50 bucks for an upgrade

[epic_pc]

I'm looking to give my system just a little boots with some Christmas cash I still have. I'm running:
AM2 5000+ BE
M2N-SLI Deluxe
2x 9600gts in SLI
2 GB of memory
640 gb HD
700w psu

I have $50, should I get more ram like these sticks
What would you recommend?
Thank you in advance

 

[Devastator_uk]

RAM is the only thing you can upgrade for $50 and you should notice better perfomance in some cases especially if using Vista. Also you shouldn't need to by 4GB, an extra 2GB should do as you're not likely to need 6GB with that CPU.

 

[pr2thej]

yarr just 2x1gb will do it

 

[13thmonkey]

what OS are you using? if only a 32bit OS you'll probably only see an additional 1Gb (maybe even less) because of the dual 9600's.

Its a bit more than $50, but this might be worth looking at
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220341

Either of these might give a better perf boost than an extra Gb?

 

[rangersig]

either 4gb (2x2gb) of ram or a better cooling solution for your cpu if you need it for a better overclock. other than that save your money for a next gen gpu latter this year.

 

[epic_pc]

That has been some great advice. The $50 is on a visa gift card and as awesome as newegg is, they do not accept two forms of payment unless you use one of their gift cards.
I'm running Vista 32bit..., but I'd ditch my old ram for those....
My cooler is rocken http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003&Tpk=HDT-S1283 ....it keeps my cpu under 34c at full load, except the thing is so tall it wont let me completely close my case.....

 

[13thmonkey]

As I understand it with 32bit vista you have a maximum of 3.4Gb, less your video memory less other allocations so you'll only see 2.4Gb, that'll be an expensive 0.4gb benefit...

Call them, can you order over the phone, can you sell the $50 to someone else so that they can buy it in a single transaction, i'm sure there are ways of getting that $50 out into the open.

Up to you, but there are limitations with the 32bit OS that will limit the benefits

 

[mi1ez]

@monkey

if we're subtracting video memory, he only gets 1GB as it is...

you need to subract from his current setup as well as what he'd potentially be having total. It'd be 1.4GB of extra RAM either way.

 

[13thmonkey]

I think that you subtract from the 3.4Gb limit don't you? and this gives you the maximum available addressable memory value?so at the moment he has a max addressable of 2.4Gb which as this is above his 2Gb is not noticed as an issue. People with 2Gb of memory and 2x1Gb video cards may notice this on a 32bit OS.

I might be wrong, that's how I thought it worked.

 

[13thmonkey]

http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-maximum-memory-in-32-bit-windows-vista/

gives an idication of how it works, looks like this starts at 4Gb not 3.4Gb but that 600Mb is typically used, so add in another 1Gb for the SLI'd cards and you arelooking at 2.4-.25Gb of addressable memory regardless of how many actual sticks there are.

Try to edit to include reference and final paragraph, failed, hence another post.

 

[epic_pc]

The 9600gts are 512mb....
The way that I see it is that 3.4 is the limit...so you loose .6 right off the bat. subtract the amount of GPU memory from the 3.4, which leaves you with 2.4GB of free allocatable memory. So if I purchased 4gb, I would be wasting 1.6GB's..... is the .4 worth it? Well since I put it that way I would say no....perhaps I could find faster memory as a paired 2x1gb? currently I have ddr2 800 4 4 4 12 cas of 4. I play WoW and it is memory heavy.....it rides up to about 1.4gb of used memory when I run it.

 

[Devastator_uk]

That's one negative point about SLI/Crossfire, the waste of memory addresses.
That 0.6GB could vary slightly depending on buffer/cache sizes and so on, and could possibly be half that amount, in the past I've always counted 0.25GB and that was never far off.
Essentially you get 4GB-0.25GB-2*0.5GB = 2.75GB (or 2.4GB if you used 0.6GB).
So you're only looking at about a half a gig increase no matter what you install.

 

[13thmonkey]

memory speed might help you a little, what you might find helpful is faster swap space, or upgrading to a 64bit OS, and then more memory, but this obviously goes way beyond the $50 budget.

TBH I'm not sure where'll you'll get benefit, perhaps buying the 4Gb so that you can later go to 64bit, or even buying 2x2Gb in readiness, but you'll see virtually nothing until you can access it.

Thinking further about it though, the extra 0.4Gb will be an extra 25% of memory available to you, and probably more like an extra 35-45% available spare (above and beyond windows base load) so you might actually see some improvement.

One thing to remember is that vista superfetches everything it thinks you might need into ram, and then dumps it when you want something else, so RAM always looks very highly utilised, what is more important is how much WoW is using and how much of that is in swap file, if WoW is using 1Gb and none in swap, then there is little to be gained, if it is using 1Gb with 1Gb in swap then there might be somewhere to go.

 

[epic_pc]

I've never thought about moving to the 64bit OS....but it is a possiblility, I believe I have the 64bit install disk around here somewhere. Now I know this is going off my own topic, but can the 64 bit OS run all my programs? noob, I know. Will the 64 bit OS yield better fps?
What do I look for when I check the swap file size or rather if vista is using it?

 

[13thmonkey]

I've read many 64bit threads here and all seems to be ok with it 'mostly' I think you might have to tell some programs to run in 32bit mode (windows on windows) its on the properties tab of the exe i think.

Badge has written about 64bit vista a bit and seems to get on ok with it.

I'm about to make the jump once the final part of my order gets into stock (2x30Gb SSD's) but that might be a while yet.

You need to look at task manager and it'll be able to show you process by process the memory usage and how much is paged and not paged with I think corresponds to swap and physical ram respectively. Obviously do it whilst it is running, so you might need two monitors, rivatuner could log total page file usage in the background so you can see what is happening whilst you are gaming if you do not have access to a second screen.

 

[13thmonkey]

I've read many 64bit threads here and all seems to be ok with it 'mostly' I think you might have to tell some programs to run in 32bit mode (windows on windows) its on the properties tab of the exe i think.

Badge has written about 64bit vista a bit and seems to get on ok with it.

I'm about to make the jump once the final part of my order gets into stock (2x30Gb SSD's) but that might be a while yet.

You need to look at task manager and it'll be able to show you process by process the memory usage and how much is paged and not paged with I think corresponds to swap and physical ram respectively. Obviously do it whilst it is running, so you might need two monitors, rivatuner could log total page file usage in the background so you can see what is happening whilst you are gaming if you do not have access to a second screen.

Miles also runs 64bit vista I think?

 

[MKWith]

When I used Vista32 I showed 3gig of ram with my 2x8000GT's.

Q6600@3.0Ghz
MSI P6N Sli Platinum
4Gig @ 4,4,4,12
2x8000GT's

 

[13thmonkey]

wasn't there an update to vista to improve how it displayed memory amounts and how it dealt with memory mapping, I'm not sure if it actually freed up memory as this is assigned through bios, I think it juststopped the 'why don't I have as much as I should have questions'

Are there other ways of determining actual memory availability?

 

[papalarge123]

The Vid cards get the extra 600MB that r not used in the 32bit OP\Sys, so u should start @ the 4GB RAM then subtract the 1GB RAM for the GPU's.

A friend has the 32bit Vista installed with 4GB RAM, but because he has 2x GTX 260's in SLI, he only gets 2.2-2.4GB RAM available.

 

[epic_pc]

I thought I heard something about that update when SP1 came down the pipeline...
Any other thoughts on upgrades or improvements rather than memory?

 

[13thmonkey]

cheap small SSD for the OS, programs and remainder on the HHD, decent(ish) soundcard (don't know what you've got), gaming keyboard, surround headphones, nicer chair?,

 

[4745454b]

YOU START AT 4! You start at 4GBs and work your way back, not 3.6, not 3.4, but 4GBs. You also do not subtract the full 512GBs for each card. Some things that take GPU memory the OS doesn't need to know about, such as AA. I'm not sure how much ram you'll "lose" per card, but it should be less then 512MB. Because you have two cards however, you will see less then 3GBs.

Another option is to sell the 9600GTs for $100 each, which leaves you with $250. This is enough to get a GTX260 or the 4870. I doubt either of these will be that much faster then the SLI setup you have already, so this isn't a great idea. What cooler do you have already? Perhaps a new mouse? A nice new computer chair? If you can't decide, you could always buy a game.

 

[nsimo86]

I'm running 4gigs of ram and a 512mb video card in 32bit xp and it shows me as having 3.25gigs of ram.

Upgrading your ram to 4gigs might be worth it but your money could be better spent somewhere else. I say use that $50 to buy a new game or two.

 

[Devastator_uk]

4745454b is right you do start at 4GB and work back but if you have two GPUs with 512MB each you do lose a full GB because they both need 512MB of memory addresses whether in SLI or not.

Buffers + cache + BIOS + soundcard + NIC + mouse + keyboard ... = ~0.25GB (for a standard PC) but possibly slightly more depending on components (maybe upto 0.5GB).

so:
Maximum usable RAM = 4GB - ~0.25GB - Total_video_memory

 

[4745454b]

Why would the OS care about the memory used for AA? My computer also shows 3.25GBs, but my video card only has 384MBs of ram. Nsimo86 and myself report the same ram amounts, even though our video cards have different amounts of ram. The OS only needs some address space for video memory, it doesn't need the full amount.