Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Whoever said using 4Gb of ram over 2Gb helped playing BF2 is a liar or an idiot. Please no one go out an by 4Gb of ram just to play BF2 because it would be a pointless move.

Amen.

Are you sure it's impossible to run the memory with 1T?

Not impossible, but with amd systems there are only a few mobos that can support a 1T rate with all 4 banks filled.

[sackynut]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

i have 3 512 sticks of XMS ram, and my bf2 works perfectly at MAX settings (HIGH lighting, 4xaa, and one video card). I only see a need for 2 or more if your going to be like listening to music and crap while playing. But I dont and I can alt tab quickly and I get a solid high fps.

[The Soup Nazi]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

i run 4 1GB sticks of PC3200 and am frustrated with Windows' memory addressing. this is what i see when i go to my System control panel:



i notice NO difference in BF2 performance. but, i do seem to have better overall performance when i'm multi-tasking with dozens of open windows.

[BoloMarkXXX]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

32 Windows just cant handle 4 gig Win x64 can GO HERE READ WHY

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/8/1/381c074b-b5d9-4054-a909-fbba470af276/Benefits_of_Windows_x64.doc

also the MOBO & chipset have alot to do with how memory is handled.

There are 2 types of memory Single side chips(high dollar) & double sided chips, on most mobo's use'n 4 double sided chips will drop you from 400 to 333 (because they require more power), 4 singles are needed to stay at 400.

I run Win x64 /w 2 gig mem & its great fast & stable I never have to reboot like with my 32 bit machine & 32XP & I'm get into the game 30 seconds or more before anyone else after a map reload.

[whofriggincares]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

There are registry hacks to let you use all 4GBs. I don't know where you can find them, but I've heard about that for a while now.

[Flanker]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Ive ran 4gb in my machine and theres no difference. Remeber a machine will only use what it requires so if a game uses 1.5gb of ram then thats all it will use!

QFT.

If 4GB gives you an advantage it's time to clean up your system. At that point you got so many programs running in the back that even a virus would just leave to find a better PC.

Seriously Battlefield 2 uses 800-900MB of RAM and therefore with 1GB of RAM there isn't to much space left for the operating system. 2GB would provide that space and therefore give the performance boost. Since loading for the pagefile is slow.

Above 2GB that would make a difference anymore unless you want to run 15 virusscanners, photoshop, 10 firewalls, 4 browsers and 5 messengers in the background when you are gaming.

QFT.

[Regent]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

"But 2->4GB made BF2 go into hypermode!"

Complete crap. BF2 never uses more than about 1.3 Gb of RAM, leaving plenty for the OS, and some other apps, if you have 2 Gb.

[Flanker]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Complete crap. BF2 never uses more than about 1.3 Gb of RAM, leaving plenty for the OS, and some other apps, if you have 2 Gb.

QFT :) Couldn't have said it any better.

[Berrern]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Ok, so I got my RAM on Saturday, and have done quite some testing since then.

First of all, I got all 4 sticks to run at almost the same settings as my 2GB, namely 400MHz with 2-3-2-5 timings. However, there is no way with my motherboard to run 4 sticks in 1T, so that had to be changed to 2T.

Windows only recognizes 2.5GB, I've tried different boot.ini switches but they're not compatible with a SLI system, so there's no way to increase the amount Windows sees, without upgrading to Win x64.

When I ran CPU-z though, it did see all my 4096MB of RAM.

Anyway, onto the testing/benchmarks.
In-game BF2 I noticed no difference at all. FPS seemed like before, and the gameplay felt like before.
I've heard people saying that 4GB wont help the in-game performance, but it may/will improve loading times and the verification process - so I decided to do some tests there aswell. I tried loading the maps three times with each different RAM configuration (2 vs 4GB), and removed the first number as it's not accurate due to caching. Between every load, I closed and re-opened BF2.

The numbers displayed are the seconds it took from loading started, to the verification was complete. Each map has two numbers (two tests) for better accuracy.

4GB (2.5 in XP), 2T:
Karkand: 23.7 - 23.7
Dalian: 23.6 - 23.4
Mashtuur online: 26.0 - 24.2
3DMark05: 11 942

2GB, 1T:
Karkand: 23.0 - 22.8
Dalian: 24.1 - 23
Mashtuur online: 25.1 - 24.3
3DMark05: 12 088

So, if we look at these results, there's NO benefit wrt loading times when running 4GB. Actually, the loading times overall are lower for the 2GB configuration!
Also, the 3DMark score was higher when using 2GB.

I've decided to return the sticks, and use the $500 on something more useful. When Windows Vista, with better memory handling, is out I might upgrade to 4GB again, because right now there's not any point to it.

I wish I had a copy of x64, so I could to some proper 2vs4GB testing there too.

[Regent]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Might as well test your RAM bandwidth with SiSoft Sandra while you're at it. I'm sure you'd see a performance drop due to the 1t to 2t command rate change, but I wonder what the result would be. Thanks for reporting your findings!

[Hephaistion]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

If you own a system with a Intel or AMD processor released anytime in the last several years, you are using a 32-bit system. Right now, 32-bit systems are butting up against a limit to how much memory your system can make use of. Even if your budget could allow for more RAM, the machine can't make use of more than 4GB of RAM in any standard P4 or AMD system currently available at retail. On a per processor basis, you really can't make use of more than 2GB of RAM in a 32-bit system. Even if you have 2 processors to make full use of the 4GB limitation, the RAM is shared by the operating system and any applications currently running, reducing your available memory to something less than 4GB. While that seems like a ton of RAM compared to the 512MB of RAM most of us are comfortably using to run Windows, it doesn't begin to touch the potential.

http://www.jakeludington.com/ask_jake/20050426_windows_sixty_four.html

[IntensivCareBear]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

hey Sauron! that was my first ever battlefield online name!

i played it first in that demo of secret weapons of WWII, the winter map HELLENDOORN!

that was one of my alltime favorite BATTLEFIELD maps. hell, it probably is number 1

[Berrern]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Might as well test your RAM bandwidth with SiSoft Sandra while you're at it. I'm sure you'd see a performance drop due to the 1t to 2t command rate change, but I wonder what the result would be. Thanks for reporting your findings!

I'm as interested as you are in these comparisons, so I downloaded Sandra and ran the Memory Bandwidth benchmark.

4GB (2.5 in XP), 2T
Int buffered: 4853 MB/s
Float buffered: 4849 MB/s

2GB, 1T
Int buffered: 5966 MB/s
Float buffered: 5985 MB/s

Now, I just came back from buying WinXP Professional x64, so now I'll format and do some more testing with 4vs2GB. I'll report my findings later!
If you have any more benchmarks you want me to run, or things I should test, let me know and I'll do it :)

[Flanker]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Doesn't matter how much RAM gets recognized, it won't increase your BF2 performance. Stop wasting your money.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Has anyone upgraded to 4GB RAM?

Doesn't matter how much RAM gets recognized, it won't increase your BF2 performance. Stop wasting your money.

Too late.