Should I even bother upgrading to 4gb?

[LoneEagle]

Yes... yes it would...

I am a BF2142 gamer and was taking a lot of time when I was closing the game,
around 30 sec of memory file swapping. Vista 64 helped a lot and 2 extra GB helped more.

I play bf2142 and I am not quite sure what you mean that it take 30 seconds to close the game. Did i get that right. When I quit, it just quits. Also, how will lowering my swap file help me also, what is the default setting?

When I was quiting the game and returned to the desktop, Vista was working like hell (HD) to swap back the memory that the game was taking. It was taking some time before the HD light stopped and Vista was not responsive to my mouse or keyboard (may be Raptor drive would have helped a little bit more).

The default setting for the sap file is normally the same size of your RAM. But the more you have, it should the less needed for swapping. With plenty of RAM, you do not need that (me 512MB) and you do not want swapping too.

I am so much happy now with Vista 64 and 4GB! Just waiting for SP1... 🙁

 

[sweetpants]

A lot of people are saying that they're happy with Vista 64.

I play games a lot and that is the sole reason I haven't switched over to Vista 64 bit. Have you been running into problems with games/drivers at all?

(sorry to hijack the thread)

 

[chefswg]

So far for my system running vista 64- FEAR, Half Life 2, 2142, Everquest2, Bio Shock and Itues have all ran with out problems. The problems I've had have been Command & Conquer and Yahoo Jukebox. I'm sure there are other programs with out Vista support but, I'm going to guess here, that the problems are going to come mainly from older software.

 

[ss_rakesh]

Now I have upgrated my system ram to 4GB 1GB * 4
Bios shows only displays 3GB in bootscreen 🙁
But the CPU-Z displays info for all the 4 Ram cards.

Even if windows XP 32b does not use more than 3GB is my current config will still work under dual channer mode?

 

[spaztic7]

I would think it would still work in dual channel mode.

I am having problems with doom3, and x-3 revolution. x-3 will crash my system and I have to reinstall windows and doom3 just fails at loading the game.

I do not experience the lag you do loneegale when quiting bf2142. That may be becasue I am running raid 0 (in stripe mode) as well.

 

[dengamle]

even if windows doesn't see all the ram, the workload is still spread across the two channels, so you will not lose the dual channel functionality

 

[ss_rakesh]

ok gr8, But y bios donot show 4Gb is it also 32 bit?

 

[aevm]

You need to make this thread a poll.

One more vote for upgrading to 4GB. It may not help right away, but prices are low these days and programs will get bigger.

Crysis will most likely use less than 2 GB. That is, a version capable of using more would have to be compiled specially for 64-bit systems. However, if you have 4 GB then Vista can use a ton of RAM itself and still let Crysis have 2 GB all for itself.

 

[mis33]

I can see that 2 X 2 GB is btter for 4 x 1 GB for future upgrade.

However, there are much more selections in 1 x 4 GB (at least in my local stores) and I see that the 2 GB RAMs are more expensive.

I read that some boards cannot work with 4 sticks of RAMs? Is this a common problem? Should all 4 stick the same make and model?

 

[onestar]

The difference you will see is incremental at best. Vista 64 will address the 4 GB to be sure, but usage will be spotty.

Personally, I 'd spend my money on the weakest part of the system and not on something where small returns are seen. Maybe faster disk storage or additional storage.

 

[LoneEagle]

Now I have upgrated my system ram to 4GB 1GB * 4
Bios shows only displays 3GB in bootscreen 🙁
But the CPU-Z displays info for all the 4 Ram cards.

Even if windows XP 32b does not use more than 3GB is my current config will still work under dual channer mode?

You have to go in BIOS and change a setting for the memory to remap or something else...