2 Gig memory - Is it worth it?

bushmins · 14 Mar 2007 at 16:41

I have seen that XMS2 2x512 sticks have gone down by £30 in the last few months. I was wondering if i should go from 1gig to 2gigs. I play a lot of new games and do a lot of multi tasking applications, will the extra gig help at all?

My setup

E6300
DS3
7900GS
1gig XMS2
If i did get it what can i do to give the ram a good test to see if it has increase the speed of games etc.

Regards

barrymacp · 14 Mar 2007 at 16:51

I would recommend 2gb of ram if play loads of high spec games.

MeatLoaf · 14 Mar 2007 at 19:09

Yup deffo go to 2Gb

Richdog · 14 Mar 2007 at 19:13

2GB is standard now... like 1GB was a couple of years back. It should be the minimum amount any power user has in their PC.

PhillyDee · 14 Mar 2007 at 23:19

Definately. 2Gb is recommended and required IMO.

masslac · 14 Mar 2007 at 23:47

2GB tbh. Make sure the next kit you buy is as good as your current RAM tho, as a PC's memory is only as fast as it's slowest module.

pl2k1 · 15 Mar 2007 at 00:02

2gb is the way forward!

chaparral · 15 Mar 2007 at 00:53

Richdog said:
2GB is standard now... like 1GB was a couple of years back. It should be the minimum amount any power user has in their PC.

Am very surpise it still only 2gb needed now...

I built my system am using now about 18 months ago and it needed 2GB back then for highend gaming..

PhillyDee · 15 Mar 2007 at 01:27

Thats a fair point, but now 2Gb is becoming mainstream.
Plus, there hasnt really been any need for gaming to have and use more than 2gb. Even Sup Com uses quite little ram. Only game that really hogs it is BF2142.

bfar · 15 Mar 2007 at 14:47

2GB is essential for high end gaming. Some of us install even more!

Sinizterguy · 15 Mar 2007 at 16:14

Yes its worth it. Even my laptop has 2gb.

bushmins · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:09

Would it be likely to see an increase on 3DMark software?

Im just reading up on over clocking, but would there be any significant increase without overclocking?

Richdog · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:16

bushmins said:
but would there be any significant increase without overclocking?

Yes of course, the higher the GB the more information can be held in RAM, so overall system/gaming performance will be noticeably faster and smoother regardless of whether you OC or not.

Chris Beard · 16 Mar 2007 at 10:00

RAM is a lot cheaper now anyway. The reason there is a 2GB cap is XP is mainstream and XP doesn't really yeald much benifit from more than 2GB.

overcl0cker · 16 Mar 2007 at 10:02

2GB makes a lot of difference to any system imo.

oc.

Luffy · 16 Mar 2007 at 22:42

Another vote for 2GB. Battlefield benefits hugely from the extra RAM if you play it, but overall you will notice the improvement

Corasik · 16 Mar 2007 at 23:44

With XP, anything more than 2GB is a hack, and its not very usefull to 'general' users. It uses a mode called PAE, which is fine, but applications can only use it if they are specifically programmed to understand PAE mode.

So most applications can only access 2GB memory even if more is installed.

I do believe on a PAE enabled XP system, windows does know enough to allow multitasking to make use of the ram, so if you like a dozen apps open at once then it does have benifits, but if you close down your apps and have nothing but windows + your main app, then the gains for enabling the PAE hack are extremely limited.

XP 2GB Yes, it really makes a difference, but there are many good reasons why 2GB is still the normal 'max' thats worth installing in a 32bit windows PC (including 32bit Vista).

When 64bit Windows become standard, then 4GB will very likely become the new standard, as XP64, and Vista64 can access 128GB of ram, and thats purely a software limit, a lot more is possible in the future)

(Actually apparently Vista Home Basic supports 8GB max, Vista Home Premium 16GB Max, and Vista Ultima 128GB max) Thats kinda beside the point though as most current motherboards are limited to between 8 and 16GB of DDR2 memory.