speedbump,

Compared to a fast CPU and a current- or last-generation video card, my understanding is that memory power consumption isn't too important.


Correct. As stated in the first post, 1x512 is a single channel configuration while 2x and 4x512 are dual channel configurations.

Of course that would have been a better test. There's always a better test. But, I don't have 2x256MB of DDR400 RAM. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I have 2x256MB of any RAM, and if I do it's PC100 or PC133. My point: I conveniently had a decent enough RAM selection matched with a mid-to-high-end machine to run these tests for SimHQ, even if they're not perfect.

The improvements from 1GB to 2GB should not be in FPS, but in improved multi tasking (alt-tabbing out of games) reducing stuttering, etc.

Multi-tasking I can understand. Stuttering, however is FPS, isn't it? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Hi
I have the same board as you the asrock939 and i have 2 512MB OF RAM .I play fsx wich is very much ram hungry,and was wondering if i should get 2 more 512mb or 2 1024 mb and would those last 2 share well with the 512 bars?Dual core is not being used yet i think with games.Does it meen that half the rams are just sitting there waiting for the dual core to be used?I hope you understand my saying im not always clear .Thx for helping .Robert

FPS drops to be exact.

For example, you could be running Battlefield 2 with textures on the highest settings, and have 60fps because you have a nice video card and CPU, but you only 1GB of RAM. You will experience stutters when you move into new areas, the fps will appear to drop to single digits for seconds as the game reads textures from the hard disk because there's not enough RAM available. The game will basically skip because it couldn't access and display the necessary textures in time. It could be so bad that you'd have periodic stutters every few seconds, with excellent framerate in between stutters.

If you are running games like BF2, Red Orchestra, Oblivion, Armed Assault, at resolutions of 1600x1200 with high details, you WILL have stutters unless you move to 1.5GB of RAM minimum. Red Orchestra alone can have a RAM footprint of 1.3GB.

Because of the nature of stutters, they dont show very well on FPS benchmarks. The editor would have to play the game and report on these stutters, the frequency, etc.

With FSX I definitely recommend 2GB of RAM, and as much video memory as possible. Preferably 512mb of video ram on your video card. I'm not making this up, one of the FSX devs said it over at the Something Awful forums.

I havent even bothered buying that sim until I receive my Geforce 8800GTS, and that is a lower end card as far as FSX's engine is concerned. That sim wants a video card with 1GB of RAM.

This is from Lomac forum-

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I got 4GB of RAM and all my sims/games purr smooth as a kitten. [/QB][/QUOTE]

I've been thinking about more Ram, but I read that 4 gig is OTT, and can be counter-productive?
What did you start with, and did you increase incrementally? If so, was there really a genuine increase in FPS as you did so?
I've got 2 gigs- wondering if i should increase"

It is me asking the last question. What do you guys think?

I think the Lock On results answer that question pretty clearly. I saw very little improvement moving from 1GB to 2GB, and I think moving to 4GB is a waste of money.

I just write FWIW (to anyone interested) to indicate the ASRock motherboard itself does not preclude 1T with 2GB -- mine ran PC3500 at 1T with no tweaking required.

Minimal Details: Corsair DDR TWINX PC3500 2x1GB at 2,3,2,5,1T with a 10 percent overclock of the Opteron CPU and the RAM at 440MHz (~PC3500) -- all other mb settings nominal or slightly overdriven by the 10%, as applicable. Since then, I changed to my current motherboard which runs at the same nominal slightly-overclocked settings at 1T. FWIW.

I assume your mb does not do 1T because, as I remember, your mb is overclocked/tweaked substantially. Also, 1T often only works for two RAM slots and fails for 4 populated RAM slots on most mb -- why I got 2x1GB vs 4x512MB.

And, yes, I got 2GB for Oblivion. It also helps minimize stuttering in Gothic 3. But, most older games were designed around 1GB max I think.

Thanks, Joe you just saved me $180.00. I was going to add 1024 ram to get to 2048 but not after reading your post.

Did anyone mention a that not using as much virtual memory is one reason loading may be faster with 1024 over 512? (not just the doubling in bandwidth with dual channel)