4GB RAM and games

i have had a horrible experience with vista and games. Nearly all of them crashed or did something rubbish. went back to xp, exact same rig and configuration....zero crashes for like 2 months now.
:rolleyes:
 
^Nvidia's support is still bad though, a lot of games crash in vista, some of them don't work at all without disabling my 2nd screen, wich is rubbish imo as in xp I don't have to disable my 2nd screen for any game to work, they all work with both screens enabled while in vista, a lot of games crash, or have issues like not working mouse, etc...

I dissagree.

On a decent rig Bioshock maxxed out will not even use 1.5Gb of Ram throughout the whole game. Same goes for Battlefield 2 and 2142. Therefore an extra 2Gb of Ram to make 4Gb will be of No benefit what so ever.

Vista does use more ram but still I havent ever gone over 1.7Gb of Ram when running any games. Running Vista SB x32 and XP 32bit.
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I disagree with you, having any less game optimized windows or windows with 500 mb of background stuff and you get bf2 to stutter on some big 64 maps when flying, while with 3 gigs it's fine.

LMAO is your vista borked? Vista ALWAYS uses 99% of your ram even if you have 16gb except completly at start when it's still cacheing (unless you disabled superfetch, but why on earth would you do that, it only takes a few minutes at start and for the following session you have an ultra fast pc and no unneccesary hdd cacheing).

Try CoH on ultra textures on a high resolution, not just the strat of theg ame record the usage while playign for 30 mins without alt tabbing ( it somehow clears the ram a bit when alt tabbing ), I had it pass 3 gb of usage together with my background stuff.

Besides, extra ram always helps when shutting down games in xp, you get to desktop much faster, also loading new maps ( once you're already playing) in bf2 is a lot faster with extra ram, as it keeps evrything untill you leave the server.

In vista, x64 or 32 bit, every bit of RAM helps, you will get MORE programs to start faster, more thumbnails and previews to load intstantly once you enter a folder, etcetc, imo 4 gb of RAM is DEFINATLY (a bit less in xp, but still very helful in xp) worth it ( ignore the sig, it's obelete :p).
 
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When playing WIC or the ET:QW demo my ram goes to around 91-95% and occasionally stutters under Vista 64...I think I'm going to pick up another 2gb ballistix this week. Will definitely solve the problem as I borrowed my friend's 2gb ballistix the other week to test 4gb in my rig and WOWOWOW it made a huge difference in everything...even just starting windows
 
snowdog said:
I disagree with you, having any less game optimized windows or windows with 500 mb of background stuff and you get bf2 to stutter on some big 64 maps when flying, while with 3 gigs it's fine.

LMAO is your vista borked? Vista ALWAYS uses 99% of your ram even if you have 16gb except completly at start when it's still cacheing (unless you disabled superfetch, but why on earth would you do that, it only takes a few minutes at start and for the following session you have an ultra fast pc and no unneccesary hdd cacheing).

Try CoH on ultra textures on a high resolution, not just the strat of theg ame record the usage while playign for 30 mins without alt tabbing ( it somehow clears the ram a bit when alt tabbing ), I had it pass 3 gb of usage together with my background stuff.

Besides, extra ram always helps when shutting down games in xp, you get to desktop much faster, also loading new maps ( once you're already playing) in bf2 is a lot faster with extra ram, as it keeps evrything untill you leave the server.

In vista, x64 or 32 bit, every bit of RAM helps, you will get MORE programs to start faster, more thumbnails and previews to load intstantly once you enter a folder, etcetc, imo 4 gb of RAM is DEFINATLY (a bit less in xp, but still very helful in xp) worth it ( ignore the sig, it's obelete :p).
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OK I've taken to the fact that Windows Vista will be a little smoother on 2Gb+
but I still think its a waste of money with XP.

I have turned off many of Vistas features as I can't stand the constant HD access and hardly ever search and don't use Thumbnails. When Vista boots its using 1Gb but as soon as I start doing anything I goes down to 600/700mb.

I'm a big battlefield 2142 player and normally play 64 player maps. I'm currently running XP Home with about 350mb taken on startup. I normally have Ventrilo and firefox in the background whilst playing. ALT+TABing is instant on any map with any amount of players (Although I do have 2 74Gb Raptors in a Raid 0)

Ive never seen BF2142 use more than 1.5/1.6Gb of Ram and thats at 1680x1050, 4AA all on max details. I'm getting these results from the Windows Task manager under Performance and the Commit Charge values, either Peak or total. What are you using to gauge your ram useage mate?

I can't speak for CoH as I don't have it. :) Any good?!

As for BioShock I played through the whole game at 1680x1050 on max details on Vista x32 without a hitch or any paging. When ALT+Tabbed it reported to be using around ~1.6Gb. Ill double check with a screenshot.
 
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markyb said:
Ive never seen BF2142 use more than 1.5/1.6Gb of Ram and thats at 1680x1050, 4AA all on max details. I'm getting these results from the Windows Task manager under Performance and the Commit Charge values, either Peak or total. What are you using to gauge your ram useage mate?

I can't speak for CoH as I don't have it. :) Any good?!
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I'm using taskman on my 2nd monitor live when I'm gaming.

Well it seems you have a low base usage of ram, in idle mode ( basic startup apps (like msn, xfire, deamontools, logitech g11 profiler, nod32, etcetc), internet browser, email app, and a few folders open) my pc (in xp pro 32bit) uses 700 mb of ram.

In bf2 I get some stutters with 2gb (maxed everything, high textures, 4x aa, 16xAF, 1600x1200 etc...) @ start on the 64p map Fushe pass when I quickly take off in a plane and fly towards the enemy base (happens about near the centre of the map), however this is only at start I'm guessing it's throwing out more windows apps from the RAM and makes more room for BF2.
With 4gb ( or 3.2 actual gb's) it's smooth.

CoH imo is very good, most people who dislike RTS games like CoH nonetheless.
 
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700mb is a lot for xp to load at startup mate.

I have had no stutters what so ever with 2Gb of my current setup, although it depending on what your using on startup. Also slow hard drives can be the cause of jitters and paging.

Bioshock test, (Rig in Sig) With 2x 74Gb Raptors in Raid 0 & Vista SB x32

Clean boot

Runing in Background...

Avast AV
MS Active Sync
Fraps

nothingda7.jpg


Now running Bioshock...

runningnn9.jpg


Alt+tab is instant, no paging at all. No stuttering in game using almost 1300mb of ram.
 
Wow never expected it to provoke this kinda response.

So I get the general feeling is on XP 32bit I'm kinda wasting my time, however moving to Vista (x64) and it would be worth it.
 
@ MarkyB

Okay I never expected bs to use much ram so no need for proof, I believe you :p.
I don't think my hdd's are too slow, windows drive is not a fast but not a slow hdd, a 250 gb wd caviar, shouldn't really lag anything, while my gaming & pagefile drive is a Raid 0 of 2x250 gb 7200.10's 16mb's sata.

Yes 700 mb is a lot, but the programs just pile up, usually around 150 mb for iexplorer, bout 65 mb for explorer.exe, 55 mb msn live, 50 mb peerguardian2, etc...
My boot is even harder because deamontools usually has 3 or 4 cd/dvd's mounted wich means my pc has an extra about 5gb (just an estimation) to load at startup (reading the images).

But the thing is imo, get more RAM if you can't be botehred optimizing and tuning your system but want just want to run a lot at once.
I'm the type of person that is too lazy to shut down anything before starting a game, and that after a game, doesn't want to need to restart everything, I just want everything I need to run immediatly, and always.

CoH uses approx 1.3 gb @ start of a game gradually making its way to 2gb ( CoH.exe alone that is, all my ram is full @ 99% usually even @ start of a CoH game :P. not even maxed all settings and reasoably low reso, but on ultra textures though)
Renember though, vista doesn't show the ''in cache'' usage as ''ram usage'', unless you really have disabled superfetch, the remaining 700 mb you have ''free'' is actually filled witch cache.
 
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I may have just been lucky then but having moved to Vista almost immediately since it was released I haven't had any problems that I haven't experienced on XP too. Feels the same as XP to me with a better look and extra features. Absolutely smooth transition for me which is impressive.
 
The amount of vram counts too. With bf2 it can need half a gig of texture space so if you have a bigger video card you will need less main memory
 
highest ram consumption game iv seen on xp was battlefield 2, its ram usage peaked at 1.3gigs ish. 2gigs of ram is more than enough for gaming on windows xp. with vista 3gigs is plenty.
 
helmutcheese said:
Well use it as 3+GB in XP and when you feel the need for Vista gaming your all set with 4GB :)
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true, thats what im doing, ive already got vista but im not installing it until i get a game that uses directx10 due to the fact i see no other (current) advantage over XP, if you use over 3gb in XP though you can put the /3GB switch in the boot.ini (copy the line thats already there, stick /3GB on the end and you'll get a selection when you boot your pc)

although that still only allows me to see 3.5gb, what does it actually do?

then again the main reason i got 4gb because of the price at the time (the geil that was ricidulously cheap on the ocuk shop a few months ago)
 
mrbios said:
true, thats what im doing, ive already got vista but im not installing it until i get a game that uses directx10 due to the fact i see no other (current) advantage over XP, if you use over 3gb in XP though you can put the /3GB switch in the boot.ini (copy the line thats already there, stick /3GB on the end and you'll get a selection when you boot your pc)

although that still only allows me to see 3.5gb, what does it actually do?
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The max a 32 bit OS will see is 3.5GB, is simply can't see more. To access more you need XP\Vista x64.

By default XP32 will only use 2GB max for user-space applications, the remaining 1.5GB will be only accesable by kernel applications. The /3GB switch means 3GB is avaiable for user applications. However since it's 32bit only 2GB max can still only be used by a single application.
 
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