RAM upgrade and possible issues

[Manvol]

Hello everyone!

I have 1gig of RAM (2 X 512MB module), and until now, I thought that was enough for hi-end gaming on the PC. Then FEAR came and made it all a mess. I set everything on the maximum settings (except of course soft shadows and 2-3 other thing like AA), and while it's obvious that the 6800GT can handle it most of the time, the game occasionally, and especially when new areas are revealed, freezes for 1-3 seconds. It's obviously a RAM issue, and I wanna ask: Is it a good idea too put another module on my PC (be it a 1gig module or another 512MB one) and make them three, or it's possible that I will suffer instability and crash issues?
What's your experience with this kind of ugrades?

Note that I have a Kingston Value PC3200 module and an S3 (TwinMOS?...) one PC3200 too.

 

[Mize]

Hello everyone!

I have 1gig of RAM (2 X 512MB module), and until now, I thought that was enough for hi-end gaming on the PC. Then FEAR came and made it all a mess. I set everything on the maximum settings (except of course soft shadows and 2-3 other thing like AA), and while it's obvious that the 6800GT can handle it most of the time, the game occasionally, and especially when new areas are revealed, freezes for 1-3 seconds. It's obviously a RAM issue, and I wanna ask: Is it a good idea too put another module on my PC (be it a 1gig module or another 512MB one) and make them three, or it's possible that I will suffer instability and crash issues?
What's your experience with this kind of ugrades?

Note that I have a Kingston Value PC3200 module and an S3 (TwinMOS?...) one PC3200 too.

If it's DDR they have to go in pairs. RAM is cheap so I'd recommend an additional 2x512 or replacing your two with 2x1024. Many DDR boards are flaky with more than 2 DIMMs - especially when overclocking or using different modules. If you go to four total I'd try really hard to get exactly the same part number as what you're currently using.

Which motherboard are you using?

 

[Manvol]

It's the MSI K8N SLI Platinum.

But unfortunately as I mentioned above, I already have two different modules

That complicates things a little bit....

 

[Crusher]

I don't have any problems running 3 sticks of RAM currently, but I have a socket 754 motherboard, and that presents other problems (RAM runs at a slower clock with this many banks in it, and if I upgrade to anything more than the 1 GB I have now, it will slow down even more). If you have a S939, you're probably running the RAM you have in dual chanel mode, and a third stick will be in single channel mode, and may even force the other two into single channel mode as well. I doubt you'll have instability issues from it, it's just a matter of how much bandwidth it will let you use.

My advice, buy a 1 GB stick and throw it in the third slot. If you don't like how it works in that configuraiton, sell your 2x512 and buy another 1GB stick of the same kind and run them in the dual channel banks.

 

[Rambler]

www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=468 - LegionHardware did some tests - might be helpful in deciding whether or not will 2GB help

 

[skmanga]

if u wanna upgrade sell ur 2 512 sticks and buy 2 1gb sticks

 

[Mize]

Well if you're running three sticks you're not running DCDDR as it requires multiples of two sticks by it's very nature. If your timings are conservative you can often mismatch sticks with some success, but my MSI NF4 board only likes my 2x512 in two particular slots - the same sticks won't work in the other two and they won't work with my OCZ stuff. Matched pairs seem to be best.

 

[Sandwich]

www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=468 - LegionHardware did some tests - might be helpful in deciding whether or not will 2GB help

Interesting test, but with a flawed conclusion: as the performance difference between 512MB SC and 1024MB DC was only 13% at best, then the sweet spot is for a gaming rig is 1 cheap 512MB dimm, not 1024 DC, or they should've tested with different games.

I'm thinking they could have benched with troika's Vampire to show a big performance difference even with 2048MB.

 

[Rambler]

Flawed conclusion yes, but I think the point was to show that you can play most of todays games just fine even with 512/1024MB and it's up to everyone if they are willing to shell out the money for additional 1024MB when (currently) only 1-2 games have that memory requirements (or should we say are that inefficient/badly programmed?).

 

[kyleb]

Well if you're running three sticks you're not running DCDDR as it requires multiples of two sticks by it's very nature.

My nforce2 ultra board does dual channel with 3 sticks just fine, I think it just depends on the motherboard chipset.