian Li PC7 Plus Case
Artic Pro 7 Cooler

Games playing currently are F.E.A.R and Battlefield 2142 but am constantly changing once I beat a game or grow tired of it. By multimedia I mean Tv Tuner card recording tv, mp3s, videos, etc. Burn some backups of 360 games as well and use newsleecher frequently. So will the 2GB be worth it? Right now I use windows xp pro about 75% of the time and vista the rest. Should I wait even longer until I use vista more and the price on the memory drops lower?

 

[akhilles]

BF2 def. runs best with 2 gigs. Some other demanding games like Oblivion as well.

Price drops are a given. If you don't feel you need it right now, you can wait.

 

[nobly]

Should I wait even longer until I use vista more and the price on the memory drops lower?

That just means you don't need it right now. So wait. Save $. Although I do agree that the consensus for BF is that 2GB will help.
If you're doing video rendering it might help there too.

 

[Uscooper]

With windows Vista, 2 gigs is ideal. The way I explain it to my customers is like if you had 512 on your xp system and it was fine for what you use the pc for, 1 gig will be fine on vista, if you like more performance and had 1 gig on xp, 2 GB on vista is ideal, etc.

 

[nobly]

Vista's ideal RAM size with Superfetch and the-other-name-i-cant-remember is more like 100GB of RAM.
If they started making less bloated software we won't even have to worry about Superfetch and whatever.
I tend to build towards my application's requirements, not the OS. But to each their own!

Personally, I'm sticking w/ XP for a while. Vista sounds like its mostly eye-candy at the moment, and I don't like sacrificing performance for eye-candy (at least not on the OS).
Although I do like the black taskbar...

 

[slashzapper]

The 2gb will help so get it in my opinion 8)

Faster loading , smoother system and you can do more tasks , also no need to worry about memory when you upgrade

 

[jba6511]

thanks guys. I think I will be holding off until vista becomes my primary OS.

 

[jeff_2087]

Personally, I'm sticking w/ XP for a while. Vista sounds like its mostly eye-candy at the moment, and I don't like sacrificing performance for eye-candy (at least not on the OS).
Although I do like the black taskbar...

You might wanna take a look at this:

http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=13415

Makes XP look a lot like Vista, though I havent used Vista since Beta 2. But I love this transformation.

 

[EXT64]

Upgrading from 1GB to 2GB will make a big difference in high memory games like Quake 4 or Oblivion, however, I think you will see a bigger performance increase if you save that $200 or so and put it toward a new graphics card. Being able to store data on ram won't help if your graphics card can't spit it out fast enough.

 

[nobly]

You might wanna take a look at this:

http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=13415

Makes XP look a lot like Vista, though I havent used Vista since Beta 2. But I love this transformation.

Eek too much reading for me right now.
All I really want is the black taskbar! hahaha oh well, its not like I look at my taskbar that often. And i'm sure there's a way to do it, i'm just too lazy to figure it out at the moment.

thanks for the link though!

 

[aceprowler]

I ordered my 2nd gig of memory yesterday. 4x512. I play the games you play. So I will have give a shout out when I do install it.

I have had 1 gig for over 1yr now. So I will be able to tell the difference if there is one.