16 GB of ram seems slow, along with my 3d mark score.

My system doesn't seem much faster with 16 GB of RAM as it did when I only had 4. It shows it has 16, but where's the performance I would expect. Also my 3d mark score is p2774 and in extreme its x775. I was expecting a little better with cross fire 5870s and the i7 840 QM. I just upgraded from the 4870s and I don't see much improvement either.

Would RAM effect my 3d mark score if it wasn't working right? And what's a good way to tell if in fact I'm getting the most out of the RAM?

 

Compared to the previous generation such as with the Mobility Radeon HD 4870, the HD 5870 should be about 20% faster, at least according to AMD. HD 5870 cards with GDDR3 memory are expected to have lower performance gains. The gaming performance of the 5870 should be sufficient for all current games (2009-2010) in high resolution and high detail settings. The following games should run fluently in 1920x1200 with 4x Antialiasing: Left4Dead, UT3, Devil May Cry 4, Far Cry 2, ET:Quake Wars, and Wolfenstein MP (over 30 fps according to AMD slides - see below). Compared to the previous leader in the mobile segment, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M, the new HD 5870 should be noticeably faster.

- From notebookcheck

Edit: The above bolded is what should be of reverence to you.

 

People keep asking questions like this, and it makes me pissed at marketers, not you. More RAM does not equal a faster computer. Most people don't ever need more than 8 GB for everyday tasks and 3d gaming. Things like gaming rely on video-card RAM more. The RAM speed (mhz) is more of a factor in overall speed and has a slight impact on 3d scores. If you went down from say 1333mhz to 1033mhz, you may fell the difference slightly. Companies try to sell RAM as the end all of speed boosts, and that is a complete exaggeration. RAM affects your ability to multitask more though. More ram allows for more background tasks, multiple windows, etc.

As for your video cards, do you know your previous 3d mark scores? like Hackintoshihope said you should see around a 20% increase. Also you should be able to overclock the 5870s better than your previous cards. Maybe a 30% increase would be great.

 

More RAM allows you to multi-task more, have more things open. Just because a machine has an insane amount of RAM doesn't mean it will be fast, it can just do more.

 

RAM is like a desk or a bench top: the bigger it is the more you can do.

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True, it will help you to have more software running at the same but won't make the PC faster.

 

Those scores are probably normal for the 5870 mobility, it's several (real) generations old now.

 

If you don't play the latest and greatest, 5870M CF is still pretty decent. I ran BF3 on 1680x1050 all high settings, for 1920x1200 I had to turn down to medium. It benches the same as a 6970M which is still pretty decent too.

 

My m17x R2 with the 5870s ran BF3 like a champ at 1920x1200 and everything on high... heck, it still does

 

Yeah, I ran BF4 actually on high and full Hd and had no issues... Except for on Gulien peaks but that seemed to be because of 64 players.. 5870M is a beast and in CF even more...

 

*Cough* correction, I run BF2 Bad Company at max lol >.>