Better to upgrade RAM ?
February 4th, 2020
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate (x86-32bit)
Processor: 2.30 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
HDD: 250 Gigabytes Hard Drive
Memory: 2Gb DDR2 Ram
Graphics Card: Radeon 4870×2
Motherboard: Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 PSU : Powercool 650W Dual 80+ 12V V2.2
The Thing I want to know is this, I like playing a lot of games, WOW and fallout 3 etc – so would i benefit from using an extra gig or 2 of ram ?
Most people say that that 2gb is fine but I use my PC for everything, Video encoding, picture editing, playing games – the list is endless
Any Help is appreciated guys
the bigger the better up to os limit so yes
nah on 32 bits the maximum allowed is 2.8 gb of ram , but if you get an 64 version , you need much more , if anythng runs like you want nice smooth and easy , why to upgrade ?
2gb should be ok for you. I dont see why you would need to upgrade unless you are running 64 and do a lot of stuff
nah on 32 bits the maximum allowed is 2.8 gb of ram ,
Isn’t that 3.25 gbs ?
Btw having more ram wouldn’t hurt
i know about 2.8 , sorry about the offtopic (when i buy my sony , and my old toshiba it was 2.8 about 8 months ago )
RAM is pretty cheap these days thats why i was asking, i was just wondering if it would give me better frame rates when playing fallout 3 ?
I would install x64 but I cant be bothered with installing WoW again it takes forever lol
just look how much ram do you use on that game , if isn`t use 100% then do as you wish , and abut the prices , tehy wil go down from now on
with vista 32bit adding ram up to 4gig should make some diff in loading times but not a big diff in frame rates
and you might be better off replacing your 2gig with 4gig faster ram if your @ 533 or 667, 800 might help a lil and the board will take it
with your video card your CPU is under powered and is the bottleneck tho
with vista 32bit adding ram up to 4gig should make some diff in loading times but not a big diff in frame rates
and you might be better off replacing your 2gig with 4gig faster ram if your @ 533 or 667, 800 might help a lil and the board will take it
with your video card your CPU is under powered and is the bottleneck tho
Yeah i suppose your right, my graphics card has a 6 and 8 pin PCIe, but can be run on two 6 pins – which is the way i do it, so am i dropping a lot of performance with the two 6 pins connected instead of the 6 and 8 pin ?
My PSU only has two 6 pin PCIe’s and no 8 pins Ithought this would be okay cos I only bought the PSU a few days ago …
It said on the graphic cards box that a 650w PSU would be fine
your PSU looks fine
Processor: 2.30 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core at this point this ^^ is your limiting factor
your PSU looks fine
Processor: 2.30 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core at this point this ^^ is your limiting factor
When you said underpowered I assumed – power as in watts , iv been meaning to upgrade that for a while, but i suppose the real limiting factor …
is money … student here lol, Thanks
i think 2gb are enough
nah on 32 bits the maximum allowed is 2.8 gb of ram , but if you get an 64 version , you need much more , if anythng runs like you want nice smooth and easy , why to upgrade ?
It’s 4GB Ram on 32 bit, not 2.8GB
power as in watts
actually it’s gigahertz (GHz)
the 2.30 GHz
to fully use that video card you’d probably want at least a 3 GHz CPU
to fully use that video card you'd probably want at least a 3 GHz CPU
GHz is not the only thing. Cache mem is important for gaming as well. Overall CPU architecture is important.
power as in watts
actually it's gigahertz (GHz)
the 2.30 GHz
to fully use that video card you'd probably want at least a 3 GHz CPU
Of course, my mistake
Can i not tweak the cpu up to that ? or is that not advisable…
2gb is enuf for x86/32 bit.
But if you are going to get 2 x2gb sticks, make sure to get ddr2 1066 – your bios will auto adjust the ram to run faster than the cpu (ram to cpu ratio) and you might get a snappier performance feeling then short of overclocking.
You’d probably see you vista performance index ram score improve too.
2gb is enuf for x86/32 bit.
But if you are going to get 2 x2gb sticks, make sure to get ddr2 1066 - your bios will auto adjust the ram to run faster than the cpu (ram to cpu ratio) and you might get a snappier performance feeling then short of overclocking.
You'd probably see you vista performance index ram score improve too.
Okay, how do these look ?
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?OCZ-8500GD
Personally I would get these but it would be overkill for you plus 10 pounds more:
http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=ocz+blade+low-voltage&scoring=p
The new ocz low-voltage blade series.
The ram you posted is ok but there is plenty other ram at the same price with better 5-5-5-15 timings (crucial, g.skill, corsair, etc.)
If you don’t pony up for the ocz blade then get these buffalo firestix for 45.99:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BUF-8500C5
ddr2 1066
his mobo is only good for up to 800, think it will clock the 1066 down
Supports dual channel DDR2 800/667/533/400 DIMMs from herehttp://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=2287
It’ll run 1066 ram =)
But you have a point – he’ll probably have to manually change the ratio in the bios himself to the 1066 settings.
he'll probably have to manually change the ratio in the bios himself to the 1066 settings
according to the specs 1066 won’t be available as a memory bus speed
you may be able to bump the bus up a lil but no where near 1066
I think his best option is 2x2gb DDR2-800 (PC2-6400) sticks Can i not tweak the cpu up to that ? or is that not advisable...
you may be able to bump up the FSB a lil, maybe 2.50-2.60 or so
you never know till you try
just be sure to find your bios reset (reset_CMOS) jumper on the mobo to reset a bad overclock if need be
I think il go for 2x2gb DDR2-800, Just now im using two DDR2-667’s Do you think ther will be a noticable improvement ?
yes
it may not be faster but it will be peppier, seem more responsive vista deff benefits from the extra ram, it has a tendency to use ram up to how much you have
When i boot up and have no programs exept kaspersky running i have about 30-37% ram geting used, is that okay ? On task manager at the moment under the performance tab, at the bottom left where it says Physical Memory (MB) it reads:
Total :2046
Cached :1457
Free : 39
I dont know alot about it but that doesnt look too good, since theres only 39 free, is this not bad… fi its only got 39 free cache memory?
that’s correct
I dont know alot about it but that doesnt look too good,
now when you need memory it has to move/remove something to make room for the new request
adding more should eliminate that
and it’s also faster memory
so when it now seem sluggish to respond that’s what it’s doing, moving things in and out of memory
yesIt might just be the placebo effect. There shouldn’t be any reason for it to be faster since the memory only works as fast as the FSB to mem ratio no matter how high the rated mem speed is.
it may not be faster but it will be peppier, seem more responsive vista deff benefits from the extra ram, it has a tendency to use ram up to how much you have
that's correct
Quote:
I dont know alot about it but that doesnt look too good,
now when you need memory it has to move/remove something to make room for the new request
adding more should eliminate that
and it's also faster memory
so when it now seem sluggish to respond that's what it's doing, moving things in and out of memory
Okay i understand that
How do these look, what one would you suggest ?
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/dirresults.html?s=2x2gb%20DDR2&d=
these are like what I’m using
Crucial Ballastix 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kithttp://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?CRU-B644GK
the lower timmings are better
CAS 4-4-4-12 Timings
you could also go here to start and see what they recommend using the “Crucial Memory Advisor� tool” just input the needed info
http://www.crucial.com/
Okay iv bookmarked those
Heres what I got on their site http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=GA-M57SLI-S4
And to address the cpu bottlenecking issue, what cpu do you suggest for maxing out games ?