 How Much Ram Is Enough For Xp, If I play a few games does extra ram help |
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 Oct 25 2007, 12:55 AM
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 Member  Group: Members Posts: 68 Joined: 25-July 06 From: Wisconsin Member No.: 77,817  |
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Oct 25 2007, 02:12 AM
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#2
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Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 303 Joined: 23-October 07 From: SoCal Member No.: 164,912 |
Whats going on with his computer for him to ask for more ram. Is the game not playing correctly?
-------------------- Centurion 5 Case~GA-P35-DS3L Rev2.0~E6550~EVGA 8800GS~3GB GSkill~Cooler Master 650 PRO~Seagate 320GB SATA II~ 2 ASUS 20X Burners~Sound Blaster Audigy SE~ZeroTherm CF900~Acer 22" P221W
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Oct 25 2007, 06:25 AM
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 Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 307 Joined: 16-November 04 From: Queensland, Australia. Member No.: 5,292 |
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I think most MoBo's only support max 4gigs.....unless you have a 64bit board.
-------------------- JTH
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Oct 25 2007, 01:59 PM
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#4
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Forum Addict Group: BC Advisor Posts: 7,459 Joined: 3-September 05 From: Killeen, TX Member No.: 33,068 |
The max is defined by two things:
a. The motherboard. b. The operating system. http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm Louis |
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Oct 25 2007, 02:46 PM
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#5
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 Distinguished Member Group: HJT Senior Classmen Posts: 712 Joined: 12-July 07 Member No.: 143,145 |
I believe the max available is 3GB unless it is 64bit. You can put 4GB in a 32-bit system but it will not see the last 3/4 GB or so.
More memory would help your son and with the cost of memory these days, it is the number 1 most cost-effective thing you can do for your computer. It's hard to say how much it will really help as there may be other things slowing him down. How much memory on the video board? 256MB is a minimum and 512 is even better, for gaming. Good luck. DR 
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Oct 25 2007, 02:48 PM
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#6
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 94 Joined: 5-October 07 Member No.: 161,071 |
depending on the issue... I would say that going to 2Gb "even" will probably give a slight but noticeable boost. The one question I have is: Is he using the onboard video for his graphics acceleration? If this is the case, then my suggestion would be to get a decent GPU. It'll take a lot of the load off the system and will probably result in a better boost in gaming performance than an exra 512 Mb of RAM. Not to mention, he'll be able to turn on more of the "bells and whistles" graphically.
*edit* Incidentally: Yes, there is such a thing as too much RAM. I have installed too much RAM on a machine before and it went straight to BSOD. (this was a few years ago so if it's not the case anymore plz let me know) This post has been edited by doomgiver13: Oct 25 2007, 02:51 PM -------------------- If you truly live by the sword, it only stands to reason that someone has to die by it.
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Oct 25 2007, 05:28 PM
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#7
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 Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 211 Joined: 22-October 07 From: beachmere qld aus Member No.: 164,717 |
hm that wouldnt so much be to much ram, more incompatible ram
 if you are going to spend money - spend it on a videocard oppose to ram. i think that the vid card is the bottleneck at the moment...and you will get a much bigger performance increase from a new vid card oppose to more ram. regarding ram...i would buy another 512stick to take it up to 2gb - then thats bout as far as you want to go (with x86 anyway).. -------------------- =)
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Oct 25 2007, 11:47 PM
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#8
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Arachibutyrophobia Group: BC Advisor Posts: 5,200 Joined: 4-March 05 From: Northern Sierra Foothills Member No.: 13,532 |
How about if we start with some specs first so that we know what we are really dealing with. What is the make and model of this computer, is the graphics card stock? If this is a custom build what make and model is the motherboard, graphics card, PSU, and RAM.
If this is a newer machine which allows dual channel RAM you may want to look at duplicating this one gig module and running the two in dual channel, twice as fast ain't bad. Edit: Remember that dual channel memory must have the exact same specs. This post has been edited by dc3: Oct 25 2007, 11:48 PM -------------------- May we please have a little chlorine for the gene pool?
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Oct 26 2007, 12:50 AM
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#9
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Member Group: Members Posts: 68 Joined: 25-July 06 From: Wisconsin Member No.: 77,817 |
This was a year old emachine but is now custom since I had to buy a new motherboard for it.
Board Biostar GeForce 6100-M9 ram 2 sticks of 256mb and 2 sticks of Cosair 512's total ram - 1.5 gigs of DDR400 video card Evga e- GeForce 7600GT processor Athlon64 3200 socket 939 psu Antec Earthwatts 500 watt OS XP Home My son thinks that more ram will improve his game playing. He has no major complaints. He simply thinks that more ram is always better. I would like to know for sure if more ram will do any good. Perhaps a better video card is a great idea. Or perhaps saving for a better motherboard that will take DDR2 and an AM2 socket is the best bet. I bought the Biostar 6100-M9 because I could use his existing processor and ram and it is working fine. I just wanted to know the point of no performance gain on an x86 Xp machine. My personel computers are 10+ years old and one has 512mb sdram and the other has only 256mb and they do the job. I even have a spare machine with only 128mb sdram and a celeron processor and it works for basic tasks. All my machines run XP Pro. I can tell you for a fact that 128mb is a minimum. I can see clearly the performance gain going from 128mb to 256mb to 512mb in each machine. But when you are at 1.5 gigs on my son's machine do you really need more? |
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Oct 26 2007, 12:07 PM
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#10
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Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 303 Joined: 23-October 07 From: SoCal Member No.: 164,912 |
What game is he playing?
-------------------- Centurion 5 Case~GA-P35-DS3L Rev2.0~E6550~EVGA 8800GS~3GB GSkill~Cooler Master 650 PRO~Seagate 320GB SATA II~ 2 ASUS 20X Burners~Sound Blaster Audigy SE~ZeroTherm CF900~Acer 22" P221W
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Oct 26 2007, 02:55 PM
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#11
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Member Group: Members Posts: 68 Joined: 25-July 06 From: Wisconsin Member No.: 77,817 |
Dungeons and Dragons
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Oct 26 2007, 03:10 PM
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 Visiting Alien Group: Members Posts: 5,140 Joined: 20-May 07 From: millenium falcon and rockytop Member No.: 131,963 |
reccomended is just a gig so he won't notice much improvement by adding more
-------------------- Chewy
life is like a box of chocolates and stupid is as stupid does but you can always run |
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Oct 27 2007, 09:31 AM
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#13
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Member Group: Members Posts: 68 Joined: 25-July 06 From: Wisconsin Member No.: 77,817 |
Thanks for all the replies.
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