Will faster Ram help me?

I was amazed when I went to my local puter bits and pieces shop to ask the price for a 512 stick of PC2100 DDR SDRAM one of which I already have only to be told its outdated. I've only had this sys for around 18 months.

I recently got a new combat flight sim game and it runs real slow on this sys.
I have a 256 mb ATI 9600 pro graghics card.. pentium 2.53.. 512 of the above ram ( Samsung )

I am no techie.. heres what Everest overclock says:

Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.1.2600 (WinXP Retail)
Date 2004-10-17
Time 19:53


--------[ Overclock ]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Properties:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4A
CPU Alias Northwood, A80532
CPU Stepping C1
Engineering Sample No
CPUID CPU Name Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
CPUID Revision 0F27h

CPU Speed:
CPU Clock 2524.83 MHz (original: 2533 MHz)
CPU Multiplier 19.0x
CPU FSB 132.89 MHz (original: 133 MHz)

CPU Cache:
L1 Trace Cache 12K Instructions
L1 Data Cache 8 KB
L2 Cache 512 KB (On-Die, ATC, Full-Speed)

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID 09/23/2002-SiS-651-6A6IXE19C-00
Motherboard Name ECS L4S5MG3 (3 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 2 DIMM, Audio, Video)

Chipset Properties:
Motherboard Chipset SiS 651
In-Order Queue Depth 12
CAS Latency (CL) 2.5T
RAS To CAS Delay (tRCD) 3T
RAS Precharge (tRP) 3T
RAS Active Time (tRAS) 6T

SPD Memory Modules:
Samsung M3 68L6423CTL-CB0 512 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM (CL 2.5 @ 133 MHz) (CL 2.0 @ 100 MHz)

BIOS Properties:
System BIOS Date 09/23/02
Video BIOS Date 03/10/06
Award BIOS Type Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00PG
Award BIOS Message L4S5MG3 Ver1.00(DX) 09/23/2002
DMI BIOS Version 6.00 PG

Graphics Processor Properties:
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0)
Video Adapter ATI Radeon 9600 (RV350)
GPU Code Name RV350 (AGP 1002 / 4150, Rev 00)
GPU Clock 398 MHz
Memory Clock 202 MHz

Sensor Properties:
Tsystem 30 °C (86 °F)
Taux 41 °C (106 °F)
Fcpu 1688 RPM
Vcore 1.46 V
V2.5 1.84 V
Vio 3.30 V


I wondered if I should just get another stick of the ram I have already or try if it will work to replace the existing RAM with the newer stuff. 3200??? What do you think? And will doing anything with RAM make this run 3d apps better?

I hate being grounded!!!


Hmmmmm do those temps look a bit high? This has been on for around 10 hrs. Doing nothing but surf for the last 3 or 4 hrs though.

 

The quality of 3d apps will not change by adding ram.
More ram will allow you to have allot more open, and the apps will run more stable.
As for your temps, you should not worry about it.

 

He didnt say anything about quality; just if they would run better. IMO yeah 3d intensive apps run much better when you have more physical memory available to the system.

 

Thanks guys.. I should have been more specific. I can choose the quality settings within the game. Its FPS that I am after. Of course the higher the detail the lower the FPS but I am finding that if there is a lot going on in the game graphics wise even on quite low quality settings I am getting temporary freezes. I don't know it its any use but this game is IL2 sturmovik forgotten battles with the ace expansion pack.

I am sure more ram will help. Do you think that I should just get another stick of the PC2100 or go for 2 sticks of faster ram? Apparrently my mobo will take a gig of ram. It's just that I dont know whether it will run the faster ram or given the mobo specs whether it will run the faster ram without me gaining anything.

So.. 1 more stick of 2100 or a gig of something faster.. what do you think?

Yup every time I get a new flight sim I am looking at upgrades.. lol

 

the ram is already running at the same speed your bus is 133mhz. i dont think you will get any benifit from faster ram.

it seems like you should be getting acceptable frame rates. do you have anti-aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering enabled? that would really choke the video card.

 

While your games & apps will load much faster with more RAM, I myself, don't really see much increase in frame rates. I do believe it helps alot in full rooms of Battlefield Vietnam.
I just stuck another 512megs in my machine & I do notice smoother gameplay. Not necessarily actual frames, just smoother transitions.

I say get the RAM. That's always a good buy IMO.

 

Hi,

Don't get faster ram,as SiLenZe said the pc2100 is running at the same speed as your cpu.

Sometimes running ram out of sync (different speed than cpu) can cause stability problems and then you have to underclock the ram anyway

But more ram is always good

Rick

 

Thanks all for the help so far.

Looks like another stick of 2100 for me then.

As to anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering I have looked everywhere to find some way of disabling them. No go so far The ATI control stuff I have doesnt have an option that I can see to disable. All there seems to be is " Application preference" or custom settings. Nothing to disable them though.

I did tweak a few settings in there though and it seems to have improved things a bit.

I suspect the lack of RAM to be my main problem though.

 

I am having the same Problem with same Board and same Game!

Hi Flyingaddict!

I have the same Motherboard as you. The ECS Elitegroup L4S5MG3 and a Pentium 4 2,53Ghz (same as you have), but just the ATI Radeon 9000 Graphiccard and just 256MB of Samsung DDR-RAM PC2100.

AND i am playing IL2 FB+AEP+PF too!!! But it is unplayable. I have reduced all In-Game-Settings to the lowest and the game stocks and freezes.

So my idea now is to buy a new stick of 512 MB RAM. Theres no more DDR-266 (PC2100) RAM to buy, so i want to buy a stick of DDR-333 RAM. The mobo can handle this i think. I have checked this http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Produc...&LanID=0&DetailID=28&DetailName=Specification

So please can you tell me what you have done at last?? Have you update your RAM? And is IL2 now running better?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Re: I am having the same Problem with same Board and same Game!

In your case the best improvement for gaming is too start with a better Graphics Card.
Also note, there is lot's of PC2100 DDR avaible!

 

you are overclocking your 9600pro aren't you? that would help a lot.

 

I have a 9000, not 9600. And i cannot overclock it cause it gets disfunction immediatly. I'm not sure but i think this card can handly DX8 only. So i need to grab a new card that can handle the dx9 though i think.

But the PC is always outsourcing to pagefile.sys, and this makes my game frozen for seconds i think.

Finally i have to update both - RAM and GFX Board to get pleasure in 3D Gaming. Damn - wish i had my own bank ....

 

I could play IL2 w/ a 1.4GHz celeron 768MB SDRAM and an nVidia 5200, so I think you should be able to play no problem

if you goto the ATI control panel in the 3D section ... there should be an option to select direct3d/opengl performance options ... click custom and put all the settings to app pref or default off

also remember to get the latest drivers and directX ... if you just have the ones that came w/ the card they are probably outdated ... my 9800 card came with 3.X drivers which were like a year old when I bought it and the thing wouldn't run stable ... updated to the rescent one and it runs very nicely

 

Thx Pyrate!

I have installed the latest Catalyst two days ago. My settings are all put to the lowest / eq. off. I have DX9.0c also installed. But my gfx hw can only handle DX8 commands. It doesnt feature the DX9 thing, i think. I have read this info somewhere. And only 256MB of RAM makes my machine outsourcing to much. So the game stutters and freeze only if my harddrive is doing something for a while. For all the people with performance trouble playing IL2, Forgotten Battles and especially Pacific Fighters ... i have found this: http://groups.msn.com/BeowolffsRoninLair/il2fbacepfhelp.msnw

May it help you. My performance is a little bit better in game now after following the tips from this link.

Thx all of you.

 

Yeahhh that's it!

Just got a new 512MB PC-2700 now - and IL2/FB/AEP/PF is runnning really smooth. I have 768MB at all now. Get more RAM and enjoy the Gameplay!