Gaming Comparison, 2gb vs 4gb. 4gb FTW!

[XMSYellowbeard]

One of our guys, Gareth Ogden, did some extensive testing and found some interesting results when gaming with 2gb vs 4gb. One thing a lot of people that read this tend to overlook is the minimum frame rate. If you have gamed on older gear or bought some new title that brings your system to its knees then you'll realize what he's talking about. Max frame rate is a pretty number but, playability is most affected by the minimum framerate and how long a system stays at that minimum frame rate. Who cares if your system can do 500 FPS on an intro screen. When you drop to 10 FPS during a heavy fight you get killed.

It's sorta long but a good read. http://www.corsairmemory.com/_appnotes/AN804_Gaming_Performance_Analysis.pdf

 

[doomturkey]

And 4 gb is so cheap, why not??

 

[shadowthor]

4gb definitely if you are running vista.

 

[OS43]

Vista 32 bit only makes use of 3.5. Take away .5 from your GPU, 1.0 if you have SLI. So really you only need 2.5 or maybe 3 gig of ram, unless you use vista 64.

I plan to get a 4870x2 eventually (1 gig), so vista will only be able to make use of 2.5 gig of RAM. There is really no point for me to get more than 2 gig of ram.

Perhaps in a year or two, when companies bother to make x64 drivers for their products, I will switch to vista 64 bit, and get some more ram.

 

[Scotteq]

Perhaps in a year or two, when companies bother to make x64 drivers for their products, I will switch to vista 64 bit, and get some more ram.

I'm curious - What are you using that you can't get 64 bit drivers?? I built my own system close to a year ago, and didn't have any trouble then. I can't imagine the stuff was somehow removed from the marketplace.

 

[OS43]

Ok, well just for example: Anything made by linksys.

 

[RetiredChief]

To be or not to be.
A real performance test would be between a 32 bit system with 3 gigs installed vs the same system with 4 gigs and IMIO's that use up about 1 gig.

Is there any performance advantage, or disavantage, from loacating this memory map in "real" memory verses where it resides in a 2, or 3 Gig system. Not just for gaming, but also video encoding.

Due to low cost memory it makes more since to jump from 2 to 4, using 2 x2 Gig in the event you decide to go with 64 bit.

Scotteq.
It's not just drivers. I have some very old "Expensive" software.
In my case, I do not need to go above 4 gigs ram. My 32 bit system runs just fine, why PAY microsoft $xxx and then find out they will not run. Programs = Digital capture program for a Digital o'scope, Orcad for Windows (Hell it baulk at XP 32 bit), and comminications programs for DVM's. I still enjoy writing small programs using "DOS"