How much memory is enough?

OK you can NEVER have enough.

I run 1 gig rdram and I love it.

768 is the min due to XP and the min it requires.

Lansing can you make your shut-down program avilable for download.

Slightly OT but...
Well 3+ to 4GB actually is too much (or too little) atm becasue of how the adresspace is used in 32bit computing. A normal win xp pc with 4GB ram will only see between 3-3.7GB ram depending on what hardware you have in the machine.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=279151
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...AE/PAEmem.mspx

True. But there are hardly any motherboards out there that support 4GB+ of RAM. Some blade servers I work with have just 4GB, most have 1GB-2GB... that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Just that the people using them will most likely have a server operating system instead of XP Pro. I'd personally say as of the programming right now, that 2GB is most likely not going to be used. You'll notice that programs fill up the available memory. In essence, there will never be enough memory, as more memory becomes frequent there will be programs to fill it.

Lansing Kai Don

Lansing Kai Don

Okay, I know you've all been on pins and needles wondering what (if anything) the Village Idiot is going to do to his computer. After careful consideration, I've decided to drag it behind my car until I get pulled over. When the policeman says to me, "Do you know you're dragging a computer behind you?" I will respond, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I've got two 128Mb 40ns PC800 RDRAM RIMMs in my ears!" *RIMM shot*

But seriously folks, I just bought two more 128Mb RDRAM units to bring my system total up to 512Mb. I found two sticks (used) on eBay for 82.99 USD shipped. Hopefully, it will arrive before Friday. Now, I think my nVidia GeForce 4 (64Mb, model 420) will be the bane of my existence.

Upon further research, I've discovered that indeed there is an "access lag" with RDRAM due to the serial architecture of RDRAM (you have to go through all 4 slots; that's why you need the continuity RIMMs in what would otherwise be empty slots). DDR RAM has no such lag because its architecture provides access to each stick in parallel. The practical consequenses are that DDR is better for more numerous and smaller memory reads/writes, such as in servers. And RDRAM is better for fewer but larger memory reads/writes, such as in games. The Dell 8200 is intended as a higher-end gaming machine (or was 3 years ago.)

So the RDRAM is more like a sequential file and DDR is more like a Random Access file. Good going John I knew you could figure it out!

Glad you got the ram, that's all you really need, your video card, although a more aged engine will likely be fine. Whatever you do do not upgrade the drivers if its that 71.xx nvidia package, or if you do be ready to back it down to the older drivers because those seem to be troublesome. Just play this next BWE you got 10 days after that to get another video card should it be a problem.

You remind me of my ex-wife. And that's not a good thing.

I bet she would think it's the best thing ever happened to you, not that someone reminds you of her, but that you realize what a fine upstanding person who deserved much greater influence over your life that she is.

you are correct

if circumstances allow you to upgrade your video card pick almost any budget card that supports direct x 9

the problem with the 420 mx is that the memory on that is single data rate instead of the standard double data rate (for some reason nvidia doesnt prominently advertise this)

the other part they dont trumpet is they cut costs on the mx line from top (460) to bottom (420) by stripping everything that made the GF3 and GF4 important which was the programable pixel and vertex shaders

those are what make all those neat effects that show with direct x 8/9 but not direct x 7 which is what the MX line is stuck with

you will notice a dramatic improvement with a better card

Thank you loviatar. My 5200 is my first nvidia so don't know much about them, but have noticed most of the time their older stuff is fine with newer softwares, although not with all the glossy extras. It appears this time it won't really work at all huh?

i went to newegg.com and looked at a 5200 and it said that it supported direct x 9

aside from being slow on higher graphics settings i dont see any problem

I have played it on 4 systems in the house, 2 with 1GIG, 1 with 768MB, 1 with 512MB. All four have the same video cards, (5200, 1 with 256MB) overclocked (and stable) PIV 2.8, PIV 2.5, AMD 2600, AMD 2200.


Zero problems. No difference except the HD in the 2.5 system has a 2MB cache, which causes a little lag.


I personally think that the game is so friendly, forgiving and well designed that 512 would be plenty.

Thanks PhineasToke. Yours was certainly the most on-topic and useful post thus far. Knowing that more than 512Mb doesn't help significantly makes me feel better about my decision to add the 256Mb of RDRAM (rather than adding 512Mb or getting a new DDR RAM motherboard). I did play two public weekends and found the game worked well even with my 256Mb.

Sin: It's pointless to respond to someone who can't admit a mistake. But since I'm the Village Idiot, I will anyway. Memory is different from file systems. DDR and RDRAM are BOTH random access memory. The only difference is that RDRAM is faster for gaming, even though the signals have to pass through 4 sticks with RDRAM, and just 1 stick with DDR. RDRAM doesn't have to read every byte of memory in sequence to find what it's looking for. Okay?

Sin, Lovitar: Here are the specs on the 5200. The comment is not mine, but the reviewer's:
The good news is that GW does NOT use DirectX 9.0. It uses DirectX 8.0. So it may not be quite so awful as the reviewer states, at least for GW.

Here are the specs on my GeForce4 MX 420 (well, he didn't review the 420; the 420 just has 64Mb memory) from the same reviewer:
Clearly, my card's lack of DirectX 8.0 is the reason the GW auto-detect sets my overall graphics setting to lowest.

So now I'm looking at upgrading my video card. The 6600GT at NewEgg.com costs 175.00 USD for 128Mb of GDDR3 memory (AGP). Hang on, I have to take my dog out before he chews through my door... time passes ...

Okay, I'm back. The 6600 at NewEgg.com costs 145.00 USD for 128Mb of DDR memory (AGP).

BUT, I can get a used GeForce4 TI 4600 on eBay for around 60 to 80.00 USD. Here are the specs on it:
Another factor is that I may need a power supply bigger than my pitiful Dell box 250 Watter for a 6600GT. I dunno. My brain hurts again. I know, I'll hurt it back.

I have a couple of P4 2.4ghz pc's, one with an overclocked GeForce 4400 and the other with a 4600, both with 768 mg of DDR RAM, and they run GW smoothly with no glitches or hiccups.

Thanks Marksmann, that's good to hear.

As it's very late, my brain is thinking evil thoughts. Idiotic evil thoughts, perhaps.

Does anyone think there is a possibility that GW will switch from DirectX 8 to DirectX 9 for the final release? If they stick with DX 8 for the initial release, I think it would be hard for them to switch to DX 9 later, since ppl would have equipped their systems presuming a DX 8 game. I wonder...

Or GW could provide a choice of DX 8 or DX 9 clients. Hm,mmmm....

Your assuming there are major differences between DX8 and 9, which there are... but everything is backwards compatible. I will doubt they will go to DX9 just for some new feature when they've built the entire game w/o it so far. Also, I've use 5200 in most of my systems and will still recommend it as the best bang for the buck (a value card if you will). I have a 9800 PRO now and it lags worse than the 5200 did EDIT: I just got my RAM and man the increase is wonderful... you know why? BECAUSE for some reason I was mapping 512MB of my RAM for the graphics adapter... so I didn't have any left for programs w/o biting into it which caused a whole lot of rewrites. Oh, and you should be fine but a video card upgrade will of course be helpful, it depends on what your budget is.

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. Yes, for those of you that missed me I'll be off for awhile but I'll try to check in (studying and doing homework ahead of time so I don't have to worry about it this weekend)

P.P.S. A little bit of technical information that you probably didn't need to know. To generalize, DDR and RDRAM have the same theoretical bandwidth at a given speed (say 200Mhz) and their performance are pretty similar. But as we all know, the more RDRAM sticks the higher the bandwidth (it's beautiful, I know) so DDR came out with Dual Channel which puts them pretty much the same again (w/ two sticks). I also want to burst some bubbles... increasing your FSB frequency does not improve that much. For example, let's take a 100 MHz (CL3) bus improved to a 200MHz DUAL CHANNEL (CL2,2,2,5) bus... so you'd think that your memory access time would improve dramatically (around 80-100%). Actually, you might reach (after computations), around 17-20% during an intensive game that doesn't prefetch very well. So a higher FSB will not solve your performance bottlenecks. MORE memory however can do wonders depending on how many processes are running and the resources currently allocated. I could go into a long spiel about page tables and usage but I won't... unless you want me to . This is how I'd mark utilization of memory during a graphic intensive game. This is completely my OPINION, I haven't even performed simple computations besides probability of page frame replacement and using GW requirement of 256MB as my basis.

256MB(196) 90% Utilization
384MB(324) 72% Utilization
512MB(552) 58% Utilization
640MB(580) 50% Utilization
768MB(708) 46% Utilization
896MB(836) 43% Utilization
1024MB(964) 41% Utilization

These are just approximations (and are based on 256MB(sys requirement)-approx. 60M (system resources) and are not to be relied on.. I'm not saying worthless ( I got the simple reduced equations out of an old Operating Systems book), they just show that to an extent the program "fills the memory you give it". The more memory you have, the less page frame replacement. But you notice, after 512MB you only make minor leaps in utilization (i.e. 8%, 4% 3% 2%)... these are NOT increase in performance. In fact it's late, let's have some fun, if you have a 20% I/O wait (keyboard/mouse) therefore an 80% CPU utilization time. Then 1- p^n= 1-.8^(number of processes) let's say on average 10 (generalized) 1-.8^10= 89.3% CPU utilization. Ok, now your CPU is currently used 89.3% of the time or 8.93 sec out of 10 it is processing and not waiting for input. Make a random variable x, to associate that the probability that CPU is working. Random variable, y1, for a read from memory. y2 for a page frame replacement. Taking the gap from 512 to 640 as an example. The probability that the CPU will read from memory is x given y1 or f(x/y1)=f(x,y)/f(x). While the probability there will be a page frame replacement is f(x/y2)=f(x,y)f(x). f(x)= int(e^(-x-y),dy,0,infiniti) = e^(-x). f(x,y)=e(-x-y). So, f(x/y1)=e^(-y)*.017, which equals as y approaches 0, =.017, as approaches infiniti,=0. Same process for y2, and we get 2% or 0.02. Remember, that y1 and y2, are the probability that the CPU will read from memory and a page frame replacement. Now, if you never need to do either, you will gain a .037 or 3.7%increase in performance... if you only need to do 2 (every 10 sec or nsec etc.. any set of time) then your performance increase will be .0043 or .43% (basically nothing). So for ANY little performance increase you have to do less than 2 writes/page replacements.

I did this for the jump from 256 to 384 and found them to be 12.42% (for 0 reads from memory and no page file replacement) and a whopping 7.39% ( 2 page file replacements). NOW this is 8% performance increase just because you jumped in RAM, this SHOULD be noticeable (that's an understatement). If my numbers are wrong somebody let me know, its almost 1 in the morning and I can't really see my calculator. I just felt the need to contribute. SO in essence a jump from 256MB to 512MB, you would receive the addition of the two and get the numbers 17.55% for 0 replacements, and 9.94% for 2 replacements (all in a timespan out of 10). A 10% increase you SHOULD very well notice TrickKnee but if you would have gotten 512MB sticks and gone from 256 to 768... then I add the four(after doing the computation for 640-768). You would see a 22.47% for 0 replacements, and 11.04% for 2 replacements.... this is very close to just a 1% increase in plausible system performance (from the jump of 256 to 512) assuming my numbers aren't completely wrong. Sorry for all the typos. Hope this helped ease your mind.

I picked up a used TI 4400 card off eBay for 48.00 USD shipped. It's in and working great. My 3DMark 2001 benchmark (the latest one my MX 420 would run) is now 2.5x more than it was with the MX 420. The GW graphics slider auto-detects to the position just short of max, rather than the lowest position with the MX 420. So, I'm as happy as I'm allowed to be.

Wow Drizzt, I am so sorry. I completely missed this post. Yes, it's not very large... but I don't have any form of hosting. I can send it via email. You just have to edit it to whatever processes "you" may have running. I tried to include as many as I could think of, but there are programs out there that I've no idea of.

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. If you could recommend a free hosting site, I could do it that way. OR just give it to someone that already has hosting. It's no big secret, just automation of the batch commands of killing processes. I also edited it to run my game by entering a letter (but the only way this works is if it creates small batch files for each game in the home directory, so unless you like clutter I'd recommend taking this portion out... or I can beforehand).

The trick with the socket 939 AMD64's (Like the 3200+ I have) is that they have 2 memory controllers on the die. That way they can run 2 channels at once, so you match the DDR in pairs on each channel. I'm sure I'm passing RIMM with my dual channel PC3200.

does anyone know a decent graphics for me to upgrade to?

also if u wanted to add more storage could u do this without affecting any of your current files?

LunarBunny:

You may well be correct since PC3200 is 400MHz and two channels would effectively be 800MHz, which is the speed of my RDRAM (PC800). But the DDR2 technology is spankin' new. I got PC800 three years ago, and there was PC700 and PC600 before that. So that makes RDRAM at least four years old. And the latest RDRAM is PC1600, I think (1.6GHz).

So DDR is making advances and so is RDRAM. I do realize that RDRAM is probably only 10% of the market. It was only put in high-end gaming machines, like my 3-year old Dell 8200. I guess it isn't easy selling faster RAM at 2.5x the DDR price when it's hard to quantify the advantage. Whereas the price advantage of DDR is immediate and compelling, although DDR2 prices are quite a bit higher than DDR.

the search button is your friend. you can add storage externally if you do not have a free IDE / ATA spot. please stick with the topic if you wish to post in this thread.

Depends on what you're referring to. If it's bandwidth sorry. PC3200 in Dual Channel has a 400Mhz bandwidth. The good news is that although the bandwidth is smaller, they access memory blocks in parallel (better throughput). SO while RIMM is Tx/Rx 2 bits at a time (if you have 2 modules) then DDR will be sending 32 bits (if your default word size is 32). If you look at performance... their pretty darn close to the same. But I've heard RIMM has a jump on DDR for a little better speed. Someone read an article similar to the one I did. Please post to verify and give the updated speeds. Maybe it was awhile ago and DDR2 surpassed.

Lansing Kai Don

I'll just say that I'm glad that I have competetive speeds for less than Rambus. This runs nice and fast, and every time I looked at RIMM I just couldn't stand the prices.
I don't think AMD ever had a contract with Rambus, so it's not even available for their CPUs.

EDIT: Yes, the true cycle speed is 2[channels]x200[MHz]=400MHz, but in the spirit of DDR, it runs at 2[channels]x200[MHz]x2[DDR]=800MHz (DDR is called what it is because it utilizes the top and bottom of the clock cycle)

Yes, true it does. But that is already taken into account. Hence the difference between PC100 SDRAM and 200Mhz DDR. The only reason for the name convention is due to Rambus. So you really are only operating at a 200Mhz bus.

Lansing Kai Don

running with 512 RAM on my P4 2.8

Just picked up a stick of PNY 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory for $20 here:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...6-3906&afsrc=1