I was just wondering what the difference would be from 1 gig? I have heard many mixed answers, Some say it may help in memory hungry games like bf2 which i play alot and others say it can make some slower idk?? why? some said it decreases the paging file which is good and others said that it wont be noticed that much? So i came to you guys to give me a good answer thanks.

I agree that it might help some games but don't expect huge improvements.

According to info I found on the Kingston web site, you will not notice any difference with more than 1gb even if you are a power user, unless you have a server.

I increased from 1GB to 2GB because of Half Life 2. Other than that, I found absolutely no difference.

Whoever told you ram can make things more slower is ignorant. The more ram you have in your system the better the preformance. If you play games like BF2 on high settings then it's a must to have 2gb of ram or at the least 1.5gb of ram because BF2 on high settings uses 1.1gb of ram alone.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

if you can afford it, it is definitely advisable to go in for more RAM. it defenitely adds to the processing power.

nb.

Check your site's google Page Rank here

"According to info I found on the Kingston web site, you will not notice any difference with more than 1gb even if you are a power user, unless you have a server."

Make that 2gb, under some heavy duty circumstances.

Ultimate Memory Guide
How Much Memory Do You Need? etc.
http://www.kingston.com/tools/umg/u...
.......

Memory FAQs - System Specific
Issue:
KGQ-080802-2 Will additional memory speed up my computer?

Resolution: Additional memory will not increase the speed of the CPU, but it will reduce the time a CPU spends waiting for information from the hard drive. RAM provides data to a CPU faster than a hard drive, so it will not take as long for programs to execute.

KGQ-080802-4 Will adding memory improve Web browsing?

Resolution: Internet browsing speed depends on several factors, including your modem connection speed, traffic on the site you're visiting, and the components in your system. You will probably notice the biggest improvement from additional RAM if you are viewing or working with large files such as photos, digital audio, and video.

""others say it can make some slower idk?? why?""

" Whoever told you ram can make things more slower is ignorant. "

In order for the cpu's L2 cache, or on older mboards with older cpus that did not have L2 built in, the onboard L2 cache, to be able to cache all your ram and make access to it faster, the addresses of all the ram installed on the mboard must be able to fit within the capacity of the L2 cache. It is possible on many mboards to install more ram than the L2 cache can handle, and in that case the L2 cache is not used at all, and you will experience a noticable overall decrease in the apparent ram speed, even though the ram itself is still running at the same speed.

The bigger the L2 cache on the cpu, or on the mboard for the older cpus, the better.

e.g. on many current mboards you can install as much as 4gb of ram - all of the ram may be cached by the L2 if you install 2gb of ram, but more than that may not be.

e.g. I have an Epox MVP3-G5 with a 2mb L2 onboard cache in which you can install K6-2 or K6-III cpu's, maximum - the mboard chipset will recognize as much as 768mb of ram according to updated specs, but 512mb is the maximum that can be cached by the L2.

If you want to see for yourself beforehand how much of a performance hit you would experience if you had more ram installed than the L2 cache can handle and the L2 was not being used, go into your bios Setup, and if there is a setting to disable the L2 cache there, disable it and try the computer for a while.

Moving from 512mb sticks to 1gb sticks can be slower depending on their latency. The larger sticks tend to have slower latency.

So, having 1gb @ 2x512mb can be faster than having 2gb @ 2x1gb.

This is what I hear but have not spent the time to validate this information as I am not a gamer.

Bryan

"Moving from 512mb sticks to 1gb sticks can be slower depending on their latency. The larger sticks tend to have slower latency."

True, but the difference is tiny, and increasing the amount of ram up to a certain point, and/or using ram that runs at a higher mhz, makes a lot more difference.

Also, the CL rating only makes a difference when the ram is initially accessed, and is also a tiny factor. e.g. ram rated at CL3 is initially accessed slower than ram rated at CL2, but once it has been accessed if it continues to be accessed there is no performance difference between the two.

I'm talking about in terms of memory file storage.

Plus I was reffering to his processor.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

"Also, the CL rating only makes a difference when the ram is initially accessed, and is also a tiny factor. e.g. ram rated at CL3 is initially accessed slower than ram rated at CL2, but once it has been accessed if it continues to be accessed there is no performance difference between the two."

I agree - how fast you exit your driveway in the morning, has arguably no influence on how quick you'll get to work.

The Secret Letter From Iraq

The issue concerns some old Intel Socket 7 chipsets, specifically the 430xX series including the 430FX, 430HX, 430MX (mobile chipset), 430VX and 430TX. All five of those chipsets will only cache 64MB worth of memory, except for the 430HX which can cache either 64MB or 512MB depending on the tag RAM used on the motherboard. For motherboards with the 430HX, you can sometimes upgrade your tag RAM if you have the lower end version installed.

Now, keep in mind, that we are talking about the maximum cacheable memory. That means that the motherboard will only use L2 cache on the motherboard with the first 64MB of memory you have in your machine. The L1 cache built into the microprocessor is not affected by this, as it is on the processor. Nowadays, L2 cache is built into all current processors, making this a non-issue. Back when the Intel 430xX chipsets were around, the L1 cache was on the chip, and the L2 cache and associated tag RAM were on the motherboard.

So, how much memory can you use with these chipsets? The maximum memory you can use with most of them is 128MB. With the 430HX, you can use 512MB, and with the 430TX, you can use 256MB.

Now the question is: does it matter? I haven't seen any solid benchmarks that prove or disprove these theories, but I've seen a lot of talk and conjecture about them.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

"The issue concerns some old Intel Socket 7 chipsets"

Yes, and a lot of other older chipsets.
Yes, some older chipsets have a relatively low limit to how much L2 onboard cache they can support, but many mboards did not have the max L2 they would support installed on the mboard (some el-cheapo models had no L2 at all), so the mboard itself may not support caching as as much ram as the chipset is capable of, depending on how much L2 is there.
If the chipset will support the L2 cache size, the ratio of L2 to ram cached on all the mboards that had onboard L2 and no on cpu L2 was the same as I stated for my Via MVP3 chipset - 2mb L2 supports caching up to and including 512mb or ram, 1 mb supports to 256mb, 512kb supports to 128mb, etc.

I don't know if that particular ratio applies to L2 on the cpu, it probably doesn't, but the size of the L2 cache still matters, wherever it is, as far as how much ram can be cached by it.
If you search on this site you will find many relatively recent posts along the lines of - I installed more ram and now my computer runs slower - I had 2 gb and I installed 4gb and now my computer runs slower - etc.
If they installed ram that was compatible and all the ram is running at the same mhz as it was before, the L2 cache is no longer being used.

You can easily benckmark the overall speed of your system before and after installing more ram to see if this problem applies to your case.

If you look around on the net, you will see all sorts of similar issues with 4GB of RAM installed. The amounts in task manager vary. I've seen 3GB, 3.2GB, 3.56GB, etc. It all depends on the hardware you have in your PC and its requirements for address space. Motherboards with PCI-Express see the worst hits. I've read that it easily takes up to 512MB of addresses for all the different ports, and those boards with SLI capabilities take up even more. Factor in your video card, BIOS, and other hardware using DMA and you can see how quickly that 1GB or so can disappear.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

You last post is about other subjects all together - the ram available to Windows after programs have loaded, and what impact they have on how fast your comuter runs. And some of what you're taking about is I/O port addresses which don't use very much system resources at all, not ram location addresses.
What I'm saying is with everything else being equal, these people are experiencing very noticable overall slowdowns of their systems when they have done nothing else new but added more ram. I read one example where he had benchmarked before and after the ram was added - it was 25% or so slower after adding the ram, on a system with an XP2600+ .

The last post was just contributing to also other factors to why the ram may also slow down in preformance as well.

Well I have seen people that use 64bit processors and use 4gb of ram without any slowdowns after memory benchmark testing it.

But I did run across this bit of info...

"A 32-bit system can only handle a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, but using 2 GB of RAM or more on a 32-bit system can severely limiting the amount of accessible memory in an existing system"

From what i'm getting from basis.com is that the reason why these people are getting these slowdowns when adding 2gigs or more is more of the result of the 32bit processor itself.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

"Well I have seen people that use 64bit processors and use 4gb of ram without any slowdowns after memory benchmark testing it."

What is the size of the L2 on those cpu's?
If that's larger than most 32 bit cpu's that's not surprising.

"....these people are getting these slowdowns when adding 2gigs or more is more of the result of the 32bit processor itself."

I seriously doubt it has to do with the cpu itself, other than the size of the L2 built into it.

Like Athlon 64 on the Vencie core with 512k L2 cache.

I don't know how the 64bit semprons fair but I haven't read anything about slowdown problems when adding more then 2gbs of ram.

Well all I know is every problem I have read it's regards to drop of preformances is from 32bit processors.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

"Well all I know is every problem I have read it's regards to drop of preformances is from 32bit processors."

A lot more people have 32bit ones. Without also knowing what their L2 cache is it's comparing apples and oranges anyway.

Enough of this. We've answered franchyze922's primary question in any case, and have not gotten a second post from him so he may not even be looking at this.

Was any factual evidence introduced in this thread?