1gb vs 3gb, any 3dmark06 score difference?

I am testing a notebook at the moment which has a 1.5ghz c2d, 8600m gt video card, and vista home premium on it. the notebook shipped with 1gb of ram, and got a 3187 on the first run of 3dmark. Well after thinking 2+ would help out, we swapped in 3gb from an HP and ran 3dmark a second time. The score ended up being 3184... practically identical.

Anyone want to swap out some ram in their gaming notebook and run a few tests to see if they notice any change as well? Just seems really odd that the score didnt budge one bit.

 

You wont see any difference because you arnt using enough ram, ram is only used when programs are open, so if the ram isnt needed, it wont be used, so its not surpriseing that 2gb more doesnt effect, now open up adobe, msn, firefox, itunes and some other apps to where it takes up more then a gig of memory, then you'll see the difference the ram makes in 3dmark.

 

Between 1 and 3 I am sure you will see some difference. Most definitely you will feel/see it in actual game play. From 2 to 3 tho you probably wont see much change.

2gb ram is standard for any gaming machine, 1gb is geared for business.

 

Well yea, but I figured that having anything above 1gb was going to slightly improve things. Perhaps loading textures and maps into ram first since there was plenty of room.

 

You will see the difference in real life, but not in 3dmark scores, since only the GPU and the CPU are tested . Heck 30k scores were obtained with 2 gigs or RAM...just check the hall of fame on 3dmark06`s web page.

 

In XP you wont notice any difference, in Vista maybe...

 

Its not the OS or anything so much its the format 3dmark is tested, its a fairly low resolution and doesnt require much memory for the textures and its a timed demo.

In a real game tho ram demands are much higher, games have been using all of 2gb of ram in XP all the way back to BF2 and maybe before. If your measuring FPS you may not see a difference because the cpu/gpu are just as fast reguardless but you will see bad "studdering" in a game wich feels like a drop in fps from when ram runs out and a page file starts, also you may have blank textures, increased load times ect.

Ram is so cheap right now and since in increases every aspect of your computers performance getting 2gb of ram is seriously not even an option, it would be like buying a car with only the back 2 wheels.

Games will run smoother, applications will load faster, you can actully alt+tab out of a game without taking a smoke break to wait for windows to pop back up.

Boot time is faster, ect ect. 3gb+ is still more or less enthusiast territory and has limited returns on your investment. I say go for it if you find the ram cheap it wont hurt its still money well spent but atleast its not needed so much.

 

Ya no doubt, its def. a good investment if you can get it cheap. Im just saying that its not like revolutionary.....you will see more solid fps in real games with more ram, i was just saying that 3dmark doesnt use enough ram to notice any difference. also try to figure out which slot your laptop uses first and put the 2gb stick in that one.

 

When I got my laptop, just for fun I ran 3dmark06 before putting in my second gig, and then again right after. I think the scores were off by only a few points. A friend did the same thing going from 1 to 3 and also reported similar results.

But yeah as people have said I'd rather have 2 or 3gb than 1 in the real world