Memory and gaming

[gott]

Can someone explain to me how much having more memory affects gaming and some of the benefits that result from having more memory?

 

[GhislainG]

It depends on how much memory you already have and the OS. If you have 4 GB, upgrading to 8 GB won't help; but if you have 1 GB, then adding more memory will improve performance because there will be much less disk swapping.

 

[meodowla]

Reading from slow speed memories affect performance. While using more RAM, paging memory on HardDisk is avoided. Thus results in faster data accessing.

 

[gott]

I think I understand now. So memory is like a lot of cache?

 

[dokk2]

I only have 2g of ram,but I am running with no swapfile at all..Workz fine.

 

[leo2kp]

Memory is temporary storage. Data is read from the hard-drive and stored in to RAM because RAM is faster. Then, when the program needs to fetch that data, it can get it from RAM instead of reading it off the hard-drive therefore improving overall performance.

But most programs can't use more than 2GB RAM because of how they're written. If you're running Vista, that will use over 1GB of RAM by itself, so having 3-4GB RAM should be enough for anything you do, and anything over 6GB is just a waste of money.

 

[Scotteq]

Can someone explain to me how much having more memory affects gaming and some of the benefits that result from having more memory?

It's an old analogy, but still pretty good:

Processor is like the guy/gal sitting in the chair - It's what's doing the work.

Memory is like the top of your desk: The more (area) you have, the more things you have (open) at your fingertips to be worked on.

If you run out of room on top of the desk, you have to put it somewhere: This is what the Hard Drive is for. It's the "File Cabinet" where your computer stores things that aren't being worked on.





So - If you don't have "enough" RAM, your computer has to constantly take things out of and put things into storage as you work. ("Paging" - and yes, that's why it's called a 'Page File') If this is happening, then you can and will benefit from having more memory.