Will RAM inscrease my gaming performance??

[Syphanx]

Hey Guyz,
At the moment ive got 256mb of ram, i know that's pretty crap. But on games my comp still performs better than average, to get this performance even higher would it help by increasing the RAM to 512?
Also because my motherboard only has 3 ddr ram slots, and one of them is obviously used by a 256mb stick. If i were to add ANOTHER 256mb stick and then a 512mb stick to make it 1gb, would this work?? because ive heard rumours that 256 and 512 dont match together very well??
thanks,

 

[ekÆsine]

from what i have seen it will not increase your gaming performance by that much. the memory that is integrated on the video card is what would make the biggest difference. i assume your memory is what is in your signature?

your signatureis very strange though: "PC2700 256mb DDR 400+ ram" that makes absolutely no sense to me. DDR400 means it is pc3200. so you have pc2700 and pc3200 mixed memory installed? it is not good to mix memory speeds for gaming.

there is no such thing as ddr400+. this is probably a marketing ploy meaning it cCAN be overclocked. which is complete BS.

 

[Syphanx]

well i asked the guy at the shop for some pc 2700 RAm (256mb) and he gave me this packet with ddr 400+ RAm in it which was 256mb.... I think he gave me the wrong thing lol, o well it still works....

 

[Syphanx]

So then if Ram doesnt increase your gaming speed what does it do? And what will it make perform better?

 

[ekÆsine]

what i meant was that if you already had 256MB of DDR memory you would get a small increase in performance in games if you added another 256MB with a total of 512MB. it would not double the speed of your games. 3D game performance is related to the video card hardware.

ram quality and type DOES increase gaming/ application performance. if you had 256MB pc2100 and replaced it with similar quality 256MB pc3700 that would definately speed up your system. the memory latency effects the ram the most, that is the reason some memory is better than others.

when people refer to quality of the memory that is usually what they are talking about, this is found by looking at the memory timings. "CAS latency 2, 4-way bank interleave, 1T command,
RAS & RAS to CAS delay & all the other stuff to minimal latency"

qouted from:

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?threadid=20942
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Syphanx i think he gave you pc3200 and your motherboard has underclocked the DDR400 down automatically to DDR333. you are using mixed memory types.

 

[Syphanx]

o ok
yeah i knew some of that...
i never knew that you could get 256 pc3700 ram though.. o well ill look into that.. But lemme guess it's like triple the price of 2100 ram? right?

 

[ThirtySixBelow]

RAM

I increased my ram from 256 to 512 and i noticed a pretty nice difference in Unreal 2. Im sure for gamming it will only make a difference if you are playing a game that will be using the majority of your 256mb of ram. Upgrading to 512 will give you and your computer much more flexibility in this department. RAM IMO is just something that will stabalize you system. If you are running XP check out the task manager while running a normal load of programs and see where you stand. This is a good indicator of whether you will notice a big difference upon upgrading.

 

[Syphanx]

O ok cool then thanks,
But what type is ur ram? because i know the quality of the RAM differs...
thanks,

 

[ThirtySixBelow]

pc2100

 

[i_krayzie_i]

RAM is the place where all of your programs are loaded from the hd and run so obviously this is going to effect performance. Its best to get high quality memory and have the sticks at the same speed and size.