Differences between 4 and 8 GB DDR3

[Vapid]

Okay I'm just curious as to why a change in RAM (albeit a large change, but 4GB DDR3 should still be fine I think) has made RO2 almost unplayable for me.

In short, I had some PC issues and formatted my HD, re-installed Windows and all my software. So far I'm only running RO2 and one other game (which works fine) - before the problems started I had 8 GB of the same memory but had to remove a stick as I think it was dying (I ran memtest and it said there were problems) and the game ran smooth as a nut with everything on Ultra. I never had any slowdown whatsoever, even on 64 player maps and with loads of smoke and artillery. It was the best the game had ever ran (the GOTY patch I mean) but since removing half my RAM the game is sluggish as Hell. I knocked down the default GFX setting to High, and then to Medium. Everyone stutters when they run and the FPS must be about 15 or something (guessing here, but it's slow) and I have no idea why. I've never known the game run this poorly and it says 3 GB is the recommend whereas I have 4 and it's good quality DDR3.

I know RO2 is CPU-heavy but that's not changed and it ran great before. My PC even auto-shut down earlier because when I tried it on Ultra after I first re-installed (assuming the performance would be similar to before, albeit maybe a bit slower) it practically ground to a halt, maps took ages to load (and often timed out/lost me my slot) and as I say on one occasion my PC just shut down.

These problems are only with RO2. What's going on guys? Am I missing something obvious? I have the latest Nvidia driver of course. :IS2:

Specs:

Windows 7 x64
Q6600 2.4GHz
GTX 550 Ti 1GB
4GB DDR3

 

[Proud_God]

Are the your RAM sticks still installed in dual channel mode?

 

[tixhal]

4gb ram fill pretty quickly while playing (including cache). the cache is swapped to your pagefile more often. this can cause performance issues. if you have a spare usb stick you could try using it for "ready boost" (win7), it might help. i use it since i got win7, but i have no idea how effective it actually is.

 

[Vapid]

Are the your RAM sticks still installed in dual channel mode?

How can I check/change that?

 

[tixhal]

if you only have one stick left it's single channel. you need 2 or 4 for dual channel. depending on your motherboard you sometimes have to put the sticks in certain sockets to get dual channel. check the manual for details.

 

[Vapid]

LOL I had a feeling that's how it worked, and I had it in A before - I put the stick in the other slot (slot B, which I know now I shouldn't have) and it booted up and then froze on the desktop. Shut down, put it back in A and it hasn't frozen yet... and I hope it doesn't. It definitely booted up in single channel mode both times so that's good I think. After I tried B it reset my CMOS clock so I had to re-do that and go back to default settings. I enabled overlapping memory though or it only displays 3GB.

Still not sure why it's so slow on RO2 though. Do I have to tweak settings in the .ini file? I didn't have to before.

I've ordered some more RAM though.

 

[lawless]

i finally just got a beefy server with 16g to play with. the prices have really come down since the back in the 90's. can you remember how much ram was at fry's then?

 

[Vapid]

Yeah lol. I just paid

 

[tixhal]

i remember paying 140DM (~70€) for 512mb ddr400 ram back in the day. totally worth it

 

[PermenentMarker]

Very odd that the issue is just with RO indeed.

For the game running sluggish, that isn't normal. Also if you don't get performance increases when going from ultra to medium, then it might be something either driver or hardware related.

I would install hwmonitor
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
Just to keep an eye on your cpu and gpu temperatures.

Have you checked your cpu fan and heat sync for dust accumulation ?
Same goes with the videocard.




All in all, most people do not really need more then 4 gigs, but these days with Windows 7, office2010, Firefox12 with youtube tabs, a good antivirus...

Your OS can take up to 2.5 - 3 gigs of ram... but that's if you aren't careful or you just like to keep mass windows available at all times...

A game will take usually between 1 and 3 gigs depending on the game.

So these days, having 8 is nice, but if we manage our OS cleanly, we can make do with 4.

 

[Vapid]

Remember that I've just re-installed Windows too - I installed the essentials (AVG, 7-Zip, CCCP codecs) and RO2 installed some .NET framework and DirectX stuff but aside from that the PC is pretty bare so there's no crap I've accumulated over the years that would slow everything down. The registry should be pretty spotless.

 

[Warlord]

Don't know for certain, but it sounds like your problem might be with your RAM.
You mentioned earlier that your 4GB was only showing up as 3GB, plus crashes & sluggishness with memory heavy games like RO2...system boot problems, and memtest errors on top of that.
Yeah...I'd give the new RAM a go.

 

[Vapid]

Just had a quick game of classic mode and it ran fine on medium - must indeed have been a RAM issue which (hopefully) has now sorted itself. My new sticks should be here on Saturday so I should be back to normal then, and I can ramp everything back up to Ultra.

Thanks for all your help guys. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong.

 

[r5cya]

best thing i ever did for ro2 was up the ram from 4 to 12 gig.