MasterBlaster76
ICC Chairman
Yeah, that's what I meant - my XP is a 32bit. I've heard that XP 64bit is awful, so I wouldn't touch it.
Will 3gb of RAM bottleneck a Quad Core?
- Thread starter MasterBlaster76
- Start date
Yeah, that's what I meant - my XP is a 32bit. I've heard that XP 64bit is awful, so I wouldn't touch it.
AngryPixel
Chairman of Selectors
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2009
- Location
- Mumbai, India
- Online Cricket Games Owned
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - PS3
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
Why don't you upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit.. Your system is more than capable to handle it..
Chewie
BCCI President
um. He has Win7 64-bit...
Abhas
Retired Administrator
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2004
- Location
- New Delhi, India
And how do you know his system is capable of handling it? I have a printer which doesn't have a 64 bit driver, and without it, my system is incomplete.
Yeah, that's a different point altogether that he already has Windows 7 x64
MasterBlaster76
ICC Chairman
angryangy
ICC Chairman
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2004
Maybe. I think the speed of the RAM and particularly the CAS latency are more key to reducing the bottle neck than simply having lots of RAM. The clock rate will tell you how many transfers could occur in a second, but RAM doesn't work instantaneously in time with the clock. It needs a few clock cycles to respond to the command and access the address. It's like the seek time on a hard drive or optical drive, once it finds the address, to start from it can send a lot of data in a burst. There are a host of these timings, but CAS latency or CL is the most recognised timing value to look for. Generally current RAM has a CL between 6 and 9 clock cycles, with lower being better, but the faster the clock rate, the quicker the cycles. CL 9 at 1333 MHz means a real value of 13.5 nanoseconds, whereas CL 9 at 1600 Mhz means 11.25 ns.
That's assuming all other bottlenecks are covered. Eg, assuming "Quad Core" is an i7 with each RAM module having its own channel. If you're on a dual channel system and you have 3 RAM modules, then yeah, you're opening yourself up to unnecessary bottlenecks, but not because of the total amount of space in RAM, but because with an unpaired stick, the system might revert to single channel.
angryangy added 4 Minutes and 2 Seconds later...
That's assuming all other bottlenecks are covered. Eg, assuming "Quad Core" is an i7 with each RAM module having its own channel. If you're on a dual channel system and you have 3 RAM modules, then yeah, you're opening yourself up to unnecessary bottlenecks, but not because of the total amount of space in RAM, but because with an unpaired stick, the system might revert to single channel.
angryangy added 4 Minutes and 2 Seconds later...
A 32 bit OS can address up to 4 GB, but it will address your graphics card's RAM too. So the way to look at it is that your system has 4.5 GB and it addresses the first 4 GB.
angryangy
ICC Chairman
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2004
Okay, considering the specific point, I can't see how it's hardware linked at all, except by drivers. The driver base for XP and Vista/7 is different, especially for 64 bit, so if you have been installing XP drivers, then maybe you have a bit of a problem there...
Do you know what driver version you are using? I think there have been at least half a dozen Catalyst releases this year and each one has been used to address issues with recently released games. It's important not only to get the latest drivers but to check again to see if they are superseded.
Antivirus is a very important point. A lot of games now keep track of stats or save settings and frequently access these files as a result. Any AV program that does on-demand scans will probably scan these files as frequently as they are accessed, creating a stutter in frame rates or maybe even input lag. A good catch-all way to deal with this is to have the AV exclude folders such as Steam or the Documents/My Games folder, where a lot of user data is kept.
Do you know what driver version you are using? I think there have been at least half a dozen Catalyst releases this year and each one has been used to address issues with recently released games. It's important not only to get the latest drivers but to check again to see if they are superseded.
Antivirus is a very important point. A lot of games now keep track of stats or save settings and frequently access these files as a result. Any AV program that does on-demand scans will probably scan these files as frequently as they are accessed, creating a stutter in frame rates or maybe even input lag. A good catch-all way to deal with this is to have the AV exclude folders such as Steam or the Documents/My Games folder, where a lot of user data is kept.
