Will upgrading from 1GB Ram to 2GB make much difference??

[HookeyStreet]

Hi,

I currently have 1GB (2 x 512MB) of Dual Channel DDR 400 installed, would adding another 1GB of identical Ram make much difference to the overall performance of my system??

Daz

 

[Deleted member 3]

Doubt it, unless you use programs that suck RAM or ofcourse multitask a lot

 

[HookeyStreet]

Doubt it, unless you use programs that suck RAM or ofcourse multitask a lot

I do multitask quite a bit (DVD ripping/encoding whilst on the internet/playing online games etc)

 

[The Rage]

1.5 works fine for me =P no lag

 

[GoLLuM4444]

Personally I'd instead buy some higher rated RAM (as I am) and overclock.

 

[Halki]

well i thin 1gig should be enough (that's a big chunk even for windows), but don't listen to me, i have came here all the way from 486/33 w/ 8megs of ram (now it seems like a horror to me) and i've ran a win95 on it... those were the days

 

[Breit]

if the programs you may run on your machine don't need that extra gig of ram, than maybe your system is a bit slower on 2 gig of ram. this is in most cases related to the fact, that it is much more difficult for your memory controller to handle 4 modules instead of 2 and so, to ensure reliability, the memory controller will probably add some extra latencies. this also depends on how many banks each module of your ram has. exactly this is the point why servers have registered (buffered) ram instead of unbuffered like desktops, they simply need more ram and so use more modules...
but thats only the half of the story: every 32bit operating system has some difficulties with addressing memory beyond 1g. device drivers, that will adress a memory region beyond that border must go through a process called bounce buffers which mirrors the desired data in a small buffer in the lower memory, but this process consumes some time...
anyway enough of tech-talk: if you need more than 1gig, then its definitly faster with 2 (swapping/paging is terribly slow), but if you don't need it, then better leave it at 1gig...

if you don't belief me, maybe you should run some tests on your own before you decide...

cheers
--breit

 

[OVERKILL]

I run 2G Dual-Channel PC3200 on my rig, the benchmark scores in SiSoft Sandra are basically identical from 1GB to 2GB, I just have Kingston Value RAM and Intel PAT enabled.

With a pile of apps running I get: 4744MB/sec in Int. and 4738MB/sec in Float. I'm sure the scores would be higher if I bothered to close everything. I've run the test before upgrading to 2GB and after with almost identical throughputs. But, as said above, it has a lot to do with the chipset and thus memory controller as well as the actual memory itself and its configuration. If you run a PILE of things at once like me, you will see 2GB is faster, if not, you won't.

 

[Breit]

if you want to know if your system runs faster or not with more ram, take a stopwatch and run your favorite programs...

sandra numbers are nice to impress someone, but they don't tell you how fast your system will run your apps. in case of sandra there is only one task running at a time and no access to device drivers or something like that, no communication between multiple processes...

with 2gb maybe your system is exactly as fast as with 1gb of ram, but maybe not?! - i think sandra won't tell you that...

cheers
--breit

 

[OVERKILL]

I wasn't saying my Sandra scores proved my system was faster with more RAM, I was using them as comparisons in throughput, as it was questioned whether having all four banks populated would degrade memory performance. Sandra is fine for measuring things like memory throughput.

 

[Bastieeeh]

And now my two cents worth. Even if you play RAM-intensive games like Battlefield or HL2 and if you are running a DVD-RIP-job in the background I doubt that one more gigabyte will make your overall system feel faster. RAM nowadays tends to be expensive and I'm not talking about lousy noname brands. Imho it would be wasted pretty much and instead of RAM think about a faster CPU or at least one that you could overclock higher. The subsystem as well is a component to think about. Two WD Raptors in RAID 0 definitely improve level loading times in games and to a some degree OS loading times as well. I think in doing this your money is spent much better...

 

[Breit]

i agree with bastieeeh. if you never experienced a memory shortage on your system with 1gb then you better leave it at that and better invest your money in a faster cpu, a faster graphics card or some faster hard disks (if you ever saw your operating system boot from a 15k-scsi-disk or even a couple of them in raid-0, you know what i mean... ). the performance you will gain from that will be much more noticable...

just watch your memory usage through the task manager. if the page file usage goes never above 800-900mb then you will be fine with 1gb and your system will not run any faster with 2 and under some circumstances, wich i described above, it could be even slower...

@overkill:
shure you can use sandra to bench the throughput of your memory and shure you get some nice numbers, but all i whould say is, that under some circumstances your system may be even slower with 2gb ram instead of 1. maybe you have a motherboard wich deals great with 4 banks of ram. most systems/chipsets, especially older ones, cannot handle more than 6 banks (and i mean banks, not slots!) of unbuffered ram. there are some benchmarks and reports out in the internet, try searching if you don't beleave me...
and in case of the bounce buffer mechanism i mentioned before: this effect is only noticable if some device drivers do some dma-access or something. this effect is not noticable in sandra, but shure it is if you run some real applications wich deal with your hardware through the drivers...



--breit


edit: i won't post any links here, but maybe you try searching google with "2gb ram slower"...

 

[OVERKILL]

I agree completely, in fact, there are a number of cases with VIA Chipsets that with DDR 400 when you populate more than 4 banks it drops the speed down to 333 in order to prevent bleeding so I do understand and agree with you. My system has the i875P chipset, it apparently deals with a fair deal of RAM quite well, my gaming performance is no faster with this amout of RAM and any benchmarks I've run all show the exact same results before and after, so no, it hasn't made my system "faster" but what it HAS done is allow me to run piles of applications at once without much of a performance penalty, that's the reason I upgraded, that reason alone.

 

[Nobru_rv]

I just wanted to say that on soltek 86spe2 (i865) dual channel 2x512 kingmax tinybga, 2.8 northwood,not oc-ed in AIDA/EVEREST bandwith was 5088 read/1955 write. And soltek isnt a crazy performance mbo. When i tried 2x 1gb hynix ddr 400 i got 4980 read/1833 write.

 

[paradyme]

I would base this decision on what Online games you are playing. DVDRipping/Encoding prolly wont be effected by Ram as much as it would be by a faster HD. But if ur playing Online games such as MMORPG's like EQ2, WOW or Lineage 2(which will use ever last bank you have) then RAM will make a huge difference.

 

[aL Doom]

If you really want to dvd rip while playing some game, then the only real way to boost preformence is to have a duel cpu setup which is really really expensive. The good thing about winxp is that you can assign different cpu's different tasks. Then the 2 GB ram will really shine (especially if u r using multiple ram/cpu heavy apps)... my 2 c...

 

[OVERKILL]

I tried that EVEREST program and got 5585 Read and 2008 Write, that's with 4x512 of RAM that is cheap but cooled.

 

[Breit]

If you really want to dvd rip while playing some game, then the only real way to boost preformence is to have a duel cpu setup which is really really expensive. The good thing about winxp is that you can assign different cpu's different tasks. Then the 2 GB ram will really shine (especially if u r using multiple ram/cpu heavy apps)... my 2 c...

yep that's absolutely right....

i have a dual system und besides that ram-thing most games do run slower on a dual-system than on the same system with only on cpu (even on my system if i disable one cpu). shure it is because the game developers do not take much time to think about smp when they are programming their games and so a smp-machine is not the best gaming-rig at all. maybe thats about to change when dual-core cpu's hit the market and nearly every new pc is some kind of a smp-machine...
but it also is obvious that if you do some other tasks with your system while gaming, then a dual-cpu setup could help you much in getting a better gaming experience (think about some background ftp on a lan party ).

cheers
breit