In what way does adding extra RAM help PC gaming performance?

[moeburn]

<<< My System Summary >>>

• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
  
• Mainboard : Acer FRS780M
  
• Chipset : AMD 780
  
• CPU : Athlon II X4 620 2.6Ghz
  
• RAM : 4096MB DDR3
  
• GPU : ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5
  
• Hard Disk : Western Digital 500GB WD5000
  
• Display: BenQ V2200Eco 22" LCD w/LED backlight
  
• Other: 4GB USB flash drive dedicated to Windows ReadyBoost page file
  
• Other: CFA633 LCD display unit mounted in DVD drive bay
  

So at the moment, my system is a pretty decent budget gaming system, except for the RAM. It seems that most people these days have at least 8GB or more. How exactly does adding RAM affect gaming performance?

I was under the impression that if you didn't have enough RAM at some point in the game, then the game would start deferring to the page file, which would make the game's framerate suddenly drop from its normal average to 5fps or less. The game would suddenly start stuttering while it tries to run from the hard drive instead of the RAM. I thought that if you add RAM to your system, all you are doing is preventing this sudden stuttering from happening. And if it doesn't happen in the first place, then adding more RAM isn't going to make a difference, if you already have enough ram that the entire game is loaded and it never uses the page file. Or so I thought.

But I am being told that increasing your RAM is the cheapest, fastest way to improve your average framerate, not just to prevent these occasional stuttering issues. Is this true?

I ask because I am trying to play Arma 2 at a decent framerate (don't worry I'm not playing that crappy DayZ mod that everyone is creaming their pants about). I understand that without prior knowledge of how the game's engine works, this might be difficult to answer, but I am only using it as an example that seems to happen in most games. The game runs fine when I play very small, self-made missions, with very few units and objects. I can play the game at absolute maximum graphics settings and still get an average fps of 50, so I am confident that my GPU is more than enough to play this game. But if I try to play the campaign, or missions with 100 units or more, the game slows to about 10 fps, which I can improve to about 24 fps by lowering the graphics settings. Even if I am not looking at the units (IE they are not being rendered), so I am still pretty sure this isn't a GPU issue.

Do you think that this is the kind of game issue that could be improved by adding more RAM, or is upgrading the CPU really the only way to help the situation (which is what I'm expecting, but I can't afford a new CPU)? I mean, I already have the page file on a 4GB USB flash drive (thats what ReadyBoost does, right?), so I'm not sure if the RAM is the issue here...

Thank you for taking the time to read my long post, and thank you in advance for any replies/suggestions you might have! - moeburn

[Elliot B.]

  On 14/07/2012 at 22:51, moeburn said:

<snip>

In general, adding more RAM won't increase the framerate (that's affected mostly by the CPU/GPU) but it will stop the stuttering caused by not having enough system RAM (as the system will use the page file which, since it is RAM, is slower).

In your specific game case, I believe it's the CPU holding you back and not the amount of RAM.

[simplezz]

There isn't a game available on Windows that uses more than 4 gig of ram (that I know of) unless it's a bug. In fact, on Windows most games are still 32 bit anyway, which means they can't physically address even 4 gig.

The timings and number of channels are more important than quantity. I only have 4 gig, and I've never once run out of space (I turn off the swap).

[Elliot B.]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:03, simplezz said:

There isn't a game available on Windows that uses more than 4 gig of ram (that I know of) unless it's a bug. In fact, on Windows most games are still 32 bit anyway, which means they can't physically address even 4 gig.

The timings and number of channels are more important than quantity. I only have 4 gig, and I've never once run out of space (I turn off the swap).

That is so wrong.

In the case of 4 GB/8 GB for current gamers, 8 GB of slower RAM is much more important than 4 GB of faster RAM.

Also, many modern PC games have 64-bit executables.

[trag3dy]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:06, King Mustard said:

That is so wrong.

In the case of 4 GB/8 GB for current gamers, 8 GB of slower RAM is much more important than 4 GB of faster RAM.

Also, many modern PC games have 64-bit executables.

Name a game that needs more than 4gb of ram?

If we're talking Crysis 1/2 or bf3 those games are just fine with 4gb of ram. However they *do* need more than 1.5gb of vram to run smoothly at max graphic settings. More specifically, they need that much vram to run with max textures. Which is likely the problem the OP is running into, not enough vram.

[ThaCrip]

4GB of RAM is fine for most people and most general uses. but i would recommend 8GB if possible since DDR3 RAM is dirt cheap (i got mine for less than $40 in early May (G.Skill 1333mhz 2x 4GB (8GB total)) nowadays and with 8GB your basically future proofed to as anyone with 8GB of RAM will be plenty into the foreseeable future as it gives you a nice buffer so if programs start burning more RAM you will still be OK. but going over 8GB of RAM is pretty much a waste of money if you ask me unless you got some major RAM hog apps as even when i am hitting my RAM pretty good i still don't exceed 3-3.5GB on the high side but i suspect most of the time i am between 2-3GB.

p.s. but as usual.... you need a 64bit OS to use more than 4GB of RAM. even with 4GB on your system i would say it's a good idea to have a 64bit OS as then you can use all of the RAM where as if your on 32bit odds are you won't be using it all since from what i read 32bit OS can only address 4GB of RAM TOTAL and that's counting video card ram etc. so if you got a 512MB or 1GB video card (on a 4GB of RAM system) your basically not using that much of your system RAM as it will only be able to use 3-3.5GB of your system ram MAX, possibly less. but it appears you got a 64bit OS so you can pretty much ignore this part.

[DrJohnSmitherson]

Adding more ram might help. If you're like me and have more programs in the background then you're game may not have enough. If you have xfire, teamspeak, steam, and a video playing then you might need more than 4gb. I don't know about your specific situation though.

You could try turning off everything else you can. Anti virus, firewall...everything. See what happens then.

How much memory do you use when the computer first starts up, and then about how much does it use right before you start a game? (Starting a game after normal, everyday use)

[Elliot B.]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:29, thatguyandrew1992 said:

Adding more ram might help. If you're like me and have more programs in the background then you're game may not have enough. If you have xfire, teamspeak, steam, and a video playing then you might need more than 4gb. I don't know about your specific situation though.

You could try turning off everything else you can. Anti virus, firewall...everything. See what happens then.

How much memory do you use when the computer first starts up, and then about how much does it use right before you start a game? (Starting a game after normal, everyday use)

That is correct.

4 GB is enough for 80% of modern games to not stutter if you hardly have any programs running in the background.

However, I suggest 8 GB. It's cheap and it means you won't have to consider closing the majority of your background programs in order to stop many modern games stuttering (especially at higher detail levels).

[Detection]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:09, trag3dy said:

Name a game that needs more than 4gb of ram?

If we're talking Crysis 1/2 or bf3 those games are just fine with 4gb of ram. However they *do* need more than 1.5gb of vram to run smoothly at max graphic settings. More specifically, they need that much vram to run with max textures. Which is likely the problem the OP is running into, not enough vram.

On a 4GB system, turn off your pagefile and play crysis cranked to max @ 1080p

You`ll soon see a BSOD

[trag3dy]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:37, Detection said:

On a 4GB system, turn off your pagefile and play crysis cranked to max @ 1080p

You`ll soon see a BSOD

If you say so.

[dr_crabman]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:09, trag3dy said:

If we're talking Crysis 1/2 or bf3 those games are just fine with 4gb of ram.

Define 'fine'. BF3 can use between 6 to 8GB if available and it helps load times and overall smoothness when jumping from server to server. If one has only 4gb minus what the OS uses there will be swapping. A lot of it.

But I'm not sure RAM is the only problem the op has. ARMAII is a very taxing game. It needs a fast CPU, lots of RAM. modern graphics card and so on. You could start the windows task manager and watch how much RAM the game uses, same for the processor. If one of those are often at 100% you have your bottleneck.

[trag3dy]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:45, dr_crabman said:

Define 'fine'. BF3 can use between 6 to 8GB if available and it helps load times and overall smoothness when jumping from server to server. If one has only 4gb minus what the OS uses there will be swapping. A lot of it.

I define fine as playable above 40 fps. But like I said, your vram plays a large part in that, too.

[Noir Angel]

If you have extra memory, you can fit more data: EG physics data, textures ETC into memory, and with more memory you have less chance of other stuff having to be swapped out whilst you're gaming, it also means you should get less disk thrashing as things are loaded and unloaded from memory. All of which adds up to smoother running and less stuttering.

[dr_crabman]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:59, trag3dy said:

I define fine as playable above 40 fps. But like I said, your vram plays a large part in that, too.

But it's easier to bring down VRAM consumption by tuning the settings while large maps with 64 players will always tax the RAM. And seeing how cheap 4GB DDR3 are right now there really is no reason to live with longer load times and occasional stuttering. BF3 definitely takes noticeable advantage of free memory. Even 6GB is cutting it close imo, a friend upgraded from that to 24GB (yeah, that's excessive) and his experience improved considerably.

[Elliot B.]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:39, trag3dy said:

If you say so.

Argh, I hate it when people say that. It's such a snarky thing to say.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about regarding this topic and we are all (at least, from what I can see) disagreeing with you so unless you have facts to give, please leave the topic.

[trag3dy]

  On 15/07/2012 at 00:06, dr_crabman said:

But it's easier to bring down VRAM consumption by tuning the settings while large maps with 64 players will always tax the RAM. And seeing how cheap 4GB DDR3 are right now there really is no reason to live with longer load times and occasional stuttering. BF3 definitely takes noticeable advantage of free memory.

Yes. I'm not disagreeing with you. It all depends on how much stuttering you're willing to put up with at max settings. But it's definitely playable with only 4gb of ram.

  On 15/07/2012 at 00:11, King Mustard said:

Argh, I hate it when people say that. It's such a snarky thing to say.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about regarding this topic and we are all (at least, from what I can see) disagreeing with you so unless you have facts to give, please leave the topic.

lol - if by "we all" you mean you, then yeah. I'm not sure why most people would be turning off their page file, especially if they only have 4gb of ram. So that is why I replied with "if you say so". Good job getting all worked up over nothing though.

[ThaCrip]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:59, trag3dy said:

I define fine as playable above 40 fps.

i think most people consider playable around 30fps (as you can still have a enjoyable experience around that if your holding steady around that level) and perfect, as i am sure you already know, is 60fps+

i think once you start pushing around 20-ish (especially into the teens for any length of time) is when it's bordering on not playable. i imagine if you go into the teens for more than just briefly that can definitely effect your enjoyment of a game when it's that low. but if it's only brief it's not the end of the world.

so anything around 40fps is more than playable.

p.s. i think that 30fps example is especially true in single player games as i suspect multiplayer having a high frame rate is probably more important but even in cases like that, around 30fps will still be decent enough to where it won't be a show stopper or anything.

[moeburn]

  On 15/07/2012 at 00:11, King Mustard said:

You clearly don't know what you're talking about...

Argh, I hate it when people say that. It's such a snarky thing to say. :D

But seriously, thanks for the replies, everyone! So if I understand it correctly, if adding more RAM were to improve anything at all, it would be the loading times and the occasional stutter-fark (thats what i'm calling it now, a stutterfark), and not the average FPS. Since I almost NEVER experience stutterfarks with texture detail set to maximum (the only time it happens is when I am flying a fighter jet at mach 1 across the map, and it can't load the textures as fast as I can fly), I will assume it is the CPU that needs the upgrade to get Arma 2 running well. And I can't afford a new CPU at the moment. Oh well, thanks again everyone!

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:45, dr_crabman said:

You could start the windows task manager and watch how much RAM the game uses, same for the processor. If one of those are often at 100% you have your bottleneck.

Actually, I have a CrystalFontz CFA633 LCD in one of my drive bays, I think it is begging to be used for this purpose. :) That way, I can watch the CPU/RAM while actually playing the game. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that before. Unfortunately, the LCD's control software constantly uses 2-3% CPU (according to task manager) when running, so it might skew the results.

By the way, I just thought I'd add; I have tried all the obvious tricks, like closing all background programs, turning off antivirus, running in abovenorm priority, etc. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I played a graphics-intensive game without closing all the background programs. I actually have two little batch cmd files on my desktop, one is called "start favourite programs", and one is called "nuke everything". They make it much easier to turn off background progs before playing a game, and then to get all those progs running again when i'm done playing. And I don't even run a real-time scanning AV, just a scan on every file downloaded, and a nightly full-system scan while I sleep.

One quick extra question; Do you think the ReadyBoost 4GB drive is helping things at all? As I understand it, readyboost moves the page file to a usb flash drive. So all thats really doing is making the stutterfarks less farked, yes?

[simplezz]

  On 14/07/2012 at 23:37, Detection said:

On a 4GB system, turn off your pagefile and play crysis cranked to max @ 1080p

You`ll soon see a BSOD

Well I run Crysis 2 on ultra settings @ 1080p, and I don't get a BSOD. Are you sure you're fully patched up?

My Crysis 2 is a 32bit binary, so it can't access 4 gig anyway. The most I've ever seen my memory while running it is about 2 gig or so.

[jnelsoninjax]

I just paid $30 from newegg for 4GB of DDR3, which boosted my system to 8GB, now I do play games and when I only had the 4GB often time, I would be running close to max on RAM and Pagefile, so of course the games responded slow at certain points (such as loading new areas) I have also had games just completely shut down on me, unknown if it was memory related or not, but if you can afford $30 why not add more RAM?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

  On 15/07/2012 at 01:46, simplezz said:

Well I run Crysis 2 on ultra settings @ 1080p, and I don't get a BSOD. Are you sure you're fully patched up?

My Crysis 2 is a 32bit binary, so it can't access 4 gig anyway. The most I've ever seen my memory while running it is about 2 gig or so.

Technically, 32bit binaries can access more than 32bits of RAM if they do careful memory management themselves.

[08993]

Quite a lot of CryEngine games have 64 bit binaries but as others have said, more ram means not having to close everything else down when playing games. On my box, so long as the game is alt-tab friendly I can minimise games and often forget I've minimised them and then go back to them at will, which is great for people with low attention spans (like me!).

[UseLess]

Just to add my $0.02 to the discussion.

With regards to turning off the pagefile, I don't like doing it myself. It can SOMETIMES cause windows to go crazy, and some programs expect it to be there. Personally I run with a 1GB pagefile with 8GB of RAM.

The biggest issue that occurs isn't to do with maxing out the RAM I believe. I think its some legacy from when RAM was scarce, but windows loves to page out RAM whenever it can, so even if you are only using 3 of the 4GB you have, then windows will start paging some areas of memory, and you can run into FPS issues.

For the most part, "casual games", (such as LoL or D3) use around 700-1000MB of RAM, and will generally run fine with 4GB of ram (if you're not transcoding lord of the rings, solving the 102385th prime number, and sequencing DNA in the backgound).

[Detection]

  On 15/07/2012 at 01:46, simplezz said:

Well I run Crysis 2 on ultra settings @ 1080p, and I don't get a BSOD. Are you sure you're fully patched up?

My Crysis 2 is a 32bit binary, so it can't access 4 gig anyway. The most I've ever seen my memory while running it is about 2 gig or so.

I didn't say Crysis 2, but yea it was up to date when I found out it kills the system with no pagefile, generally when I was causing some big explosions

[Noir Angel]

I don't know why this needs to be repeated time and time again, but there is no valid reason to disable the paging file. It does not increase performance because Windows only pages stuff when it needs to. Let Windows manage your memory, it wouldn't be designed to write a paging file if it didn't think you needed one.