System Requirements's Ram Question.

[MrShea]

When the system Requirements say you need 8 gigs of ram, which DDR ram do they mean? And do they mean the top rated ram in that DDR category? I'm curious because i have 8 gigs of DDR2 ram in this old computer but i just noticed that its 400MHz. So i feel the system requirements may mean a lot more powerful ram. FYI i just ebayed 2 2gb 800MHz ddr2 ram for $8 canadian, so i will have better ram eventually.

 

[CountMike]

System requirements usually mean amount of free RAM. Your DDR2 is actually running at 800MHz because DDR = Double Data Rate.

 

[helpstar]

Other hardware like CPU. Mainboard, graphics card?
Which game or app you wanna run?

Check the actual ram frequency inside bios or cpu-z
Post the ram brand and model

 

[MrShea]

Alllllrighty then. CPU-Z says under "Memory" DDR2 Dual Channel 8 gb Symmetric.. uhh there we are, 340 MHz DRAM Frequency. They are 2GB PC2-6400 400MHz memory sticks.
As for the goods, i am running a Q9550 2.89GH not yet overclocked considering i will need a aftermarket cooler first. I have a MS-7519 motherboard. I have slapped on a RX 460 4GB Radeon Graphics Card. Games i enjoy playing are CSGO, The Forest, Subnautica, Stranded Deep, Survival games are fun and skyrim and such.
My power supply is an old power supply that is not powerful enough in amps to run my setup... but it runs it great at full tilt for hours... how i dont know, im like 20 amps off what the RX 460 needs, but im not going to complain

 

[CountMike]

That memory frequency setting shown in CPU-Z, multiply by two for real working frequency because it's DDR. So it's running at 680 effective speed although it's able to run at 400 * 2 = 800MHz. That's pretty usual frequency for DDR2.
(Double Data Rate = reads and writes at same time).
GPU manufacturers tend to over dramatize the power needed which can hit the peek only when used 100% and overclocked and even those numbers are usually for whole system not just GPU. So when they recommend for instance 400W that means for an average whole system.
Actual power requirement for that GPU is maximal 75W which it gets from PCIe bus.

 

[MrShea]

I'm learning so much!! My brain MHz....pffffffffffhahaha get it? lol
So when the system requirements say 8 gigs of ram, they mean any DDR of ram? ddr2 3 4 5?

 

[CountMike]

Egg-zactimently, they are talking quantity, not quality. Quality (speed) is determined by other things like frequency, latency etc. and are part to overall performance. So let's say they say a game needs 8GB of RAM, game would run but faster with faster RAM, in other words you'd get few frames per second more.

 

[MrShea]

AWESOME!! I am now smart Thank you for teaching me, oh Grandmaster Tom