AO-Help me spend my money and upgrade my PC

[Steelrat]

Ehh that depends entirely on what youre doing. For most things, no. If you play Fear or BF2, then you absolutely will tell the difference.

Ugh, now I'm confused. I play BF2 almost exclusively, and that is my primary concern at this point when designing a system. So, over 1G does help?

[wad04]

kosmo is wrong, encoding is 95% the cpu speed NOT the how much ram you have. Very little has to do with the ram. 1GB of ram is more than enough. and no, you wouldnt notice a difference in gaming from 1 to 2gigs. I have a friend who thought it would, and no difference. But i'm not just basing this off my friend either.

[kosmo]

Wad is wrong. I noticed a huge difference in BF2 and fear when I went to two gigs. It helps a lot with BF2 especially because it can have more textures loaded at once. So if youre flying around it doesnt stutter when you fly to a new area. It helped mine a lot.

[wad04]

well i'm not going to squabble with you, just do some research before dropping all that extra $.

[wad04]

This is what you should look at. Read the entire article, but also look at what he suggusted on the last page.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/page12.html

1 GB

Indeed, 1 GB of system memory will most likely be enough for the average user and for people.

* It will allow you to play new games at their highest quality settings, given that you have an adequate processor and a powerful graphics solution.
* You won't have to shut down non-critical applications when you want to play a game.
* You can (accidentally) press the Windows button while in a game without dying from a stroke during the seconds it takes to read Windows back into system memory from the swap file.
* If you go from 512 MB to 1 GB, you will notice the difference all the time. Starting up Photoshop while working with Word, an Internet browser, e-mail client and Acrobat Reader will go so much faster, and switching between the applications is a breeze.

2 GB

Still there are situations where more than 1 GB is what you want.

* If you are a professional user, you might need more than 1 GB for really heavy applications.
* If you intend to do heavy multitasking, especially if you have more than one CPU or CPU core. Running RAM intensive games such as World of Warcraft, downloading files via high speed FTP or encrypted protocols, Bittorrent or any P2P program; decompressing large archives and playing large size video files in a window or on second monitor all at the same time can max out your system memory pretty fast - if your CPU can handle it.


Also look at this one

http://www.crucial.com/library/howmuch.asp

It states that using 2 gigs of ram is for people who do 3-D CAD software, modeling software

[FlawleZ]

Build your own machine. For much less money you could own any Alienware PC. You just have to know where to look and what to look for.

[MicroMiniMe]

Wad is wrong. I noticed a huge difference in BF2 and fear when I went to two gigs. It helps a lot with BF2 especially because it can have more textures loaded at once. So if youre flying around it doesnt stutter when you fly to a new area. It helped mine a lot.

Well if you are used to playing BF2 on 1 gig, you are accoustomed to about a 60 second 'verifying client data' after connecting or loading a new map. With 2 gigs you 'verify' in about 8 seconds apparently and don't get any clunkiness when you first enter the game if you get that a few seconds on game start as well.

Other than that and you'll not notice a ton of difference. But if there is a good deal or special for 2 gig and your getting that second gig for like $50 extra, then by all means buy it. Otherwise a solid fast 1 gig will do just fine.

[thecavemankevin]

Well if you are used to playing BF2 on 1 gig, you are accoustomed to about a 60 second 'verifying client data' after connecting or loading a new map. With 2 gigs you 'verify' in about 8 seconds apparently and don't get any clunkiness when you first enter the game if you get that a few seconds on game start as well.

Other than that and you'll not notice a ton of difference. But if there is a good deal or special for 2 gig and your getting that second gig for like $50 extra, then by all means buy it. Otherwise a solid fast 1 gig will do just fine.

if only that were true. I'm running 2.5 gigs of 400 ultra (got a killer deal and picked up 3 512's for 10 bucks each) and i still have a lengthy client and clunkiness for the first few seconds.

to be honest, i realy didnt notice any major increase when i went from 1 to 2.5 gigs. I usually have around a gig just sitting there doing nothing.

[Wizzman]

Wad is wrong. I noticed a huge difference in BF2 and fear when I went to two gigs. It helps a lot with BF2 especially because it can have more textures loaded at once. So if youre flying around it doesnt stutter when you fly to a new area. It helped mine a lot.

Wad is very wrong. I have the Dell XPS M170 with all the bells and whistles and had 1gig of ram in it and it ran good. I recently upgraded to 2gigs of ram and omg world of a difference with BF2. BF2 is the only game I play along with the new couter strike and it does make a difference...

-Wizz-

[wad04]

I can only say do your own research, I think most people drop the money on more ram and then convince themselfs that it looks better :) . But seriously, 2.5gigs? You do realize you can have TOO much ram right?

Lets just try and stay on the topic of actual computer building here, not ram. help this guy out.

[bleachit]

you would be better off spending the extra money you saved on only getting 1 gig on a really good graphics card, especially if you want to be gaming.

[thecavemankevin]

I can only say do your own research, I think most people drop the money on more ram and then convince themselfs that it looks better :) . But seriously, 2.5gigs? You do realize you can have TOO much ram right?

Lets just try and stay on the topic of actual computer building here, not ram. help this guy out.

i had a 1gig stick and 4 Dimm's, so when i came across a deal of 512's for $10 each after rebates......well who could pass that up? 1.5 gigs for $30!!!

you would be better off spending the extra money you saved on only getting 1 gig on a really good graphics card, especially if you want to be gaming.

i actually bought a good card before all the ram, bought a very slightly used BFG OC 6800 w/256ddr3. Got that several months ago from a coworker when he upped his stuff to twin 7800 sli blah blah blah