RAM Upgrade Question

[bori]

Hello all,

I'm looking to upgrade my current RAM and have come here to see what your opinion is. My current RAM is relatively old, 2x2GB DDR PC800. Now, my motherboard only supports up to DDR2 1200 RAM, and I don't have the money to buy a new motherboard (and a new processor to boot) right now. I was wondering what you guys think of getting 4x2GB of DDR PC1100 RAM replacements. Would this be a noticeable difference?

I'm playing SWTOR right now, and although it is playable, there are times in which I am in town or other somewhat populated areas and my FPS goes down to something like 5-10 FPS, even with it being on medium. My other specs are the following:

• Intel Q6600 2.4 Ghz Quad
• 4GB DDR2 PC800 RAM (restated for reference)
• ATI Radeon 5850 GPU
• 90 GB SSD Vertex 2 (this is where SWTOR is installed)

Now I found this on Newegg, which I'm leaning to buy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231194

What are your opinions BG? Is it worth it to upgrade from my current to this RAM?

Thanks!

[Arkanna]

I suspect the video card is causing your performance issues moreso than your RAM. IMO, you're better off saving up and buying a new CPU/RAM/Mobo set at the same time.

[Deadgye]

The 5850 isn't a bad, nor outdated card. Is the game really that graphically intensive? I'm more confused as to why he's using ddr2. I thought everything moved to ddr3 before we even started quad cores. What motherboard do you have?

[Arkanna]

It's not bad, but it *is* 2 years old and is surely more of a performance bottleneck than having 4GB RAM vs having 8GB. What resolution are you running the game at?

Also, there were many LGA 775 motherboards that only came equipped for DDR2. All depended upon which chipset was on it.

[bluefan]

And ToRs engine is just...sub par. Even makes my friend with a beast of a PC slow down at times. Make sure turn off shadows completely. My [email protected] and OC GTX 460 plays it smooth at 1920x1200.

[izembo]

yea, biggest/best advice is to turn shadows off completely and you'll play much better. i have a 6 year old pc with 3 gigs of ram and a 9800gt and run the game on max settings with no shadows and sit around 30-45fps, with heavy things only droppin to 15-20 at worst, which is at least tolerable for me

[bori]

yea, biggest/best advice is to turn shadows off completely and you'll play much better. i have a 6 year old pc with 3 gigs of ram and a 9800gt and run the game on max settings with no shadows and sit around 30-45fps, with heavy things only droppin to 15-20 at worst, which is at least tolerable for me

Thanks for the suggestion, this definitely helped. Although my reasoning is a little biased, as I'm complaining about low FPS issues in high populated areas (Imperial Fleet on a high pop server, or populated leveling areas).

The 5850 isn't a bad, nor outdated card. Is the game really that graphically intensive? I'm more confused as to why he's using ddr2. I thought everything moved to ddr3 before we even started quad cores. What motherboard do you have?

My motherboard is roughly 3 years old, and it didn't support anything beyond ddr2 (was on a slight budget). The link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128345

That's why at this moment I'm limited as to what RAM I can get. : ( Unless of course, I save up for a new combo! : )

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Amastacia]

The bottleneck is probably the stock-clock Q6600, sadly. As great of a chip as it is, it's getting quite long in the tooth, and heavily-populated areas require a lot of texture loading, which is going to stress GPU, CPU, and RAM.

There isn't that big of a difference between DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066+, so I wouldn't get that worked up over it. Plus, for gaming specifically, there are only a few cases (e.g. BF3, Skyrim) where more than 4GB matters, because most games can't or don't use more than 2GB of RAM. I'd also recommend going 2x4GB rather than 4x2GB if you did decide to upgrade anyway... going beyond 2 DIMMs can occasionally introduce instability, and it's 2 more components that can die and cause problems.

The 5850 should be fine, and I wouldn't rush to upgrade until specs and price on the 7950 come out, which will be in the next few weeks. I'd expect it to be quite a lot better than the 6950, but also significantly more expensive, and as the 6950 is retired, prices will drop so that retailers can clear out their remaining inventory. Would be a great time to jump on one provided you don't, and don't plan to, game on a 30" monitor, set up Eyefinity, etc. where you'd want more beef.

Best bet, as has been said, is to save up for new CPU, RAM, and mobo. RAM is dirt cheap these days, and i5-2500Ks can regularly be had for under $200, combine those with a $100-150 motherboard, and you've got a very worthwhile upgrade. Think a friend of mine just picked up 8GB of DDR3-1600 for $30 or $40, which is hard to argue with.