Will 512 more RAM make much difference?

[ShanBoi]

Ok my spec is as follows

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Asus K8V SE deluxe mobo
512MB PC3200 DDR400 Kingston Value RAM
Gigabyte Radeon 9600XT 256MB

Im probably going to pick up another 512 of the same RAM this weekend. Just wondering if it will make much difference to my performance. I know applications will load faster and exit faster, but like, in games and stuff will i see much difference to the likes of FPS etc

I bought HL2 / CSS the other day. It takes a long time to load up and when i exit it takes a long time for it to fully exit and stop eating up my processor..

I just want to know if the extra 512 will provide a NOTICEABLE difference, and if so, to what? If i leave my CSS settings the same, chuck in more ram, will i get better FPS? Or is it more just load/exit time

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Load times will be better.

 

[Cujo]

If any diffrence will be noticed it gonna be loading times only.
RAM on gfx card, now that's other story.

 

[koopa]

I bought HL2 / CSS the other day. It takes a long time to load up and when i exit it takes a long time for it to fully exit and stop eating up my processor..

A Gb definitely improves that aspect - programs exit almost imediately now. Fps/etc will be pretty much unchanged. It's nice to have 1024, but not essential.

 

[Hyperion2010]

it will make a HUGE difference, over time people will be making larger levels for source, and level size is based on ram, therefore the more ram the better.

 

[Champ]

Wrong forum buddy... This goes in the hardware forum.

But as the others have said, loading times only. Perhaps if your GPU (vid card) was better, the RAM would make more of an impact in-game.

 

[PvtRyan]

If any diffrence will be noticed it gonna be loading times only.
RAM on gfx card, now that's other story.

If you have 1 GB of RAM, you won't have to swap to the ultra slow harddisk anymore, with 512 MB that still is the case, but not that much.

 

[Dr0ndeh]

you should see quite an improvement in loading times.

 

[Varsity]

Getting 1GB of RAM was the best thing I ever did.

 

[Cujo]

If you have 1 GB of RAM, you won't have to swap to the ultra slow harddisk anymore, with 512 MB that still is the case, but not that much.

True, but i assume he want to know if diffrence is game-wise.

 

[Cynical]

game-wise u would be better investing in a 9800 level card. the 512mb u have is failry enough if u don't allow any other programs to run while ur playing. but to get a good performance boost in games look at this: ur processor is very good, ur ram is fairly decent and fast, the weakest part is ur 9600xt (not that it's a bad card, in fact it's a quite good card for it's price). so i say ur priority would be the graphics card, then ram, then cpu in later years (investing in one of the 10k SATA hard drives would be very much adviced whenever u can afford it, they r soooo fast and i know i want to get one).
so bottom line, i would keep the 512 ram and make sure i shut down any unnecessary programs while gaming. save ur money for a graphics upgrade!

 

[ShanBoi]

im lazy tho hehe. I open up CSS with a bunch of other stuff running in the background.

It really erk's me having to wait while my game exits. Im talkin for like 20 seconds after the game 'exits' its operation go slow trying to open simple applications like email. I know 20 seconds isnt much in the scheme of things, but its one of those things that erk's me

Upgrading the gfx card will cost what - $200 extra aussie (if i sell my card) whereas the extra ram will only cost $130 aussie... And For that $200 id get a 9800pro.. anything else will start costing an arm and a leg

I plan on upgrading graphics next when prices drop a bit. I know that for game performance, graphics is a must..

Another thing that shits me is application load times at startup. I often go through msconfig and kill all the unnecessary stuff, but yeah.. i do like a quick startup. Should help that too yeah?

 

[Cujo]

If you want to pay money for your lazyness, help yourself.
Playing online with background applications running isn't lazyness, its stupidity

 

[flo_Orian]

the first 256 of the 512 more ram will do it for sure :>

 

[ShanBoi]

hehe

I will often just fire it up to take a break from some work.. I might have msn and shit running, couple of word documents open, and some web browsers.. i dont really feel like shutting it all down and starting it all up again... pain in the bum



The thing that craps me the most is the time it takes to exit

 

[Tlaloc]

i JUST got an extra 512 last night and let me tell ya... if exiting is a concern to you (or loading levels) this is a god-send

I can quit cs:s and within 5 seconds be moving windows around... before it would get stuck for about 20 seconds

lol when you think about it the amount of time saved is kinda ridiculous(ly small).... is this what we have come to?

 

[ShanBoi]

I agree that relative to time itself - it is small.

However, with a reasonable system it just shits me. 20 seconds is a long time in computer terms, having to wait before you can open up other stuff etc.. Its just plain annoying

Do your levels load heaps faster? When i jump into css, steam loads for a while, then i get the black screen with grey status bar loading the css level, and that takes a minute or two.. annoying. id love it to be reduced

 

[Sideshow]

Well, I can honestly say that going from 512 to 1gig is the best upgrade I ever done. Doom3 went from a stuttery mess to a supersmooth experience . I think this will be the case with Half-life 2, and don´t listen to people with 512mb ram telling you not to upgrade, you have to experience it to feel how huge the differens is.