How much RAM?

i coulnt find any other topics that have to do with ram but could someone let me know if i upgrading my new laptop form 512 mb of RAM to mabey 1-2GB of RAM would make my GW faster. I am wondering if it is the ram or the graphics card that makes it slow. please let me know or direct me to a different post. thanks

Report Date: 12/14/2007
Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 22:35:56
Driver Version: 7.14.10.1322
Operating System: Windows Vista (TM) Home Basic* , (6.0.6000)
Default Language: English
DirectX* Version: 10.0
Physical Memory: 501 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 64 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 36 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 22 Stepping 1
Processor Speed: 1728 MHZ

Post full specs of you laptop. Then we can tell you.

Need to know the following:

Processor
Graphics Card
RAM (you already said)
Operating System
Screen Max Resolution.

512meg RAM is barely enough to run XP smoothly, let alone GW. (if you have Vista, 1 gig is barely enough)

And, it depends somewhat on what sort of graphics are in you laptop. If your laptop has "integrated graphics" which shares some of the main RAM, you have even less RAM available for OS plus apps.
If your laptop has a separate graphics chip with it's own RAM, then you would see less change in framerates if you upgrade the main RAM, but loading times between areas, etc., should go down significantly.

So, basically, yes - upgrade to at least 1gig.

You need at least 1 gig in my opinion.

I would go for 2 if you can, cause 1 gig for me on wiki constant switching will die out in 30 minutes

It would make your laptop a heck of a lot faster.

Adding RAM will surely help. When i upgraded from 512MB to 1.5GB it made a big difference when loading areas. I didn't see a boost in video performance but that's because i have a GeForce Go6600 (Laptop is almost 3 years old :P). Bottom line, it will probably make your gaming experience more enjoyable.

This may be me splitting hairs, but whenever it comes to questions of RAM on a computer, I stray away from saying more will make your computer faster. I prefer to advise people that adding more ram will help your computer run more smoothly. Speed relies on a combination of things, one being ram, but upgrading that alone will rarely yield the faster performance you seek.

Upgrading the processor, video card, ram, possibly motherboard, hard drive, adding more cooling, etc, *will* speed things up, but that's a bit more than you seem interested in doing, and that's fine.

Nowadays, 1GB is the *least* I would recommend on a gaming rig (2 is preferred and 4+ is probably overkill at this point in time).

It really depends on how bad your video hardware is. Nothing impacts performance in the game as much as your video card, period. RAM helps a little, but going from 512MB to 1GB is never exclusively the difference between an unplayable slideshow and smooth FPS.

I would definitely recommend having at least 1GB of RAM to play any game made within the last few years, but if you're having serious issues running the game RAM is likely not the cause. We need to know more information about your system and just how slowly GW is running for you.

thought this might set things straight. the graphics memory is crap but is there a way i can change that on a laptop. and yes i know its vista. i cant downgrade < but i did already turn off all the fancy stuff like the animated this and the animated that , my desktop is nothing but windows classic theme. thanks for all the help so far





Report Date: 12/14/2007
Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 22:35:56
Driver Version: 7.14.10.1322
Operating System: Windows Vista (TM) Home Basic* , (6.0.6000)
Default Language: English
DirectX* Version: 10.0
Physical Memory: 501 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 64 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 36 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 22 Stepping 1
Processor Speed: 1728 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 27A2
Device Revision: 03

i should also note that the game as of right now is playable in the sense that i can a few farm runs or go to Kamadan and buy and sell stuff...but the fact that when im in Kamadan because everyone is moving around and its such a "big" place my game becomes a slideshow when i start to move. i have all the graphics turned down to the lowest they can go. when im in a town with NO people in it , it runs kind of smooth. i just bought 1 GB of ram online and am going to get it tommorw. I will have a total of 1.5 GB of ram and will let you guys know how it turns out. once again thanks for all the help

Get rid of Vista.

Usually the only things you can change on a laptop are the hard drive and the ram so doing anything to the graphics card is out of the question

Basically you can get as much ram as you like but your crappy graphics card is going to slow down most games you try to play

Vista also has a feature that will rate your system that should tell you most of the stuff I just said

ya i tried to downgrade vista but its too hard. these dam toshibas are like tanks when it comes down to getting rid of vista. The whole rating thing---2.0 -.- but the only thing slowing my down is my....graphics....im screwed arent i.. thats what i get for waiting in line for 10 hours on black friday night and getting the crappiest Toshiba laptop + printer for $220 USD thanks for the help anyway guys

More details about my computer


i refreshed and it decided to change

Component Details Subscore Base score
Processor Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 530 @ 1.73GHz 3.9 2.7
Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 504 MB 2.9
Graphics Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family 2.7
Gaming graphics 64 MB Total available graphics memory 2.8
Primary hard disk 48GB Free (73GB Total) 4.8
Windows Vista (TM) Home Basic

System
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer TOSHIBA
Model Satellite A135
Total amount of system memory 504.00 MB RAM
System type 32-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 1
64-bit capable Yes

Storage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total size of hard disk(s) 73 GB
Disk partition (C 48 GB Free (73 GB Total)
Media drive (D CD/DVD

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family
Total available graphics memory 64 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 0 MB
Dedicated system memory 32 MB
Shared system memory 32 MB
Display adapter driver version 7.14.10.1322
Primary monitor resolution 1280x800
DirectX version DirectX 9.0 or better

Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network Adapter Realtek RTL8101 Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)
Network Adapter Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter
Network Adapter Microsoft Tun Miniport Adapter

ur graphic card and ram nids an upgrade. try to stay away form intel graphic card. also a cpu upgrade will help at least a centrino duo core.

...it's a laptop

I'm running it perfectly on 1 gig, but 2 gig is always better

So, basically, you have your typical low end laptop - not surprising considering the price. Notice that it says "504 meg" Ram instead of 512 - that's because the integrated graphics in the 945 chipset "shares" it's 8 meg with the main RAM.
Upgrading to 1.5 gigs will improve the performance, but it's never going to be "good". You may be able to boost the graphics performance a bit by letting the graphics steal, er, "share" more RAM now that you have a bit more to spare.

stay on XP..is much better for gaming, than Vista...which is only much better, for working and safety...

and in general ... so more RAM you have..so better.... so longer can you play high end games..without having to logout and to relog...to get your Cache emptied to play further....

Also higher RAM wil improve your FPS ... or at least wil ensure you better and more smoothy running FPS at high resolutions and having all graphic settings at MAX is then naturally possible..being able to play with everything at absolutely max..without having to fear about graphical lags

to run high end games today smoothy..I can suggest only having like 2-3 gigs of RAM... high end games like Gothic 3 went even with 2 gigs of RAM not smoothy..so such games really need more RAm, thna 2 gigs ...

Such high end end games of the 5-Star Category we will see surely in future much more often and its normal, that if a player wants to play in future also the best possible games, then the player has like to upgrade his PC every X years...or to buy a new PC..which is at the latest point og high end hardware to ensure to be able to play also the latest high end games...with enough RAM to run them smoothfully

wow...SOO MUCH INFORMATION O_O

im not really looking to play high end games but more or less only play GW

and yes its a laptop so no graphics upgrade can be done. i am going to the store right now to pick up the ram , ill be back in a bit

god that system sucks hard.

for starters the only thing slowin you down is the processor speed.

installing ram only jacks up the memory nothin more.

My pc:

Gigabyte Technology

2gb ram
210gb HDD
DUAL Core hyper thread or equivilent 4.50ghz
Radeon ATI Sapphire Pro. 512MB
DvD 48x52x48
ADSL 512mbs
USB-SD Hubs @ 14.

So yea top-of-the-line

shame about the net connection though. =(

Not the overall limiting factor, just a bit shy of the Nightfall recommended specs and scores 3.9 out of 5.9

Not much you can do here other than add RAM to boost the 2.9 into the 4s. The graphics card is the bottleneck in this system, bringing your overall score down to 2.7. There is nothing you can do to fix this. 64M is the minimum recommendation for Factions but I suspect that it is higher for Nightfall, but the box doesn't list minimum video RAM

Overall it's a good computer to surf the web and play non-graphics intense games, but sorry to say that it's not much good beyond that.

TO ALL THOSE WHO HELPED ME!!! Thank you very much! i bought 1 GB of ram increasing my computer to 1.5 GB of RAM and it now runs GW as smooth as a babies bottom. RAM was the only problem i guess because i can put it on the 3rd highest grpahics setting and it still runs perfectly. I can also run Vent and Xfire along with a page or 2 of wiki while still running it very smooth with an average ping of about 160-180ms. Thanks for all the help guys.

PS- i still have vista on here and i even turned back on the Vista skins (i.e. the black bar on the bottom)