I havent actually played AOE but I can say that RTS games are less demanding than FPS.

Back to the topic, 4X512MB(2 modules of dual channel 1GB@ 2X512MB) or 2X1GB, which configurations do most people use nowadays ?? Thinking of selling off my cheapo 2X512MB and get a 2X 1GB but is it more practical to get an extra 2X512MB since 2X1GB pricing is not at its best.

Cheers.

This post has been edited by Computer^freak: Oct 17 2005, 11:57 AM

well, my mistake then, but from u'r post, it does seems like u'r suggesting there is somesort of improvement in 2Gig over 1Gig (or at least u'r suggesting that all ppl, both who can and cannot afford it, do believe that there is peformance inprovement)...else no one's gonna want want 2Gig, being sour grape or whatever

So, basically i'm just giving my opinion that 2 gig isn't nessarily improve peformance, just in case there's anyone who have the misconcept that more ram always means better...

i'm on 4 x 512 bcoz it still manage to go 250mhz. I heard that 1gb ram module is not that OC compare to 512mb.

Actually it does, it's the ability of the operating system to utilize and address that ram. OSX is a good example of this, Windows XP hits a wall at 2 gb. Literally.

hmm? i don't quite get what u mean there...
anyway i was talking about performance, specifically gaming

The ability to scale performance with RAM actually comes down to the operating system and not the ram when we hit the 2 gigabyte brick wall. And yes, loads of games these days love hewg loads of rams, try Rome total war with 20000 individual soldiers and you'll thank god for that extra gig.

Eeer..just spent 600 bucks on twinmos 512 x2,now feeling like saving some $$ for another 512 x2

wow you sure got it at a high price
definitely didn't buy frm garage sale didja
try 1GBx2 instead la....
it doesn't stress the mem controller as empire had said earlier that much and probably gives u higher overclocks

Mem controller it does not stress but the limitation of XP will indicate that anything around there is overkill. vista is another story as 64 bit computing's max mem usage is about 12Gb if I'm not mistaken

actually x86-64 CPUs support a 48bit virtual address space and 40bit physical address space. Which means about 1TeraByte of memory. And of course it adds extra load on the memory controller.

Get a console , no need to worry about upgrading stuff ...

aiya..better saves for future rig..dual core..SLI.. DDR2...if you want to upgrade now(your old p4/A64) with 2GB ram ,,i think it will waste your money only..well, this is just my 2 cents..

future?? i tot it's the IN thing nowadays 4 gb would be the future

that's just an example..................!<>

Of course. Noob error there. I must have mixed things up.

So, any specific issues with 512x4 on an AI7 I should know about ? I'm running 512x2 now.

No problem so far, 512 x 4 DT-D43 on AI7

Put it this way:

4 x 512MB for P4 doesn't have much impact as A64. Most A64 would run at 2T timings if all 4 banks are populated. This is because P4 runs at 1T only.

That's why it might be advisable that A64 runs with 2 x 1GB. Even the timings of 1Gb sticks are not so tight compared to 512 modules, at least it runs at 1T.

But if you already have 2 x 512MB sticks, it might be more feasible to get another 2 sticks so that you dun need to sell off your existing RAM. I'd rather run on slower timings or even at 2T as it is definitely much faster than in the case of insufficient memory (and hence, page file swapping).

Some sharing that I've encountered on my rig:

BF2 uses about 1.4GB of RAM
FEAR uses about 1.2-1.3GB
Doom3 uses 1.1-1.2GB
Half Life 2 uses 800MB-1.1GB
Ridd*** uses roughly 700-1.1GB

So all of these games will definitely cause page file swapping (that's why my games are stuttering all the time but the frame rates are still averagely high). I'd rather run at slower timings and have elimation of stuttering.

P4 chipsets don't always run at 1T cmd rate AFAIK. Depending on the memory used, sometimes it drops to 2T, although i suspect that the performance drop from this is not as great as it is for an A64.

Hey a simple question,If i wanted to run dual channel mode..do i need to buy a kit? or can have 1 gig of ram and later on add an additional stick of 1 gig??

~ yes