Originally posted by Draccan

Originally posted by Kram59

Hello all. Anyone know whether I should bother upgrading my fast 4 gigs of DDR2 for 8 gigs of DDR3? I have a killer duo core pent and a kill (280 Nvidia)  so all I would need to buy would be a motherboard and the ram. Should I see a different if I did?

Tryed researching on the net but only things I was able to find were very old comparisons and reveiws. (2007-2008)

Thanks all, game till you bleed

 

8 gigs are hardly needed for any mmo that I have heard off. I have 8 gigs and runs Vista 64 bit. Remember that 32 bit only used 3.2 gigs no matter how much you put in.

Also I don't think DDR3 gives you value for money. DDR2 can easily run all mmos.

I must have read some bad information somewhere.....just get 16 gigs of ram and use PAE to enable a ramdrive and load the whole game in that.

Otherwise get Win7 64

There are only 2 scenarios where DDR3 is better.  Triple Channel, or at a higher clock then DDR2.  Considering the jump from DDR to DDR2, you won't see gains until its at double the clock of DDR2.  That being DDR3-1600, or DDR3- 2133.  If you aren't accomplishing either, you will only notice a performance decrease by switching to DDR3.

Originally posted by nomraw

lol....second that : )....Try western digital caviar black....and I still think DDR3 is a better buy now if you are changing the mobo...(I think its pointless continuing this thread.....the OP is resting??)

There is no way Western digital black can compare to intels SSD. No spinning harddrive can. It is a nice regular harddrive but it can't even compare to a Raptor in speed. Even Seagates latest Barracuda drive scored a lot better at performance in benchmark tests.

A SSD have no moving parts and speed up the computer a lot.

As for the DDR3, both the Mobo and the memorys costs  lot more than DDR2. You could use those money to get a better graphic card or the SSD I reccomended instead. DDR3 is faster but not that much faster.

Heck my computer have 4 Raided SSD and a GTX 295. Few computers with DDR3 have a chanse against it.

Memory speed matters but there are other things that have a greater impact on performance, that is all I am saying.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by nomraw

lol....second that : )....Try western digital caviar black....and I still think DDR3 is a better buy now if you are changing the mobo...(I think its pointless continuing this thread.....the OP is resting??)

 

There is no way Western digital black can compare to intels SSD. No spinning harddrive can. It is a nice regular harddrive but it can't even compare to a Raptor in speed. Even Seagates latest Barracuda drive scored a lot better at performance in benchmark tests.

A SSD have no moving parts and speed up the computer a lot.

As for the DDR3, both the Mobo and the memorys costs  lot more than DDR2. You could use those money to get a better graphic card or the SSD I reccomended instead. DDR3 is faster but not that much faster.

Heck my computer have 4 Raided SSD and a GTX 295. Few computers with DDR3 have a chanse against it.

Memory speed matters but there are other things that have a greater impact on performance, that is all I am saying.

I think you are way overstating the impact of a faster HDD/SDD. Once the game is first loaded, there is very little activity, and not nearly enough to slow you down on a 7200 RPM HDD during play. The place where these items shine is in loading times. And lets face it, it is not going to save you much time.

For example: Lets say that you are playing a loading time heavy game, such as Age of Conan, and oyu zone every 10 mins. Your zoning time is 20 seconds with the 7200RPM HDD. Now, your SDD is double as fast, and can load it in 10 seconds. Yay. You have now saved yourself 10 seconds every 10 mins, or one second per minute. And the less you zone, the less it matters. On a game with a seamless world, you might only save yourself 10 seconds every hour or so. Hardly worth the massive increase in cost over regular HDDs. Also, unless your computer can barely handle the game as it is, it wont actually improve your FPS, because as I stated, once most of the stuff is shoved into your RAM during the initial load, it is just a small stream of data after that, which the HDD speed will not effect, because it will never max it out.

Not to say the SDDs are useless, as they have awesome applications with other things than games, but games just don't see a lot of boost, because they are not often loading large volumes of data.

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Originally posted by Rallycart
I think you are way overstating the impact of a faster HDD/SDD. Once the game is first loaded, there is very little activity, and not nearly enough to slow you down on a 7200 RPM HDD during play. The place where these items shine is in loading times. And lets face it, it is not going to save you much time.
For example: Lets say that you are playing a loading time heavy game, such as Age of Conan, and oyu zone every 10 mins. Your zoning time is 20 seconds with the 7200RPM HDD. Now, your SDD is double as fast, and can load it in 10 seconds. Yay. You have now saved yourself 10 seconds every 10 mins, or one second per minute. And the less you zone, the less it matters. On a game with a seamless world, you might only save yourself 10 seconds every hour or so. Hardly worth the massive increase in cost over regular HDDs. Also, unless your computer can barely handle the game as it is, it wont actually improve your FPS, because as I stated, once most of the stuff is shoved into your RAM during the initial load, it is just a small stream of data after that, which the HDD speed will not effect, because it will never max it out.
Not to say the SDDs are useless, as they have awesome applications with other things than games, but games just don't see a lot of boost, because they are not often loading large volumes of data.

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Agree for the most part, though realistically load times for games are also very CPU dependent (decompressing textures, moving data around etc) so just having a double speed SSD won't cut the load times in half :)

And once you are in the game, the HD doesn't matter anymore EXCEPT for one circumstance, when new textures have to be loaded on the fly - what an SSD does for you here is greatly increases the minimum framerate during that load period and benches of Crysis and such show this, but the avg framerate doesn't change since it's such a small sample.

This basically happens in WoW when you walk into a crowded town first time, or when you cross into a new region (if I remember right!), so if the load lag when you first walk into Ogrimmar is worth an extra $200 to reduce then an SSD is right for you, if you are realistic though you're better off putting that $200 toward a 4870x2 or GTX 285 :)

But I'm not trashing SSD's, I think they're awesome and I know they make your whole system snappier especially multitasking, so if you've got a good system picked out, and can spare some more cash, SSD's rock - and if the choice was between SSD or DDR3 I'd get SSD just to make my computer quieter :)

When it comes to gaming, not alot of things are as important as they are made out to be.  HDDs will only affect load time.  Most games don't actively fetch from HDD.  Memory and processors only have an impact to a certain amount.  GPUs probably have the biggest impact, but when everything plays above 30 FPS on your standard resolution that also doesn't matter.

I can't really see the point of saying you are using a gaming machine if your processor is beyond a clock of 2.66 ghz quad core, 4GB memory, and an HD4870 / GTX260.  Anything beyond that just for gaming is epeening.

Originally posted by Cleffy

I can't really see the point of saying you are using a gaming machine if your processor is beyond a clock of 2.66 ghz quad core, 4GB memory, and an HD4870 / GTX260.  Anything beyond that just for gaming is epeening.

That is entirely dependant on your resolution. I play at 1920x1080, with 8 gigs of ram, and a q9550 OCed to 3.4ghz per core, and a GTX 260, and several games still force me to reduce visuals if I want a decent FPS. If I was playing at 1920x1248 or above, I can only imagine how bad it would be. Anything above 4 gigs of ram is overkill, yes, but video cards above a GTX 260 is hardly epeening. For many games, it is just needed.

Originally posted by Kram59

Ok everyone thanks a ton for taking the time to give imput. I run Vista 32 and acually have no problems at all with any games. I always turn up settings to the max. (Whats the point of playing any game at clunky settings?) Even EQ2 at highest settings runs fine. I curently play Eve but am going to try Aion today, and basically have played every online game out there. I have a Viewsonic 26 inch and it is sweetness. I just look to have basically the best gaming computer every year, and even though money isn't the main consideration, I sure don't want to spend 10K to pick up 3% speed inprovment. Tried duo sli video cards when they first came out with it but turned into a can of worms. I'm not that computer savay and just play games. I definatly get the impression from all your imput to forget about even upgrading at this time. That helps me a lot so I can just forget about it and spend my money on something else. haa haa

 

This sounds like a good idea. Just wait another 1/2 year or so and the the new Intel for i9 line will be out. Then you can let that money thats been making your wallet heavy out.

 A little correction about win 32 bit systems

ofc you get more out of 8 gb ram then 4 gb

you'r  Ati or nvidia card will maybe have like 1 gb ram but it still use alot of the base ram 

window 32 bit can adress like 3,2 gb ram but you'r bios can easy handle even 16 gb and adress like 2-3 gb to you'r grapfic card

if you know alittle more how to  add memory around in the system you will see a huge performance

with a  E8400 Intel i will keep my ddr2 ram , and wait to upgrade the ram to ddr3 to you get a new I7 or similar

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Originally posted by Fearday
 A little correction about win 32 bit systems
ofc you get more out of 8 gb ram then 4 gb
you'r  Ati or nvidia card will maybe have like 1 gb ram but it still use alot of the base ram 
window 32 bit can adress like 3,2 gb ram but you'r bios can easy handle even 16 gb and adress like 2-3 gb to you'r grapfic card
if you know alittle more how to  add memory around in the system you will see a huge performance
with a  E8400 Intel i will keep my ddr2 ram , and wait to upgrade the ram to ddr3 to you get a new I7 or similar

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Hmm I may be misunderstanding you, but the video ram doesn't use any system ram, having 8gb doesn't change anything - what it uses is system addressing space. If you have 4GB RAM and 1GB video, the bios breaks your system RAM into 2 chunks and maps addresses to RAM for GB 0-3, then maps GB 3-4 to video ram, and maps GB 4-5 to the final 1GB of system ram. Windows 32 can only see up to 4GB of addresses and all devices and memory share these addresses so it can't see the last 1GB mapped out to GB 4-5.

The BIOS does know about everything past the 4GB barrier but it's meaningless whether there's 1GB (in a 4GB system) past that barrier or 5GB (in an 8GB system). All the leftover RAM makes no difference because it's just mapped out past that 4GB barrier so Windows never knows about it. What you'd see in an 8GB system is 0-3 system, 3-4 video, 4-9 system. It doesn't matter what OS you use the BIOS maps this all out before OS even shows up - you need a 64 bit OS or a PAE enabled 32 bit OS to see what's mapped at 4-9.

Not sure if this has been said before....

Ram really only effects load times.  If you can afford the ddr3 then it will make your nice rig last longer, which might put you in position to only upgrade your graphics card down the road, which is like 75% of gaming preformance (the graphics card that is).

Get a good dual core (or a cheap quad has been working well for me, despite being under utilized in games), enough ram to support gaming, web browsing, and vent or whatever, 4gigs of ddr2 should be enough ( think i had less than 4 gigs used running aoc and aion at the same time) on vista 64 bit.

And get the best card money can afford (i do believe some wicked next gen cards are comming out soon so mabey dont go overboard)

Originally posted by Cleffy

When it comes to gaming, not alot of things are as important as they are made out to be.  HDDs will only affect load time.  Most games don't actively fetch from HDD.  Memory and processors only have an impact to a certain amount.  GPUs probably have the biggest impact, but when everything plays above 30 FPS on your standard resolution that also doesn't matter.

I can't really see the point of saying you are using a gaming machine if your processor is beyond a clock of 2.66 ghz quad core, 4GB memory, and an HD4870 / GTX260.  Anything beyond that just for gaming is epeening.

Oh, yeah? Funny that the you can hear the harddrive when you play any game then... Well, I can't now since I have SSD.

My other specs on my computer is a 2.66 quad and a GTX295, still did changing harddrives a lot of difference in any game, particulary in MMOs. Oh, I only have 2gb DDR2 right now because I run XP and the GFX card takes up the rest of the 4gb I can use with it.

The harddrive is working all the time, both to run the OS and the game. And the HD is usually what is slowing down a computer the most. The other bottleneck is of course the ram but the difference there is a lot smaller.

Thats because you are using the Hard Drive Cache instead of memory.  It just doesn't make sense to actively fetch from hard drive in a game instead of fetching strictly on loading screens.  Hard drives just cannot transfer data fast enough to replace memory dimms.

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Originally posted by Loke666
My other specs on my computer is a 2.66 quad and a GTX295, still did changing harddrives a lot of difference in any game, particulary in MMOs. Oh, I only have 2gb DDR2 right now because I run XP and the GFX card takes up the rest of the 4gb I can use with it.

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Would you want to test the PAE mode described here:
http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2009/08/19/make-windows-7-and-vista-32-bit-x86-support-more-than-4gb-memory/

It's not suppose to effect compatibility or performance.. I'm curious if it works but I have no 32-bit OS's installed.