so i just added 1GB of ram into my computer, and i haven't really noticed any difference except for the desktop is a little faster, but does ram actually help once you get over 512mb? even after a hard render, it only helped it by 1 minute (you'd expect going from 512mb to 1.5gb would help a little more than 1 minute) and in LFS.. it did absolutely nothing, i noticed no difference in FPS..
Well you really don't want to mix and match RAM types.
But the more RAM you have, the more programs can run in it and not be swapped back and forth from the page file on your HDD to RAM and back. Also your desktop is kept in RAM, which is why it opens faster when you have more RAM (the more stuff on your desktop also means it needs more RAM).
In games RAM helps if they use a lot of textures, so in LFS it doesn't make much difference, but in bigger games, like BF2, the more RAM the better. All RAM does is make fast tempory storage for files it needs, and as it is slow to call files from the HDD all the time, they get dumped into the RAM.
It does... But it's not the grandmother of systemupgrades that people make it out to be sometimes...
RAM is only useful when you're low on it. If a game requires massive amounts of RAM, then adding some might keep it from swapping, which would speed up things (loading times mostly).
Based on a normal PC you'd get from gateway or Dell, or something... In order the things to upgrade are:
CPU: This is LFS' bottleneck. It uses insany amounts of CPU power at times, especially when using AI.
Graphics: It isn't hard on the graphicscard, which results in your ability to run at high resolutions, and turn on stuff like AA and AF and go for high quality images. The higher the resolution and the more quality settings you can turn on the better, though.
RAM: More RAM means less chance something will swap to disk when playing. Maybe in the future LFS will become more RAM intense (for buffering replays or something).
HDD: Especially when you're capturing video. The faster the HDD, the less time it will spend seeking streampositions. Also cuts down on loading times for tracks and stuff.
Edit: Instead of going for MORE RAM, I'm inclined to suggest upgrading to FASTER RAM for anything that goes up and over 1GB. You don't really need more than 1GB, so I'm inclined to upgrade to 1GB of faster ram than to upgrade to 1.5GB of a little slower ram.
well right now my computer is
2.8ghz (rated at 3.0ghz though) P4 (not hyper threaded.. oh god no)
256mb Nvidia GeForce 5600
1.5gb ram
70gb harddrive, 2gb of which is being used as a page file.. not sure why i have it so high but.. obviously its not doing any harm lol
no overclocking so..
i'd guess my bottleneck (which has always been this) is my graphics card
anyway, there's a registry setting that forces windows to not page the kernel unless it needs to, you need a gig of ram really to use it, but can help speed windows up. You'll have to google it for more precise details though.
I mean, logically, the more actual RAM you have, the less pagefile you should need.
lol.. well actually i just looked at it (since i remembered that ram and page file are dependent), so i looked at it.. and when i set it to recommended, it sets it to just over 2gb so.. im guessing it wouldn't make any difference right now anyway
That has nothing to do with the actual page file... It's just how much of the file system gets cached into RAM. Let's say you use a fileserver on your LAN, then setting large system cache to on would make that server respond quicker to files it loads often, because the files are actually in RAM instead of just on disk. On your desktop, most of the RAM would be taken up by files you've opened recently, and that would cause less available RAM for other applications.
I was using 512 MB RAM, and even putting a 256 MB RAM next to it improved load times everywhere. Windows stars much quicker, also programs like Photoshop, vegas, and games also of course ( far cry, doom 3 etc.) . IMHO 1,5 gigs of ram is enough, but i would not mind 2 gigs of it . BUT You can't really use the lots of ram without other "high end" components ( 3+ GHz cpu, good graphics card -anything better than a 6600 GT or equivalent ati card - ), mainly because new games are huge, so they need loads of ram to load and run quickly (and to run quickly they also need the other parts described above ) . It's all just my opinion, so pls don't flame me
When I recently bought my new PC, I thought one of my DIMMS was defective, so I just had 1GB in single channel mode. The PC was quite quick.
When I discovered that my OCZ DIMMS are rated at 2.0V rather than 1.8V as normal, I put the other DIMM in, so I had 2GB in Dual Channel mode. The PC is around 40% faster in everything, and in some cases 100% faster.
The gains in LFS were miniscule however, but HL2:EP1 loaded a lot faster.
. BUT You can't really use the lots of ram without other "high end" components ( 3+ GHz cpu, good graphics card -anything better than a 6600 GT or equivalent ati card - ), mainly because new games are huge, so they need loads of ram to load and run quickly (and to run quickly they also need the other parts described above ) . It's all just my opinion, so pls don't flame me 