Couple of Q's about RAM

Hi there

Firstly hello, this is a great forum with lots of info.

I have recently purchased an m17x with Q820, standard 4G RAM which I believe is 1066mhz, and it has a Crossfire 5870 card. Very happy with the performance of games which is why I bought it but I have a couple of questions regarding that. I notice especially on Aliens vs predator that at the start of each level that it tends to stutter for a few seconds but then flows as smooth as.

1) Is this just the map loading up and would more RAM help it or is that just a processor function?

2) If it is RAM related, I might as well just upgrade to 8G 1333mhz but see there are 200pin & 204 SODIMM chipsets, CL5, CL9 etc ??? So what fits? Will this one be ok - Australia Online VIP or are there better choices?

Cheers Paul

 

What I would recommend is run Task Manager in the background while you play the game, on the Performance tab. When you're mid-game, alt tab to it and see how much RAM it's using and has been using, under the 'physical memory' graph. If it's not reaching the top, then you've got no problem with the RAM and it's likely just your game is loading up.

If you decide to upgrade your RAM, you need to look at DDR3 204-pin SODIMM RAM. The CL5/9 thing is the latency-lower is better, but it makes little difference in the real world.

 

Hi PTW,

Systems with 4GB of memory often experience performance drop due to frequent load stuttering, which reduces the in-game frame rates, particularly the minimum frame rates. 4GB of system memory is insufficient to run modern games, such as Warhammer Online and Crysis Warhead. installing 6GB of memory will provide significantly higher frame rates and a considerably smoother gaming experience. My recommendation is 8 GB as this gives you even more headroom. installing 6GB of memory will provide significantly higher frame rates and a considerably smoother gaming experience.

http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN811_Gaming_Performance Analysis_6GB_vs_3GB.PDF

The industry standard JEDEC DDR3 SODIMM memory module connectors are used. DDR3 1067 MHz, or 1333 MHz
(dual-channel configurations). NOTE: DDR3 1333 MHz memory is supported only on computers with an Intel Core i7 processor.

On an a 32-bit system configured with 4 GB of memory (RAM), Microsoft® Windows® will report 3.0 GB to 3.8 GB of available memory. This is normal for 32-bit versions of Windows (the most common versions). A 64-bit operating system (Microsoft® Windows® 64-bit version) is required to utilize 4 GB or more of memory.

If the above article wasn't enough to convice you. (who do those people at Corsair think they are anyways ) here is another benchmark test.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/corsair-triple-channel-ddr3,6614.html

 

No. No. And no.

All of those benchmarks are from Corsair themselves. If you actually READ the Tom's Hardware article that you keep throwing at us, you'll see that they state the benchmarks are courtesy of Corsair. The benchmarks are not FROM Tom's Hardware. I'm not saying Corsair has modified or fixed their results in any way, but they're a RAM manufacturer. Of course they want you to buy their more expensive products. They make more money. Show me an actual independant benchmark showing that 6GB is better than 4GB for games.


Rather than starting another flame war about why you're wrong, I'll just give YOU a Tom's Hardware article. And this time, the benchmarks are from Tom's Hardware themselves. Don't be arrogant and skip over it, please actually open and read it, FalconMachV. You'll probably be suprised.

Benchmark Results: 3D Games : Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?

Have a look, and see that the benchmarks with 3GB of memory matched the benchmarks for 6GB and even 12GB of memory.

@ PTW, like I said, run Task Manager in the background while you're running the game. See if your memory is peaking at 90% usage or above. If it is, you might want to consider a RAM upgrade. If not, then upgrading your RAM will do absolutely nothing.

 

Nice of you to drop by, I thought you were still busy trying to jump start your system on the Catalyst Mobility thread. Really a shame about the Catalyst Mobility Drivers failing again like I told everyone they would back in early JUNE.

The two studies I have posted speak volumes and are far more detailed and contain much more information regarding their methodology. Anyone running windows 7 64 bit on 2Gb is hard to take seriously.

 

Do you normally act like a complacent, rude, and unsociable person? Because that's how you come across. My post was in no way agressive, rude, or offensive, whereas your post is all 3 of those. I have warned you about this in a past thread, and you have repeated it. As such, your message has been reported for review by a moderator.

Erm, I haven't been on the Catalyst Mobility thread in ages. I'm fully satisfied with the drivers I'm on at the moment. I haven't come across a single non-working set of Catalyst drivers since I bought my laptop, 15 months ago. And I have to ask, what the hell does that have to do with the argument I posed?

The two studies you have posted are one study, from which Tom's Hardware took the benchmarks to form their own article. They simply explain their results in more detail. You once again have clearly NOT read the article I posted, as it explains its methodology as well as the Corsair article does. If anything, the article I posted is more reliable as it is from a totally independant tester. It is hardly an "off the cuff" study post.

The reason I've still got 2GB is I'm perfectly satisfied with it. What's your problem with me using it? I don't experience long loading times, nor do I experience low frame rates. The only reason I haven't upgraded yet is because I preferred to spend my money on more games. Most of the games I play don't max out my RAM. Such as Bad Company 2, MW2, DAO, ME2, Supreme Commander 2, OFDR, etc...

Your reply offers absolutely no addition to your prior argument. All your argument is based on a single unreliable source, and it will remain unreliable until you provide further evidence/research to back it up.

I would recommend that if you want to become a respected and liked forum member (or even if you just don't want to be banned) then you change your attitude, big time. Please stop being rude, otherwise you'll single handedly get this thread closed as well. That wouldn't be much help to the OP.

 

From what I can see, this RAM will be fine. SO-DIMM means that it's laptop memory, and it's DDR3-1333 so it's as fast as the processor will support. I haven't seen any laptop DDR3-1333 memory faster than CL9 either, so this is about as fast as you'll get.

I've written a post elsewhere on system memory usage. 4GB should be fine for most people, as almost every game out there has a 2GB memory usage limit, which leaves at least 2GB for the OS and background applications. (The 2GB limit is documented here and here on Microsoft's MSDN site.)

My development workstation at work only has 4GB of RAM with Windows 7 x64, and I never have any problems unless I'm running background antivirus, Outlook, Firefox, MSN Messenger, SQL Server, Visual Studio and VMWare all at the same time. That is a lot of apps to be running at once, and most of those are memory-heavy by definition. I've found I can run games just fine once I close SQL Server, Visual Studio and VMWare down.

My father-in-law has a computer, also running Windows 7 x64, that only has 2GB of RAM, an older Core 2 Duo processor (<2GHz), and a GeForce 8800GTX graphics card. This machine has no problems whatsoever running games like Company of Heroes or CoD4. If he has no problems on 2GB then a laptop with 4GB should be more than suitable.

That being said, the amount of memory you get really does depend on what you want to use the machine for. If you're just browsing and playing games then 4GB should be fine (although more won't hurt). If you're doing heavy photo editing, movie editing, development or running virtual machines then you're better off getting more memory.

 

Falcon is just trying to make himself feel good about wasting soo much extra cash on ram.

Stick to 4gb, it's good enough. EviLCorsaiR is right.

 

Metro 2033? - PC

Alienware use to be an enthusiast product, unfortunately it is being marketed to the masses these days and the end result is a mixture of minimalist and enthusiasts who will never see eye to eye. My specifcations below are higher than 99.5% of steam customers so my advice and experience is far different from the average user. Enthusiast PC gamers adopted 12 GB around November 2009 when companies like Kingston started shipping 12 GB kits. Windows 7-64 is capable of 128 GB of ram so be patient and wait for newer games to start adopting more RAM. Cryis 2 will be released just in time for Christmas this year and the vast number of PC gamers won't be able to play it in enthusiast settings. Certain games will see no benefit from increasing above 4GB and others will see a huge difference. It really depends who wrote the game. All high end enthusiast desktop motherboards are now tri channel and that means 6Gb or 12GB standard. If windows wants to move more gamers onto its new OS than it will naturally have to nurse them in that direction. Falcon North West is currently building systems with 6GB 12Gb and 24Gb. Dell is phasing out the 4GB option on M17x and currently offers 6GB or 8GB in many countries. Alienware Area51ALX currently offers builds of 6GB 1600MHZ or 12 GB. Not sure why anyone wants to argue about 4GB builds as no one builds them anymore.

 

I played Metro through on highest settings with 4GB RAM and it ran fine.

I have 8GB now because I run VM's and I don't see a difference but I haven't played all they way through yet.

It is interesting they say that 8GB or more is recomended when Metro is a 32bit process (is there a 64bit version?) so it cannot use more than 4GB of virtual memory, most 32 bit apps can't even use 4GB.

I ran a perfmon log while playing the first scene and Metro never used more than 907MB of VM and my avialable memory never went below 5.8GBs

Personally I wouldn't upgrade from 4 to 8GB for gaming yet.

 

Yes there is a 64 bit mode. Same with Crytek games. If you are running it in 32 bit mode than you are capped at 4GB. Game performance with metro is all over the map and is dependent on whether you are running Dx9,Dx10, or Dx11 and what settings.

 

As you can see below 32% of steam uses have XP 32 bit while only 26% are using 7-64. When we combine Vista 64 and Windows 7-64 it is about equal to Windows XP users.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Those running more than 4GB of ram are currently only 10% of steam users.

Windows XP 32 bit32.99%-0.81%
Windows 7 64 bit26.65%+2.26%
Windows Vista 32 bit14.01%-0.54%
Windows 712.07%+0.61%
Windows Vista 64 bit6.75%+0.16%
MacOS 10.6.3 64 bit5.31%-1.14%
MacOS 10.5.8 64 bit1.03%-0.32%
Windows XP 64 bit0.56%+0.04%
Windows 2003 64 bit0.32%-0.02%
MacOS 10.6 64 bit0.13%-0.20%
Other0.18%-0.04%

 

The marketing material for the optimum system specs lists "RAM: As much as possible (8GB+)". I never trust marketing material, because it's always full of lies. Whatever they've said means nothing if Metro 2033 doesn't run as a 64-bit process.

I've done a lot of searching, and cannot find anything that says that Metro runs as a 64-bit process. I have, however, found some indications that Metro only runs as 32-bit. There's only one way to find out for sure.

If someone out there has Metro 2033 and Win 7 x64, could you please bring up the Task Manager, then start Metro. When the game is running, pause it, then Alt-Tab back to the Task Manager. Have a look at the Processes tab and find the item for Metro. If it has "*32" to the right of it, Metro is only running 32-bit. If it's missing then Metro is properly 64-bit capable.

If I'm right, and Metro is only a 32-bit process, the standard 32-bit process limitation applies. A 32-bit process cannot use more than 2GB of RAM.

I hate to say this, but not everyone uses Alienware computers for gaming. They are high-powered machines, which makes them suitable high powered applications, such as Photoshop, video editing, CAD and 3D modelling. Many of these applications have 64-bit versions available, which means that they make the most of all the system's memory.

There are very few games that have 64-bit versions available. Crysis is the only one that comes to mind immediately. We may see more games with 64-versions in the future, but this comes down to requirements. But if a game only really needs between 1GB and 1.5GB of RAM for itself, it makes no sense to compile a 64-bit version. Having both 32-bit and 64-bit versions makes life a lot harder for the game's tech support staff.

As I noted above, having more than 4GB of RAM means nothing if the games don't actually use it. Those system are most likely multi-purpose, or have triple-channel motherboards with 3x2GB sticks in them.

I'll repeat: No matter what version of Windows, no matter how much RAM you have... If the process is running as 32-bit it cannot use more than 2GB of RAM.

 

I didn't get a 64bit option for Metro and unless the 32 bit game was compiled with the largeaddressaware switch it won't even be able to use 4GB

I doubt any game would utilize 8GB of RAM but it is easy to prove run perfmon and play the game.

That goes for every do I need more RAM question.

 

Thanks all for the info. Was having a look at the perfmon the other night but have yet to figure it out. Will try the task mangaer>performance thing and Alt& Tab and have a look anyway. I also posted this on the Steam forum and the consensus there was HDD possibly or ATI driver probs with DX11. Running the manager should pick that up as should GPU-Z as well so I'll see what's happening. Unfortunately I'll have to wait for another week as I need to reload the game and it's @ home. Anyway it's not really a biggie as the game plays fluently enough after that initial bit.

I also just saw yesterday when I checked the alienware website that they are putting in 6g standard.

 

I also have a question in regards to RAM on the M17x. I was looking into buying 4g of HyperX from newegg. Anyone think that this would be a good choice of RAM to upgrade to from the stock RAM Dell gives out?

 

No argument there. I have to say though; very, very few games will perform better with more than 4GB of RAM. Of course, that will change. More games are being made with 64-bit mode available nowadays and quite a few of those will perform better with more RAM. I wouldn't say it'd be a 'huge' difference but there would probably be a noticeable difference.

I still maintain that for most people, it's best to stick with 4GB and upgrade when the price of single 4GB sticks of RAM comes down. It's already come down a lot, but it'll keep on coming down.

I gave up on trying to run 64-bit Crytek games ages ago. ATi cards don't play well with the CryEngine 2 in DX10, and my Crysis games refuse to start in 64-bit and DX9. It'll only run in DX10 in 64-bit.

No. The only difference between the HyperX and stock RAM is the latency. And the RAM latency makes virtually no difference in real world gaming, only to benchmarks really.

 

90% of gamers use 4Gb so I am not surprised that some are getting their bun in a knot over Corsair's benchmarks. Irregardless extreme PC gamers and extreme hardware manufacturers have embraced 12GB and that is just the way it is.

Kingston Initiates Shipments of 12GB Memory Kits for Enthusiasts - X-bit labs

 

It's unfair to suggest that most gamers are making excuses about the Corsair benchmark just because they only have 4GB.

The truth still is that very few games use 64-bit, so very few games see the benefit of any more than 4GB.

 

Corsair vs EvilCorsaiR too funny. A real battle of the titans.

http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN811_Gaming_Performance Analysis_6GB_vs_3GB.PDF

 

Crysis used 64bit 3 frigin years ago. Maximum PC built an assume PC for $647 dollars and it included 4GB of ram (and 5770). I suppose there are still people running rams equivalent of VHS these days but why? 8Gb of Dell RAM for the M17x is dirt cheap.

 

I have to say, that "Corsair vs EviLCorsaiR" statement did make me chuckle.

I've already said before, though, that the link you keep throwing at us really isn't 100% to be trusted, as it's from Corsair themselves, the manufacturer of the RAM. I'm not saying they could be lying, but I am saying that I'd rather see research from an independant tester.

I've already posted a Tom's Hardware page where they tested several games with no boost to 6GB or even 12GB from 3GB. Can't be bothered to find it again.

Plus, they tested only a few games there-of which only ONE showed a significant difference beyond a few frames a second average.

If a survey was used to test every single game out there, I'm 100% certain that very few would prove significantly better on 6GB as compared to 4GB.

It's hardly dirt cheap. YOU might consider it dirt cheap but most people would consider several hundred dollars a pretty significant addition to the price. In one or two years it WILL be "dirt cheap" (or at least significantly cheaper than it is now) and it's only in a couple of years that it'll actually start to make a significant difference in most games to be a worthwhile upgrade for all but the most extreme gamers.

 

This, I'm sorry but I wont pay the extra cash for extra ram. 4GB has been enough for me for years and I still haven't have had the need to go for more (even thought I still could in theory as I do buy a set of RAM here and there when its on sale @ Microcenter). Ive ran all my games maxed out for as long as I could remember (with the exception of Crysis when it came out, but now its like every other game) and the only thing I have upgraded was the GPU.

 

Most likely all the applications you are running are 32 bit and they have a 4GB limit. That is why 4Gb has worked for you for the last 10 years.

Gaming laptop is a bit of a misnomer as PC games as a general rule do not provide support for laptops (read the PC game box). Laptops have always been well behind the technology curve and most of the 'laptop' gaming rigs purchased today will struggle by Christmas to play new titles on enthusiast settings and some will struggle from the day the box is opened do to build specifications. Even if you drop $6000 on an M17x it will still look sad 2 years from now and that is just the way technology goes. Some new owners are comming from a console background and are expecting that because they have spent $4000 their system will last 4-6 years and will play anything and that is not realistic. Personally I don't think this is the right system for the masses, especially those on a tight budget. With low to medium specs it just doesn't live up to its expectations hence the thousands of threads complaining about performance. I think people comming to this forum are looking for honest answers and often they are just congratulated and cajoled as opposed to given constructive advice or warned of potential issues and problems. Than the new owners show up in droves usualy about 24-48 hours after delivery with some epic major concern about their particular system and their performance relative to what they expected. RAM is just one of many components that is often taken for granted.

Valve, 12GB RAM and keeping up with PC gaming | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

Who has the best deal on 1333, 8gb of ram?

 

Aside from accessing larger amounts of memory, there isn't really much reason for most applications to go to 64-bit. There are downsides, as 64-bit apps use more memory, and therefore don't fit as much data into the CPU cache. This causes more transfer of data to/from RAM, which is much slower than the L1/L2/L3 caches on the CPU, and therefore slows things down.

According to the Steam survey, only around 1/3 of all Windows systems are running a 64-bit OS. Until this number reaches upward of 80%, or Microsoft remove the 32-bit compatibility subsystem, most software developers will keep compiling as 32-bit. As I've said before in this thread, it makes no sense to have 2 versions of the same app available if only 1 is needed, because it raises tech support costs.

This was true a few years ago, but has got less relevant. Technology is starting to hit barriers, to the point where we no longer get exponential gains in speed. Hardware manufacturers are having to approach problems from a different perspective, rather than just making things faster. That's why modern CPUs have multiple cores running at 1.6-3.2 GHz, rather than a single core running at 6+ GHz.

This is also the reason why nVidia have moved to the Fermi architecture for graphics cards. Their 200-series GPUs still had the same core architecture as the 8000-series, just made more efficient and with higher clock speeds. This was found to be unsustainable, and that's why nVidia have moved to a very parallel architecture with numerous general purpose cores.

This is fairly well the expectation I have from my M17x when I get it. Sure, there will be games released in a couple of years time that I won't be able to play at max settings. But I should be able to play them at reasonable (mid-level) settings without any issues. I expect the system to last at least 4 years, after which I'll replace it with something else equally high-end.

I'm no n00b to computing either. I've been following gaming hardware ever since I added a 3dfx Voodoo II card to the first computer I ever built, to complement the 1MB Trident graphics card that I had in the system.

This guy sounds like he's well out of touch with computers, if he's surprised to see a system come out with that much RAM. Systems like this are for "enthusiast" users, of which gamers are a (fairly large) subset. But "enthusiast" covers much more than gamers. There are any number of uses for a high-powered computer with lots of RAM and good graphics, such as CAD and 3D modelling.

There are also people like yourself, Falcon, who believe it when they're told that "more RAM is better, so get as much as you can fit in your system." This is rarely the case, and most people today will be perfectly fine with 4GB of RAM if they're only playing games and using the Internet. This will change over time, but that will take several years.

64-bit versions of Windows have been widely available for around 3.5 years now (since Vista's release) and there is still relatively little 64-bit software out. 64-bit games are even rarer. The proportion is growing over time, but only slowly, and this isn't going to change in a hurry.

 

No question Vista 64 was a huge failure. Business dug there heals in and said no to microsoft. Game developers focused on Dx9 for the most part. Dx10 never really got off the ground because Vista users were only a small subset. Everything is changing, Enterprise is adpoting Windows 7, new computers are shipping with 7-64 and with the advent of new more powerful GPU there should bring about some really exciting games comming out. If you were running Microsoft wouldn't you push some enthusiast PC games to market in order to push die hard 32 bit users to upgrade? Of course you would, hence Crysis 2 just in time for Christmas. There will always be games for the masses and games for the enthusiast. Hopefully more of the later sooner.

 

Hi Flynnaz, I purchased my Ram from Dell, so not sure where the best place currently is to buy from. If you find out maybe you could start a thread.

 

Is this guy trolling or really just that ignorant? I can't tell at this point.

 

who are you talking about???

 

Well I had a look @ task manager last night with Modern warfare 2, and steam running and it said 77% usage @ 3.15G for ram. Interested to see wwhat the AvsP comes up with.

 

Well...obviously. Very few applications even use 64-bit, never mind games. The reason? It doesn't actually offer that big of a boost. Few games at this stage actually need to use more than 2GB of RAM up.

They are just covering themselves by saying that laptops are not supported. They design their games using desktop hardware. They don't want anyone to be able to sue them if it turns out it doesn't work on their laptop. It makes no difference, because the hardware that desktops and laptops use are identical-just on laptops, it's scaled down.

Wrong. An M17x with a decent spec processor and crossfire 5870s (easily bought for well under $3000, closer to $2000) will continue to play games very well for years.

There will be the occasional new game that won't play on the maximum settings. Will it still look great? Hell yes.

My M17 at this point is 15 months old. The actual technology (Montevina processors, mobility 3870s) is around 2 years old or more at this point, the design for the laptop itself is 2 years old at this point. It's still working wonderfully. At a resolution of 1440x900, it can play nearly every game I've got on enthusiast settings. The only games I can't run on max are the Crysis series and...wait, that's it. Even those run very well on Gamer/Enthusiast settings running at 1280x768.

The above is to prove my point: The latest hardware is still going to be powerful enough to play games very well for years. Think about this:

Games are going to continue to require more powerful hardware for the top settings, yes. However, using today's hardware, games will still look as good as they do now, if not better due to better optimisation. In 5-6 years' time, there might be a game that the M17x is only capable of playing on 'Low' settings. It'll still look as good as Crysis does now on Enthusiast settings.

No doubt, this isn't the right system for the masses. It's not targeted AT the masses. It's targeted at gamers who need a laptop for a particular reason.

I don't know what threads you're referring to, because I've seen few threads complaining about poor performance. In most of the cases where they ARE complaining about poor performance, it's usually due to an error in the game or setup or operating system or something such as that, that's easily fixed.

 

Yes Dell has turned an enthusiast only brand into a household name and it shows in performance. Right out of the box this computer still can't play 2007 Crysis in enthusiast settings. Metro 2033 is also a bit of a wash out and only plays in low settings. A significant difference between console systems and PC is the PC’s ability to do anti aliasing whereas the console does not. If you are going to spend upwards of $4000+ and than turn off all these settings to achieve playability in a game than what’s the point? 64 bit games for enthusiast have been around for eons, and here is a list about 5 years old to prove that point.

64bit and x64 - The list of 64-bit games

Performance issues with this system abound, people spending $6000 on a laptop expect to have monthly Catalyst updates and do not expect to have to sweep drivers and change vbios in order to do that. At the current time the performance of ALL 5870 CF users is suffering due to the video driver issues. Battlefield Bad Company 2 maps are slow to load because Dell Drives are out of date. Other customers are experiencing a high failure rate of components right out of the box and many have flickering video or horizontal lines and yet others are having all sort of PSU related problems, the list is too long for me to sum up. I don’t think there is a SINGLE Alienware M17x owner with 5870 CF that is happy right now with their Dell Stock Drivers. What happens to these owners 1 year from now when Dell stops writing custom drivers for the M17x and moves on to it next system? The whole planet is changing over to Windows 7-64 so I really don’t see any need to justify why. The main feature that distinguishes this version is its ability to process larger amounts of random access memory. The hardware configuration in a M17x is impressive but about a year behind that of its desktop equivalent. For $3000 you could build your own system with 24” monitor and a toxic HD 5970 4gb that would blow the doors off dual 5870’s. I like my M17x but I am not gaga over it. For men an women in the services that require a rugged laptop I think this system is absolutely ideal. For a student the system is also great but has limited portability due to weight. For the average person using this at home the entrinisic value is hard to measure. A friend of mine wants to buy one and I honestly don’t know what to tell him with all the problems system owners are having right now. But I have told him to buy at least 6 gb of ram

 

That list is actually suprising, I wasn't aware that they had so many 64-bit games back then. I was quite suprised to find Half-Life 2 can run in 64-bit...how do I actually tell if it's running in 64-bit? I still play it quite often.

Anyway, I honestly can't believe you when you say the M17x isn't capable of playing Crysis on Enthusiast settings. On the old M17, a pair of 4850s is capable of running Crysis on Enthusiast settings, in 1920x1200, at 30fps average. I'm pretty damn certain that a pair of 5870s can manage to run Crysis maxed out (even with no AA) at 1920x1200. (As a note there's no need really to turn on AA-it has built in EdgeAA that runs as standard! The AA in the options isn't as good and just hampers performance!)

I have to admit, I am disappointed when I hear that drivers aren't working properly with the cards. If I did pay out on an M17x with crossfire 5870s, I would expect the drivers to work.

Anyway, I'm going to say that we should stop debating about this-it's already gone very far off topic. To try and bring it back onto topic...I'd advise your friend to get the standard 4GB of RAM with the system, and replace a 2GB stick with a 4GB stick he buys himself. Putting his own extra RAM in is more than likely going to be cheaper than it is with Dell, you can find 4GB sticks for under $150 easily.

 

I was suprised with some titles as well. My settings for Crysis are HIGH but VERY HIGH is impossible. I do have 8x on but the game is boderline playable on high due to low FPS. In some respected the 4xxx series cards were better due to bus size especially on games like crysis. I have enjoyed talking with you and will send you some rep, thxs

 

If it's only using 77% then there's definitely no point in upgrading the RAM.

You might want to try out some other games, particularly any games you might be having a problem with in terms of loading times and the such. See how much RAM they're leaving.

I'd try out Crysis with AA off completely, and see if that makes a difference in detail quality. If I remember rightly, the EdgeAA doesn't work if you turn on the AA in the options. EdgeAA works mostly on the foliage. In any case I'd see if you see a significant difference betwen 8x and off or 2x, it's unlikely you'll get many jaggies, and it'll run a lot faster (you might even be able to bump up a few options to Very High with AA off or on 2x). The AA is what's limiting your FPS really; I remember trying out 8x once and it cut my FPS by a third.

Likewise, it's been interesting debating with you. I definitely need to get some more RAM at some point, even if I don't go all the way to 8GB. I might just get a 4GB stick for now, and with one of my 1GB sticks right now, I'd have 5GB...that would be interesting

 

@ the BC2 comment, 10.7 works fine and maps load in under 10 sec for me now.

 

I assume your reason for your wanting the 10.7 was because the Dell stock drivers were causing map delays. A few days ago you were 'emploring people' {your words not mine} for help regarding your installation of 10.7 drivers on the Battle Field Bad Company 2 thread. It is great you got it figure out but I don't think people who just spent $4000 should have to emplore people for a work around solution to make their system run normally. Again I am happy for you, but the average user probably won't find extreme work arounds feasible or practicle. The concensus is the vbios powerplay tables were modified by Dell and the only way to permanently fix that would be to flash the vbios with the ATI OEM vbios. Some users have tried to flash the vbios and have already bricked their cards through trial and error. Short of finding a correct ATI vbios that is compatible the generic catalyst drivers will continue to fail each month for M17x 5870 CF users.