Whats Faster?

[PepperDog]

Quick question- which I *should* know the answer too, but...

I have an AMD s939 system, and have the choice of 2x512 @ DDR450/2-2-2-5 or 2x1GB @ DDR500/3-4-4-8. In both cases the CPU (Venice 3200+) will be running 2.25 ghz (x10 and x9, respectively). For purely gaming which ends up being faster?

My guess is more ram does the most good, regardless of the actual "benchmark speed".

 

[niji1875]

the difference between 1G and 2G is very small.

 

[Fuzija]

if you are playing battlefield 2 I say difference between 1g and 2g is like having a Athlon 1700XP and x2 4400

With 2G I am able to turn off page file in windows and play bf2 without it, which you cannot do with 1G at all, game is much more faster and you get more fps

I'd say go for 2g

 

[F1shF4t]

ram speed for athlon 64 doesnt matter much (going from ddr400 to ddr500 is like 2% increase) , so 2 gig will be by far better especially when playing newer games like bf2 etc

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Pure benchmark speed, the DDR450 2-2-2-5 will probably be faster. But I agree the benefits of 2gig most likely outweighs the small speed increase.

 

[Conky]

As others have pointed out, it depends largely on the games you play. Most games would benefit from the faster RAM but system hogs like BF2 are just the opposite.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I'd go for the 2GB

 

[dguy6789]

There is absolutely no question that the machine with two gigabytes of memory will perform in a superior fashion in regard to the machine with one gigabyte of memory. The more advanced applications of today and those of tomorrow will require more and more memory.

-dguy

 

[myocardia]

I'd just like to point out that benefiting from 2GB's of RAM will depend mostly on the resolutions you like to game at. If you like large resolutions, you really have to have 2GB. If you game at lower res., like 1024x768 or 1152x864, then you'd see more benefit from 1GB @2-2-2-5 than from having 2GB @3-4-4-8 timings.

Of course, that only applies to now. In the next couple of months, don't be surprised if nearly every good game requires 2GB's of RAM, since it has already become so prevalent in the gaming world.

 

[RichUK]

2GB piss?s all over 1GB of RAM.

Present and future games require more RAM, or more system memory to store all of the complex graphics, sound, AI etc. This is a basic given. Now consider this. I can?t remember the exact analogy, but the access speed for RAM Vs a hard drive is something like 15 minutes for RAM, and over a week for the hard drive in comparison. So all the data a game needs to load along with the already reserved physical memory for the kernel etc, would benefit ten fold by being stored in physical memory not a 50/50 share between physical and virtual.

If you have to keep accessing your swap file (virtual memory), off of the hard drive when playing a game, you?re going to bottle neck the whole system. I remember BF2 on my old rig which used 1GB of RAM, even though I had the raptor the loads times drove me nuts, when trying to load the maps etc.

If you?re purchasing RAM these days, get 2GB if you can.

What I am trying to say, is the more physical memory you have the better. It doesn?t matter how poor the timings are, it is still many many times faster than accessing the swap file off the HDD, which actually compensates for the lack of RAM . You only really want to use the HDD as a storage device, not a regularly accessed I/O device, because it is FAR to slow.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

get this. ram speed is somewhere around 1500MB/sec. hdd speed of even the raptor is 70MB/sec. loading stuff from ram would be way faster than reading from hdd. besides with 1gb you'll probaby have to use lower res textures. in todays and in futre games.

 

[Skeeedunt]

yarrr 2 gigs

 

[Dexion]

In this case, I wouldn't use the term "faster". It's more like, "where's the bottleneck"? The CPU will be equally as fast in both cases, but the chance the CPU would be idling wwating for data from both the Harddrive and RAM would be higher on the 1GB machine.

To answer that question, obviously the 2GB would reduce the chances of the operating system to use paging memory. Most games nowadays require about 1 GB of memory while in use which is why games like BF2 would load faster on a system with 2GB.

 

[Mogadon]

Originally posted by: RichUK
2GB piss?s all over 1GB of RAM.

Present and future games require more RAM, or more system memory to store all of the complex graphics, sound, AI etc. This is a basic given. Now consider this. I can?t remember the exact analogy, but the access speed for RAM Vs a hard drive is something like 15 minutes for RAM, and over a week for the hard drive in comparison. So all the data a game needs to load along with the already reserved physical memory for the kernel etc, would benefit ten fold by being stored in physical memory not a 50/50 share between physical and virtual.

If you have to keep accessing your swap file (virtual memory), off of the hard drive when playing a game, you?re going to bottle neck the whole system. I remember BF2 on my old rig which used 1GB of RAM, even though I had the raptor the loads times drove me nuts, when trying to load the maps etc.

If you?re purchasing RAM these days, get 2GB if you can.

What I am trying to say, is the more physical memory you have the better. It doesn?t matter how poor the timings are, it is still many many times faster than accessing the swap file off the HDD, which actually compensates for the lack of RAM . You only really want to use the HDD as a storage device, not a regularly accessed I/O device, because it is FAR to slow.

If I took the time i'd say what Rich said.

 

[sillycheesedude]

get the 2 gig you will notice the difference.

 

[Vegitto]

2 GB, man. Better in BF2, better in FEAR, better in about all games I can think of. Of course, the next-gen games will have even MORE benefit from more RAM.

 

[classy]

The 1 gig will produce faster frame rates, but 2 gigs will provide a smoother gaming experience in some situations. I would take which ever is cheaper.

 

[RichUK]

nm