When to increase amount of memory

neil27 · 9 Oct 2006 at 14:04

Hi all

Not sure weather to put this here or in Gaming.

Anyway, my most memory hogging game (i think) is Flatout 2! while playing this my total memory usage goes up to about 825mb out of 1gb of memory. Would you say that I needed more memory or is it just a case of once you hit the 100% utilization you need to get more.

neil

Zefan · 9 Oct 2006 at 14:09

I'd say only upgrade if you actually notice a drop in performance i.e chugging.

neil27 · 9 Oct 2006 at 14:17

Hmmm, I do get chugging on rare occasions...but put that down to harddrive activity! maybe its going into virtual memory. Will keep a note next time to look at me MO display to see how much is in use at that time....

I wasnt sure if windows holds a certain amount back for itself either..

neil

Zefan · 9 Oct 2006 at 14:20

Hard drive activity chugging = not enough ram, as you said - virtual memory. If you can live with it don't bother, but nearly every game released nowadays needs 2gb of ram to run on highest without chuggery.

neil27 · 9 Oct 2006 at 14:24

Ok thanks Zefan...

Will keep a closeer eye on it now

neil

Minstadave · 9 Oct 2006 at 17:51

If you monitor your peak commit charge you'll know if you need more memory (it sounds like you're watching it already).

Provided that doesn't go over you total physical memory you're fine and more memory won't help you.

Captain Fizz · 11 Oct 2006 at 12:15

Minstadave said:
If you monitor your peak commit charge you'll know if you need more memory (it sounds like you're watching it already).

Pretty much... When Peak Commit Charge is regularly greater than Physical Memory... Time to upgrade.

YoungBlood · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:42

Hope you dont mind me using this thread as it seems to be the same question.

Minstadave can you check this and just confirm im reading it right.

My peak usage is 1.8Gig and I have 376mb free, meaning I need a upgrade.

Thanks in advance :cool:

Minstadave · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:46

You're using way over your 1GB of physical memory (what ap are you using that uses that much?).

If you're gaming you should get better load times with 2GB.

KurTz · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:47

What GFX card you using?

YoungBlood · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:57

Minstadave said:
You're using way over your 1GB of physical memory (what ap are you using that uses that much?).

If you're gaming you should get better load times with 2GB.

The most memory hungry thing I run at present is proberly Company Of Heroes...

KurTz said:
What GFX card you using?

6600GT 256MB

An extra gig of memory it is then. TY Minstadave

Captain Fizz · 11 Oct 2006 at 18:02

Yep - See your Peak Commit Charge - It's 1.8 GB.
Your physical ram is 1GB.

So you are using 800MB over the amount of RAM you have.

2GB is standard for games these days. :s

KurTz · 11 Oct 2006 at 18:08

Whats running in that screen dump?

800mb over your physical amount is a lot to be honest.

Minstadave · 11 Oct 2006 at 18:11

It'll be Company of Heros thats the most memory hungry, that uses 1.6GB odd on my system.

gamesreviewer · 11 Oct 2006 at 22:05

yeah, mines also using around 1.6gb peak, won't be long before 2gb aint enough. tempted to get 4gb on my next upgrade after christmas.
Richard

HangTime · 15 Oct 2006 at 01:08

As mentioned, if your peak commit charge never exceeds 825meg, then you won't really gain much by adding more memory.

Interesting to see about Company of Heroes, if I get that I'll have to tweak some of the settings a bit as I only have 1gig RAM (and shan't be upgrading unless prices fall by at least 30% from current level).

One thing I've noticed in many games is that Texture quality setting has a big effect on memory. In games like FEAR and BF2 I found setting this to Medium saved a whole chunk of RAM.