"Pausing" in Game?

[trekkie00]

Last night I was playing a bit of Crysis on my desktop computer. It runs very well on medium settings @ 1680x1050, but when I tried turning it up to high, it started randomly freezing up for a second or so - usually right as an enemy appeared on screen. I was getting ~20fps excluding those pauses, but they make the game very difficult to play.

I realize that my desktop isn't a supercomputer (Athlon X2 4000+ @ 2.64ghz, 2gb RAM, GeForce 9800GT, Windows 7 64bit), but since it the pause only appears when an enemy comes on screen, I'm thinking it's just running out of memory. Would another 2 or 4GB of memory help? Or should I just accept medium settings as the price of buying a cheap processor a year ago? I won't be able to upgrade the processor for some time - it'd involve replacing the motherboard, and by the time I do that I'll replace it with an i7 hopefully.

EDIT: I had shut off folding before I started the game.

 

[Sora]

It's hard to say really but I would say on a 64 bit OS with only 2GB of ram playing Crysis on High...the RAM probably is low.

 

[dario03]

I'm pretty sure I played Crysis with some things on high with 2gb ram on Vista 64bit. I would say try setting shaders and shadows to high and the rest to medium. I think it will run better and look a lot better than just medium.

 

[philbar71]

an extra 2gb of ram certianly would not hurt,

Newegg.com - OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory (The Official Memory of the Championship Gaming Model OCZ2F10662GK - Desktop Memory

 

[trekkie00]

Thanks for your replies. I tried turning up the shaders and shadows, and it does look a lot better and doesn't freeze up like it was anymore. When I turn on the framerate display, it comes up with a memory usage stat, and I noticed that in some forests it would reach >1gb of memory.

Right now the memory I have has fairly bad timings (A-Data 2x1gb DDR2 800 5-5-5-18, I think) so I don't really need high performance memory - IIRC anything faster than the slowest chip is slowed down. Fairly sure motherboard support stops at DDR2 800 also.

I was looking at this 2x1gb Wintec ram package, but was also debating about spending the little extra for this 2x2gb package. I realize now that 2gb is too low to play Crysis, but would I get much of a benefit by going past 4gb of memory? I primarily use a 64-bit OS on the computer, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[veg1992]

I have that exact AmpX kit and paid that same amount for it and I've very satisfied with it.. you may need to set the timings manually though

There's no point going past 4GB, but that RAM kit is so cheap, I'd highly consider buying it.

My rec: buy that second kit and sell your other 2GB kit