Will an extra 2gb of ram make a difference in gaming?

[DELTAsnake]

I have a Mac Pro running Windows 7 (when gaming) with support for both dual and triple memory channels. Right now I'm using 6gb in triple channel, I'm thinking of upgrading to 8gb in dual channel. I've seen benchmarks that show the extra 2gb of ram gives over 10% performance increase in things like Photoshop on OSX, but does that 10% performance increase traslate into a performance increase in Windows games? For that matter are there any games that even make use of 8gb of ram?

If it matters I normally play WoW, SC2, Civ V, TS3 on my PC.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

Games will load quicker, and individual levels will also. Plus, you may be able to increase graphical detail levels without decreasing FPS/performance. You'll likely have less graphical anomalies as well. Multitasking will also be smoother.

The performance improvements don't really show in benchmarks, but they are very real. I'd do it if I was you. Of course, I'm the one who bought 12GB of RAM for my new Sandy Bridge system.

 

[4745454b]

And I disagree with leaps. Once you're at 4GBs, anything more then that isn't going to do much. As someone reminded me recently, most games are still written with 32bit code, so they can't use more then 2 or 3GBs of ram anyways. If you already have 6GB, stay there.

What does your mac consist of? You probably need a better video card.

 

[chunkymonster]

Going from 6GB to 8GB will give no appreciable difference in performance for Windows gaming. A faster gpu, faster cpu, overclocking, or faster memory will give a performance increase.

I bet if you checked the system monitor, it would show that you are no where near using all 6GB of memory.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

The reason that extra RAM will be useful is that the graphics card has the ability to reserve system RAM for texture storage and such. The more RAM you have, the more RAM is available to both the graphics card and the game itself, plus the operating system.

My graphics card has 1280MB of its own, but it still reserves 2815MB of system RAM for a total of 4095MB. To find out how much yours is using, go into the Windows Experience Index page and click the "View and print detailed performance and system information" link (just below the Base Score on the right).

The gains don't show on benchmarks, but they are real. Smoother gaming equals better gaming.

Read, and be enlightened: Linky

 

[4745454b]

Hard for me to read seeing as I don't understand German, but thanks at least for the link.

One thing I did take away from the article is where he says, "8 GB of RAM really is a must if you're going to play demanding games." They were also testing at 1920x1200. The other then I have an issue with is he said "A total of just 4 GB of installed RAM hardly makes sense if the game is already using 2 GB or more...when installing more memory, this value does not change above 4 GB." So what I read is that a card can grab up to 4GB, leaving the OP with 2GBs for everything else. Seems fine to me. He didn't throw up any test data for 6GBs, so I stand by my assertion that 6GBs is fine. The OP didn't list any system specs, but I'd be willing to bet a better GPU might make a difference for him.

 

[DELTAsnake]

Best answer selected by DELTAsnake.

 

[DELTAsnake]

Games will load quicker, and individual levels will also. Plus, you may be able to increase graphical detail levels without decreasing FPS/performance. You'll likely have less graphical anomalies as well. Multitasking will also be smoother.

The performance improvements don't really show in benchmarks, but they are very real. I'd do it if I was you. Of course, I'm the one who bought 12GB of RAM for my new Sandy Bridge system.

Thanks for the info and the link to the article, I forgot that system monitor has memory usage built in. WoW almost takes up 5gb of my 6gb of memory. Since macfixit started a sale on Mac Pro ram today I might get 12gb or even 16gb of Ram.