2gb of RAM improve loading times?

IwantanewPC · 14 May 2006 at 20:50

i like to play CS:Source on 1600x1200 but this increases the map loading times by quite abit.

i have 1gb of RAM at the minute, if I increase it to 2gb will I see much if an improvement on the loading times?

VeNT · 14 May 2006 at 21:03

maybe, iirc its more to do with your hard drives speed etc than anything and your PCs ability to process that data

Minstadave · 14 May 2006 at 21:45

Here's my usual tip before upgrading to more RAM:

Press CTL+ALT+DEL and go to the Performance tab, in the Commit Charge section there is a value called Peak, you need to see if that is over 1,000,000K, if it is then you are filling your gig of RAM and are then paging to disk, and a RAM upgrade will benefit you

If you are paging then its likely more RAM will cut down those loading times, BF2 is the prime example, but CSS at that res might be hitting 2gb territory.

Fulcrum · 14 May 2006 at 21:51

^^ What he said, use enditall to close non essential programs before using CSS so your not including anything but the essentials

IwantanewPC · 14 May 2006 at 22:03

Minstadave said:
Here's my usual tip before upgrading to more RAM:

Press CTL+ALT+DEL and go to the Performance tab, in the Commit Charge section there is a value called Peak, you need to see if that is over 1,000,000K, if it is then you are filling your gig of RAM and are then paging to disk, and a RAM upgrade will benefit you

If you are paging then its likely more RAM will cut down those loading times, BF2 is the prime example, but CSS at that res might be hitting 2gb territory.

I assume I do that when Source is running right?

And which one do I look at? Total, Limit or Peak?

Darkwave · 14 May 2006 at 22:20

HL2 and CSS just have some silly load times really (no offense to Valve, Source is still the best engine out

), even on 2GB for me.

Minstadave · 14 May 2006 at 22:21

IwantanewPC said:
I assume I do that when Source is running right?

And which one do I look at? Total, Limit or Peak?

No you do it after a heavy session on source, the peak value is the important one, its the highest memory usage your system has seen since its been switched on (this is why you don't have to do it while source is running).

HangTime · 15 May 2006 at 00:32

I found that HL2 wasn't too bad on memory usage, but it's worth checking all the same.

No matter how much RAM you have, load times will always be dependent to some extend on the speed of your drive. Might be worth doing a defrag and/or move STEAM to a faster drive.

Jack Bauer · 15 May 2006 at 10:12

If you really want to improve your load times get SATA if you dont have it already and also consider RAID. Memory shortages tend to affect in game performance with stuttering and freezing.

Killerkebab · 15 May 2006 at 16:36

Exsomnis said:
HL2 and CSS just have some silly load times really (no offense to Valve, Source is still the best engine out ), even on 2GB for me.

HL2 and CSS loading is very short compared to other engines in my experience. The worst would still have to be Unreal II :/

Darkwave · 15 May 2006 at 17:00

Killerkebab said:
HL2 and CSS loading is very short compared to other engines in my experience. The worst would still have to be Unreal II :/

Yeah but HL2 at least has to load every five minutes, it gets on my case.

Pound_Coin · 15 May 2006 at 17:20

It cant be that bad.

I load cs_milita in about 30 seconds and de_dust in about 15

On 1 gig

5ingh · 15 May 2006 at 17:25

sorry to hijack, its better than starting a similar thread!

i have a similar problem i think..

i've got 2x256 dual chan memory. is that the 'physical memory total' bit?

if understand it all correctly, the system used all 512mb of RAM, and started using the pagefile...the only memory intensive apps/games ive ran today are photoshop and gta:sa :<

Minstadave · 15 May 2006 at 17:34

Mr Singh said:
sorry to hijack, its better than starting a similar thread!

i have a similar problem i think..

i've got 2x256 dual chan memory. is that the 'physical memory total' bit?

if understand it all correctly, the system used all 512mb of RAM, and started using the pagefile...the only memory intensive apps/games ive ran today are photoshop and gta:sa :<

Yup you've used a lot of pagefile, your peak is about 700MBs so you could do with a bit more really. Photoshop loves RAM, thats probably the main culprit.

Darkwave · 15 May 2006 at 20:45

Pound_Coin said:
It cant be that bad.

I load cs_milita in about 30 seconds and de_dust in about 15

On 1 gig

CSS isn't as bad as HL2 for me, since CSS only has to load once per map. HL2 needs to load every five minutes though near enough, it really adds up.

Gangster · 15 May 2006 at 21:06

Sorry for getting into this thread, but will a ram upgrade benefit me? (thats on idle) is the page file usage too high? if so how can i reduce that if i can??

thanks,

G

Minstadave · 15 May 2006 at 21:08

Gangster said:
Sorry for getting into this thread, but will a ram upgrade benefit me? (thats on idle) is the page file usage too high? if so how can i reduce that if i can??

thanks,

G

Thats normal page file usage mate, your Peak Commit Charge is only 456MB, so you're not even using half your RAM.

You have to run your system through your normal activities, games, photoshop etc, then check the peak commit charge afterwards to get your max memory usage.

Lee2k4 · 15 May 2006 at 21:12

And I thought BF2 was a memory hog :eek:

Glaucus · 15 May 2006 at 21:16

ok never looked at this before..

I have 2GB memory so why has it paged after only 77396? or am i reading this wrong?

Minstadave · 15 May 2006 at 21:19

AcidHell2 said:
ok never looked at this before..

I have 2GB memory so why has it paged after only 77396? or am i reading this wrong?

Windows pages to some degree even with plenty of free memory, so thats normal. You're looking at the Kernel memory too, which isn't really that important, the main value is the peak commit charge, when this goes above your total physical memory is when the nasty paging to disk starts going on.