Legit Reviews

Game Testing 2GB versus 4GB of Memory on Vista 64-bit

Inspired by the Corsair Performance Analysis of 4GB versus 2GB of memory we figured it would be fun to see for ourselves how gaming performance is impacted by adding more system memory. We got our hands on a 2GB and a 4GB set of Corsiar DOMINATOR PC2-9136C5 memory modules and set off to see what happens to the average framerate in nine games at 1920x1200.



Article Title: Game Testing 2GB versus 4GB of Memory on Vista 64-bit
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/709/1/

kinda wish framerates were'nt as negligable, but it goes to show, RAM isnt a factor in-game, but is a factor getting you into it

nice little test

you hit the nail on the head. It also helps the low frame rate averages on some games, but 2-3FPS at the low isn't going to really make a night or day difference in gaming. Our test platform was pretty stout too though.

Nice article .

Personally I would not tough Vista x64 with less then 4gigs myself , as Vista uses about 1gig just to run (non-tweaked) , leaving only a gig left and with some newer games using up to that remaining gig ; leaving you to use the page file .

Next time I boot to my Vista side , I'll run a mem usage check on Bioshock and a few other games and see what I come up with . (btw , my Vista side is not toned down or tweeked , aka:vLite so results should be fairly accurate) .

stereo55 wrote:Nice article .

Personally I would not tough Vista x64 with less then 4gigs myself , as Vista uses about 1gig just to run (non-tweaked) , leaving only a gig left and with some newer games using up to that remaining gig ; leaving you to use the page file.

Windows Xp home: currently using 600MB by itself, with 512MB of RAM in the PC, and THEN gaming; Entirely pagefile

stereo55 wrote:Personally I would not tough Vista x64 with less then 4gigs myself , as Vista uses about 1gig just to run (non-tweaked) , leaving only a gig left and with some newer games using up to that remaining gig ; leaving you to use the page file.

Actually, unused RAM is wasted RAM. Your OS is loading commonly used programs into memory so they can launch faster. Vista can easily free that up for games if needed, so I would say 2gb is fine.

Why spend $120 on another 2gb of RAM to get +2 frames per second when you can spend that much extra on your video card and get +20 frames?

Vista is using 1 gig?? I have 2 gigs, and with everything running I only use about 30-40% of my ram.

That includes rivatuner, ultramon, razer tray processes...etc