Right # of Megs for gaming

[ruefus]

What would constitute overkill for a gaming machine? I've got 128 meg now and due to the low prices am thinking of doubling or tripling that. Does anyone think 384 megs is going to be noticed over 256? Is it worth the money for strictly gaming, burning and such?

 

[Jarablue]

I had 128 megs of Crucial PC133 Cas 2 memory and thought the exact same thing. I went out and bought another stick of the same stuff making it 256 and to tell you the truth I haven't noticed that big of a difference. But I guess it is always nice to have. I did see that photoshop ran a little faster tho.


In the immortal word's of Bob Marley, "Let's get together and feel alllright..."

 

[Guest]

There is no such thing as too much RAM ever! RAM prices probably will not stay as low as they are right now, so buy it now before you regret it in the future.

 

[Bandit]

I agree in theory. If RAM were free, get all you can. It doesn't hurt, but it's not. I use 256 megs of ram with Win2k. It's nice, but I hardly ever utilize the second 128 stick.

Look at what other upgrades you could get for the same cost. Might be better than the ram upgrade. I have 256 megs, but before I buy anymore, I want two decent hard drivers running Raid0..

 

[Arrow]

You'd at least get some boost in performance.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[Guest]

Well, in technicality I agree, you can never have too much RAM. But I do believe I read in Maximum PC that there will not be much of a performance jump in win98 if you go from 128 to 256. These numbers refer to Quake3 and MDK2 I think. More RAM will have a noticable effect on programs like Photoshop though. Processor speed and the graphics card play much more of a difference once you've already hit the 128 meg plateau.

 

[kal326]

it really depends on what os you are running. If your running win2k or NT4(which if your gaming i doubt) then 384 would almost be recomendable. If your running win98 or winME then 256 is about all windows will use if i remember right. I run 256 on my machine and under win98 i dont notice much of any gain. in fact i have to have a lot of windows and programs open to even use the extra 128. Windows 98 seems to run best at 128, 64 to little, 256 bit to much. Win2k is a lot differant though, because it uses the nt kernal it is a lot better at memory caching and usuage. Win98 frankly sucks when it comes to memory management. Thats why your machine will slow bog down when run for extended periods of time. It has memory leaks. Win2k and NT4 does not, you can run your machine 24/7 with out problems. Even when i run win2k I only use about 138 megs of mem and a fairly small swap file. So if your running win98 256 is about the beginning of overkill. for win2k/NT4 384 is about the begging of overkill

 

[Guest]

You know the old saying rufus, If some is good, then more is better, But Honestly there are not a whole lot of games out there that you would notice the difference on, But its always good to get ahead of the game

 

[lostinms]

I know Crucial has a recommendation on there page about how much memory to get and usally it is 128 meg for gaming on the average. I got 192 meg in my puter and I notice a big differance system performance and I am still runnig windows 95.

 

[jg38141]

128 is optimal for 98. You'll notice a large diff though with 256 only when running multiple apps. When your computer doesn't have to dip into virtual memory everything runs faster. If you only plan on doing one thing at once though the speed really doesn't increase much.

"Are you saying that I can dodge bullets?"

 

[waggers]

i run 98 se and had 128 in,i bought another 128 as on special offer.when i run benchmark it shows my computer is running slower !!!!!!!!! the shop replaced both modules for me,same.when i tested with wintune it did show an increase.some things do run faster but not the increase i was expecting.there is a post here i must look up again,which explains it and what to do,but i'm only learning .
regards waggers

 

[Guest]

Why not by 64meg and a new harddrive for the some price (maybe a little bit more) as two 128Mb.

<b>Voodoo</b><i>Child</i>

 

[Guest]

by = buy
some = same



<b>Voodoo</b><i>Child</i>

 

[Grizely1]

I agree with most people here. You can never have too much RAM. But 256 seems about the chioce for most gamers.

 

[Arrow]

That's right, you can't go wrong with more, but what you do will really count in if you will notice it or not.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[waggers]

take a look at a post under windows95/98/me,page 2, "more than 128 mb sdram under win 98 " and what toejam31 has to say,anyones thoughts or tried it.
regards waggers

 

[manish]

If you only want to see gaming performance improve, then better go for 192 MB at this moment, and if you want an overall improvement in all applications (photoshop seems to be a fav of all here), then go for 256 MB.

 

[smn198]

If you get too much RAM, you will experience more cache misses as the cache has to address more main memory so there is less chance of the data you are trying to access being in the cache. However, if you are finding that your hard disk is being accessed then you do need more ram as accessing the HDD is so much slower. I'd definitely say anything above 256 is overkill.

 

[Guest]

I have seen tests where too much memory will degrade performance slightly. I believe some of these tests I saw here on Tom's Hardware, and also Anandtech. For most systems 192-256mb of RAM will be more than enough, very few applications are designed to use large amounts of memory. Most programs are coded in an manner that allows the program to run with smaller amounts of memory that is present on most machines. When programs are coded in this way they run slower, but never consume too much memory. I personally have 192mb in my server and personal machine and it is more than adaquete, as I have only once consumed all the memory and caused it to use more than is available, pagefile or virtual memory.

 

[rcf84]

get all you can buy

-- takes one to now one --

 

[johnnycheddar78]

I think 8GB of DDR4 will do (LOL HI 17 YEARS AGO)