Project Reality Forums

Seen as my computer went to hell in a rather spectacular way and is probably being used by Hitler right now to look up and make motifake pictures of himself, I am in the process of upgrading.

I was wondering, how much impact does the ram speed all else being equal, have on framerate ?
4 gig DDR400 Ram would be about 100 Euro, while 4 gig of DDR3 1600 can cost as much as 190 Euro.

How much impact would that have ? Are we talking of a difference of 3-6 frames per second between the slowest ram you can slap on the board and the fastest, is the difference more signifcant than that, or is there no difference at all, with even the slowest ram not being slow enough to act as a bottleneck ?

Depends on what kind of Windowns you have. Xp 32 can only use 2 gigs and XP 64 4 gigs afaik. Vista needs alot. I have xp 32 and 4 gigs of cheap ram and it runs fine. If I were you I'd go with 2, and make sure your graphics card have enough on it. Humans can only detect 30 frames so it shouldn't matter that much. Though when using video capture software it could be alot better, though that's not related to the RAM. A good fast spinning harddrive can also make the difference as it will read alot faster. And if your motherboard supports it, set your RAM in dual channel, that way you can do even more with less RAM.

GoreZiad wrote:Depends on what kind of Windowns you have. Xp 32 can only use 2 gigs and XP 64 4 gigs afaik. Vista needs alot. I have xp 32 and 4 gigs of cheap ram and it runs fine. If I were you I'd go with 2, and make sure your graphics card have enough on it. Humans can only detect 30 frames so it shouldn't matter that much. Though when using video capture software it could be alot better, though that's not related to the RAM. A good fast spinning harddrive can also make the difference as it will read alot faster. And if your motherboard supports it, set your RAM in dual channel, that way you can do even more with less RAM.

32 bit = 4 GB
64 bit = depends on OS

Brummy wrote:32 bit = 4 GB
64 bit = depends on OS

Im upgrading my ram soon, I have 2GB atm.
I have Windows 7 64bit.
So what RAM do you think I should get, doesnt really matter on price just not over the top

Technical Discussion?

I used to have only 2gigas of ram on my 64bit vista. Maps like fallujah lagged like hell. Then I bought myself another 2gigas of ram, and got a much better framerate

The OP asked about ram speed not ram quantity.

Personally I don't notice the difference between using my 800mhz and 1066mhz DDR2, I'm sure there is a difference but I doubt it's as significant as quantity.

Good catch snazz, people went in the complete wrong direction.

Cassius, the ram speed is not a bottleneck and therefore will not affect your frame rates to any degree of relevance (perhaps 0.05 fps?).

Higher Ram speeds are useful primarily with overclocking your CPU, as there is a proportional relationship between the FSB frequency for the CPU and the ram frequency, set in your motherboard. For a quick example, I'll use my setup:

Q6600 - 2.4Ghz [266mhz FSB, 9x multiplier]

Now I overclocked, and had purchased DDR2 667mhz RAM. Because my motherboard stipulates a minimum of 2:1 FSB -> RAM ratio, at 266mhz FSB my ram was running at 533mhz. This gave me a 134mhz leeway to play with. Due to the 2:1 ratio, that means a 67mhz FSB opportunity. Adding this 67mhz to the stock 266mhz yields 333mhz on the FSB, which in turn is 667mhz on the RAM.

With the 9x multiplier, the 333mhz FSB gives a (333 * 9) 2997mhz or 3ghz clock speed. This means that without overclocking the ram, I was able to get 3ghz from my CPU. But then I wanted more, 3.2 or 3.4ghz, but my 667mhz Ram wouldn't be enough to handle that, right? 3200 / 9 = 356mhz, which is 712mhz on the ram. So I sold my 667mhz ram and bought a set of DDR2 800mhz ram, this allowed me to set the FSB to 400, which in turn yields a clock speed of (400 * 9) 3600mhz or 3.6ghz.

I hope that helps you understand. The ram speed is useful for overclocking, that's the crux of the matter.

Brummy wrote:32 bit = 4 GB
64 bit = depends on OS

Wrong, it is usually around 3 gig for xp and vista.

Wrong again, it is 4GB for 32 bit. A small portion is subtracted for the onboard bios memory and such like video cards, but thats not much. 64 bit is only realistically limited in terms of operating system limitations. (No one can possibly reach the maximum limit of roughly a few exobytes or something).

In this case, quantity over quality wins. For speed, it doesn't matter as long as it can keep up with the FSB of the Northbridge that runs the proccesor. A bigger factor than speed is the memory latency timings, which can be REALLY big for DDR3 memory.

TLDR; Buy some cheap memory, and buy alot. You can never have enough.

lol wrong again

Psyrus wins best answer. The rest of you art degree students who should be asking questions instead of answering them is banned in sicily

You should really use Google.

Or at least post your tech related questions in the tech forums.

It had 0 viewing the general tech forum. Must be why the mods were so mercfull not to move this.

What you seem to be implying basically is that the amount of views you get for your thread is more important than where it belongs.

Even if that's accepted, you aren't limited to posting your general tech questions on the PR forums. Especially if it isn't a PR related issue.

If the mods do turn a blind eye to it then it's unfair considering the legit general PR discussions that get locked without necessity.

Do they even make DDR-400 anymore? Do not go with DDR400.

Yes ram speed can matter a lot, if you have a good GPU. And the higher resolution you play with the more the RAM and GPU will effect your performance. The exact effect can not be predicted, but only measured.

What motherboard you have/will get will decide if you are going with DDR2 or DDR3.

If you are buying a new motherboard and CPU go with DDR3 and with a socket AM3, LGA1366 or LGA1156 so you can upgrade your PC without changing motherboard in the future. That is my recommendation at least.

Also this belong here: Hardware & Custom Builds - Project Reality Forums
and not in the general discussion. Please post in the right forum section next time please.

Snazz wrote:What you seem to be implying basically is that the amount of views you get for your thread is more important than where it belongs.

Even if that's accepted, you aren't limited to posting your general tech questions on the PR forums. Especially if it isn't a PR related issue.

If the mods do turn a blind eye to it then it's unfair considering the legit general PR discussions that get locked without necessity.

Whatever the mods say go, if you read a little.

Anyway, yes, latency and amount have much more to do with your performance then ram clock speed. So get good DDR3, and 6 GB on Vista in 64 bit config would be fine.

Now, if you want to run ArmA 2 smoothly, you need to create a ramdisk and you need about 48 gigs of ram to load ArmA 2 and the OS onto RAM.

To be off topic, yes, ArmA 2 does not cache anything to RAM before it loads. That's why people have resorted to making RAM disks so it runs smoothly.

Himalde wrote:Do they even make DDR-400 anymore? Do not go with DDR400.

Yes ram speed can matter a lot, if you have a good GPU. And the higher resolution you play with the more the RAM and GPU will effect your performance. The exact effect can not be predicted, but only measured.

What motherboard you have/will get will decide if you are going with DDR2 or DDR3.

If you are buying a new motherboard and CPU go with DDR3 and with a socket AM3, LGA1366 or LGA1156 so you can upgrade your PC without changing motherboard in the future. That is my recommendation at least.

Quoted this guy to emphasize his points. I glossed over it in my haste to explain the reasoning for ram frequencies. DDR400 is from the old AMD socket 939 & intel socket 478 (and early 775), but then they moved to DDR2 [533mhz up to 1066mhz], and now DDR3 [800mhz up to 1600mhz although upper limit is still not reached]. These three generations of the DDR (double data rate) RAM all were used on different sockets (motherboards) and as such, you need to get the type of ram appropriate for your motherboard

If you need help finding what you currently use, just grab CPU-Z and check the memory tab, it'll tell you the vital information. Post back and people from your country may be able to point you in the direction of the best place to buy from.

Seen as some wanted to know, I am gonna get the Asus M4a78 pro board sound onboard radeon 3200 780g onboard Crossfire with a phenom 2 X3 720 and 4 gigs of "huh ?" DDR2 800, for 220€ total. (about 250 $).

I know I wont be able to put the latest currently avaible on the board, but I update for FREAKING 220 !!!

Depending on how badly the 3200 runs PR I might get a radeon 5770 for 140 Europeans. Else I wait for the 5850 to drop in price somewhat and hope to grab that for 160-200 Europeans.

Its a total switch too. My last system was pentium Geforce, this one is AMD ATI.
Fingers crossed that my 400 Watts supplies enough juice.

you be careful with that psu, one bork with that and the whole lots gone.
Save a bit more cash and upgrade your psu to cope with the demand it will be worth the wait.

ps are you buying the gear online or local? there used to be a pc shop on frankfurter strasse between mulheim and mulheim wiener platz he might be able to get you a deal otherwise its off the media markt