is 1GB ram enough for latest games?

[Giraffe]

i currently have 1gb ddr 400 ram and it seems plenty for games although i dont have max quality coz of my lame graphics card.
i am planning on upgrading soon and i was wondering if i should update to 1.5 or 2gig.

i just read this tomshardware article on ram
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/page6.html
it shows no difference between 1 and 2gig even in bf2! yet most ppl say 2gb is much better?
is it much better or not?

 

[godman]

go for two gigs of ram, it will help in the cpu not having to access the hard drive as much, resulting in a faster overall system also if yer planning to go for windows vista your likely to need 2giabytes or more ram.

whats your budget? if you want your computer to be future proofed for a bit longer you should upgrade you cpu and motherboard and then get ddr2, that way if you ever come to buying a newer system you shold be able to put the ddr2 ram in it, basically, ddr is being pushed out and ddr2 the future -for now, until ddr3- :lol:

 

[Giraffe]

yeah i am gonna upgrade to core2duo and a 7600gt probly
i want to get one of the ati chipsets that supports ddr1 coz i dont wanna spend extra on ram.
i dont have a budget i just wanna spend as little as possible to get what i want.

 

[chuckshissle]

For high resolutions like 1280x1024 and at high quality settings, 2Gb of ramage would be needed to play the latest games.

 

[ikaz]

If your on a limited buget I would say instead of spending the money on the 7600gt and xtra 1 gig of memory just go ahead and use the xtra money and get a better video card if possible. On another note however if you do plan on upgrading to vista once it is out you will want to to have that xtra 1 gig of ram for your PC.

 

[Giraffe]

well i could get a 7800gs agp that will leave me no choise but to upgradew everything in the future.

if i want pci-e i need a new m/b
if gettin a new motherboard i dont want another 754 coz then that is a problem coz i want dual core soon.
so i gotta upgrade everythin pretty much except ram(optional)

btw a 400watt psu will be enough for a core2duo e6300/7600gt combo with 2 optical drives and 2 hdd's wont it?

 

[tmac]

For high resolutions like 1280x1024 and at high quality settings, 2Gb of ramage would be needed to play the latest games.

I agree. I think you can get by with 1 gig - but 2 gigs will soon be the
main stream. When Vista comes out - I may bump it up to 4 gigs -
but that's going a little extreme now - but in 2 years - probably not.

 

[StriderRyu]

I run just fine with 1 gig (everything including all games at 1280x1024) but I openly admit I'd probably run even better with 2. I don't personally think the difference would be very noticeable unless I used some very fast RAM with low timings or if I were trying to run several background apps at once or another game. I've tried running Heroes of Might and Magic 5 while having Everquest running in the background and sometimes it works nicely, but occasionally I get stuck in a huge RAM swap from the paging file on the hard drive that turns everything to garbage. How often do you need two games running at once though? 😛

When making a gaming rig, I say the more RAM the better, but this should generally take a back seat to your video card. I've also found it depends on the games you play. If you're playing FPS with a few people, concentrate more on your video. If you're playing Battlefield 2 with a ton of bots, you'll notice big performance gains from more RAM. More RAM generally decreases level loading times as well. As a general rule, if you're trying to run a game with a ton of effects but few computer controlled characters moving on screen, you'll benefit less from more RAM than if you're playing a game with several characters that the computer has to control and/or big expansive worlds with a lot of stuff happening in the background like SimCity 3K.

I had a friend running SimCity3K with 512 RAM and it was achingly slow. He upgraded his video card and this had almost no effect. Finally he called me and I told him to slap more RAM in there. Instead of getting 2GB total, he just bought another 512 but this still showed a HUGE improvement in the responsiveness of the game.

All things being equal, I'd say over 2GB, you'll start to see a large reduction in the effects more RAM will have on your experience. With Vista and DX10 coming soon however, we can hope Windows PCs will be able to take better advantage of anything higher than 2GB.

 

[emogoch]

I jsut upgraded from 1GB to 2GB yesterday, and I can say that I'm quite happy that I did.

The reason being: You will not get direct in game benefits from it (higher frame rates, etc.) but you will get a noticibly snappier system. The Tom's review of 1 GB vs. 2GB is flawed, cause they use fresh systems with very little background running. However, once that's starts to happen, the main difference you'll see the 2GB is when you start swtiching between programs while playing your games (pulling up MSN, etc.). I even noticed a differen playing regular Counter-strike.

Can you survive on 1GB? Yes. Is a higher Gfx card the better area to spend you money? probably. Is 2 GB still a worth while investment if you can afford it? Absolutely.