Is 2GB the new standard yet?

[Cask]

I was just wondering who has 2GB or more of RAM and whether it is worth the money yet. Would upgrading from 1GB to 2GB be worth the money or would it be better spent elsewhere?

 

[Embattle]

Not just yet.....I would personally spend the money on a set of stonking HDs.

 

[TdC]

yer, though imo you can tune for a trade-off between disks and ram.
from my own personal poota I can tell you that moving from a 2yo pata drive to a brand new sata2 was very nice, and held off an extra gig of ram.
I think that another sata drive to hold OS and swap, while games reside on a separate drive will stop me getting the extra gig any time soon because there will be a general speed-up in the whole system. ie BF2 can load a map from disk while doze swaps and churns on it's own drive without getting in the way.

I was getting major lag in BF2 due to OS and the game both wanting the disk they were on at the start of maps. simply moving to a quicker drive has helped this loads. sure, ram is far faster than a disk, but you still have to get things in memory. a slow(er) drive will have you freaking out, no matter how much ram you have imo.

 

[SheepCow]

I don't think we're at the 2GB of RAM mark. I'd also spend the dosh on a massive or a couple of large hard drives

 

[Clown]

Not standard, but if you play BF2, it would probably make it more comfortable.
Oh and it doesn't have to be either or. Get RAM and new hard drives

 

[FozzySon]

Sadly, we're not all loaded like you are, cloweh

 

[throdgrain]

2GB or die, to be perfectly honest .

 

[Sar]

1gb is perfectly ok for me atm. Maybe I was too used to having 512mb previously

 

[Dommers]

I managed to play Bf2 at medium settings without lag, even in big fights with these specs:
2.52ghz
768mb ram
radeon 9800pro 128mb
1 80gb hdd

Bearing in mind my pc is over 4 years old im proud of how it handled it No idea how quick the HDD is. My guess is that its slow

 

[Cask]

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion looks like it might need 2GB

 

[Sar]

Any game that NEEDS 2gb is taking the piss, and obviously has NOT been optimised.

Then again, look at Bethesda's last effort - Morrowind. The engine on that thing was unbelievably shit, and you were lucky to get more than 5fps outside even on an uber rig ffs.

 

[Dommers]

Wtf? I managed to play Morrowind on even lower specs than the ones i previously posted and I never got any where near as low as 5fps.

 

[TdC]

I think I did, but I played at 1600x1200 with everything on iirc o0

 

[Dommers]

Everything was on and I was running 1280*1024

 

[Silverblast]

I got 2gb ram, combined with a 512mb (geforce 6200, 6800 would be even better) video card loading anything is instant . I can run 2 DAoC clients with no effect at all on the gameplay.

 

[Danya]

I got 2gb ram, combined with a 512mb (geforce 6200, 6800 would be even better) video card loading anything is instant . I can run 2 DAoC clients with no effect at all on the gameplay.

No such thing as a 512mb GF6200...

 

[ECA]

I got 2gb ram, combined with a 512mb (geforce 6200, 6800 would be even better) video card loading anything is instant . I can run 2 DAoC clients with no effect at all on the gameplay.

Thats like saying "I can open two copies of notepad !!!! OMG!!!!"

 

[Silverblast]

No such thing as a 512mb GF6200...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=48115&TabID=1&source=3&doy=search

 

[inactionman]

WTF, now that is either a typo, or a complete waste of money!

512Mb ram on a 7800 or a 6600/6800 is fine (although games that require that much memory for textures are rare atm) but for a 6200....

 

[Silverblast]

Well I broke my 6800 256mb (barely fit inside) few weeks earlier, anyways it wasnt very expensive, it works ^^.

 

[inactionman]

For £100 I would have recommended a 6600GT or something, a much better card despite having only 1/4 of the memory.

Back to the thread topic, I'd say that 2Gb has just about become the standard now, or will do come the end of the year. BF2, FEAR and Q4 don't run as well on my system when I disable 1/2 the RAM (load times seem to suffer, but that may be dual channel issues), and X3 runs a hell of a lot better with 2Gb (although I still don't quite get how to play it, it's a lot different from X2!). And games will only become more demanding, but RAM upgrades are normally pretty painless compared to HD upgrades (providing you buy in 1Gb sticks), so as a priority I'd agree HD before memory currently.

 

[Danya]

WTF, now that is either a typo, or a complete waste of money!

512Mb ram on a 7800 or a 6600/6800 is fine (although games that require that much memory for textures are rare atm) but for a 6200....

Given it's not listed on either nvidia's or xfx's site I'm guessing it's a typo.

Most 6200s aren't really what they claim anyway, they fake it with (slow) system memory (AKA TurboCache).

 

[TdC]

For £100 I would have recommended a 6600GT or something, a much better card despite having only 1/4 of the memory.

Back to the thread topic, I'd say that 2Gb has just about become the standard now, or will do come the end of the year. BF2, FEAR and Q4 don't run as well on my system when I disable 1/2 the RAM (load times seem to suffer, but that may be dual channel issues), and X3 runs a hell of a lot better with 2Gb (although I still don't quite get how to play it, it's a lot different from X2!). And games will only become more demanding, but RAM upgrades are normally pretty painless compared to HD upgrades (providing you buy in 1Gb sticks), so as a priority I'd agree HD before memory currently.

ooh! what's X3 like?

 

[inactionman]

OT: A bit slow, and there's no tutorial (which is a pain). They've changed an awful lot of things from X2. It's very pretty though, but they still haven't fixed force feedback (get almost none unless I turn the setting up to 'bodybuilder', and that is something I ain't!).

Still trying to figure out a good trade route, plus there's not that may pirates around, so generally making money is a bit of a pain!