Memory

[Barndog]

I currenly have 2 gb of corsair ram,(2 slots with 1gb in each) i could do with upgrading but am on a tight budget, can i take out 1 stick and put in a 2 gb stick totalling 3 gb, or have they both to match ie 2-2gb sticks...thanks

[Glenn]

It depends on the motherboard, Barndog. Will it accept single channel memory, if you have it take a look in the manual. If you have a 32 bit OS it will not register more than 3.2 -3.5Gb due to limitations of the OS.

[Barndog]

Thanks for the reply Glenn, but i cant find the manual, i have a 32 bit os, so would you recommend putting in the 2gb stick...thanks

[gizmo71]

What motherboard is it?

[Barndog]

The motherboard is Gigabyte

[dujas]

Would need your motherboard's model name/number to be certain, but most likely 1GB + 2GB RAM would just run in single-channel mode, whether you'd notice the loss in memory bandwidth is debatable.

4GB is the address limit for a 32-bit OS, but that's total system memory i.e. video card RAM as well.

[Barndog]

Field   Value
Motherboard Properties   
Motherboard ID   11/23/2007-NV-MCP61-6A61KG05C-00
Motherboard Name   Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 v2
   
Front Side Bus Properties   
Bus Type   AMD Hammer
Real Clock   200 MHz
Effective Clock   200 MHz
HyperTransport Clock   1000 MHz
   
Memory Bus Properties   
Bus Type   Dual DDR2 SDRAM
Bus Width   128-bit
DRAM:FSB Ratio   CPU/7
Real Clock   373 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock   746 MHz
Bandwidth   11940 MB/s
   
Motherboard Physical Info   
CPU Sockets/Slots   1 Socket AM2
Expansion Slots   2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16
RAM Slots   2 DDR2 DIMM
Integrated Devices   Audio, Video, LAN
Form Factor   Micro ATX
Motherboard Size   220 mm x 240 mm
Motherboard Chipset   nForce6100-405
   
Motherboard Manufacturer   
Company Name   Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Information   http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Default.aspx
BIOS Download   http://tw.giga-byte.com/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_List.aspx

[Technical Ben]

Would need your motherboard's model name/number to be certain, but most likely 1GB + 2GB RAM would just run in single-channel mode, whether you'd notice the loss in memory bandwidth is debatable.

4GB is the address limit for a 32-bit OS, but that's total system memory i.e. video card RAM as well.

Nope. It's 3 (4gb is the amount a 32bit program can access in windows 64bit OS). However I am not sure if you need to set it up to see the extra GB or two, or if it is automatic. It gets worse if you have the likes of a 1GB memory graphics card. As that gets copied into the system memory as well. However it's a total waste, and they scrapped buffering it into system memory in DX11, so now you can free some up from the system memory.

[dujas]

It looks like your motherboard would support a non-identical pair, but you would lose dual-channel mode and hence some memory bandwidth.


@Technical Ben, actually I think I'm right:

The 4GB address space with 32-bit Windows is divided up so that the user-process limit is 2GB, and the other 2GB is reserved for kernel-mode processes. You can use the /3GB start-up switch to force the kernel to to allocate more memory to applications (3GB) and less memory to the operating system (1GB).

As previously stated, the actual usable memory is lower because you have to stick video ram and driver address space for every device in the computer within the first 4GB.

[Rik]

That's certainly my understanding.

[esh]

The single/dual-channel difference in high-performance applications is around the 5% mark in my testing. (Gigabyte UD3P)

[gizmo71]

Silly question, but what benefit do you think you'll get from upgrading? Have you got something which is running out of memory?

Just thinking that you might go through the trouble of upgrading only to fail to achieve any noticable improvement...

[Technical Ben]

I apologise dujas, I read that as "2gb total" on the MS site, when it's "2gb per process" in addition to "up to 2gb system memory". 

[Barndog]

The reason i want at least another gig added is for gaming, i figure it would make a difference, i just bought bf bad company 2 and its the only game i have that doesnt run as good as it should, but more ram would sort that out, and im still none the wiser if i can add the 2gb stick or not?...thanks

[Technical Ben]

What is your PC spec? There could be other bottle nicks. Although ram is one of the cheapest to fix.

[Barndog]

Pc specs are     amd athlon 64x2 dual core processor 5000+
                                 2.61ghz  2 gb ram
                                  nvidea 8500 gt 512 mb
                                 

[gizmo71]

The reason i want at least another gig added is for gaming, i figure it would make a difference, i just bought bf bad company 2 and its the only game i have that doesnt run as good as it should, but more ram would sort that out, and im still none the wiser if i can add the 2gb stick or not?...thanks

Based on what you've posted I think you probably can go to 3GB, but to be perfectly honest I don't think you'll get any real improvement. IIRC BF2 is a DirectX 11 game so more likely your graphics card is the bottleneck.

Just my ill-informed lay opinion of course - not played any first person shooter type games since Tomb Raider.

[zappaDPJ]

That depends on whether any disk caching is occurring. If there's a lot of hard drive activity while you are playing (other than loading a new map) then more memory might help. Games like WoW certainly benefit from memory over 2GB but I'm not sure if BF BD2 would see an improvement or not. It's more likely you'd get better performance from turning down the in-game graphics settings a bit.

[zappaDPJ]

I've asked around and it seems that BF BC2 really hammers PC hardware. You might want to check just how much of your memory is being occupied when playing the game because I'm not altogether convinced you'd get much benefit from the extra RAM.

[Barndog]

Thanks Zappa, i have just ordered an nvidea 9600gt, so will see improvment hopefully ingame and might not need to upgrade ram as well

[zappaDPJ]

That should certainly improve things a lot, far more than any RAM upgrades would do 

[Barndog]

Thanks mate