Its role on games

Does RAM effect game speeds?
Is it worth having DDR3 instead of DDR2 ram, or is it useless.
Also, what is the optimal RAM space, 2,3 or 4 gigs?

Finally, can a 2.0 Ghz processor play good games, like ummm total war series?

 

RAM affects multitasking ability more than individual applications. Rare are the games that require SO much RAM(by so much I mean 2Gb+ for one application). Anything above 3Gb should effectively handle any game. unles you have really low amounts of RAM, games should be fine. I believe the most demanding game RAM wise is 1Gb currently(though I've heard rumors of a 2Gb RAM game coming soon).

Currently it's not worth it to have DDR3 RAM over DDR2. It's more expensive for little to no gain in performance and a negligible reduction in voltage.

Ideal RAM depends on your OS. XP ran very smoothly under 1Gb while Vista runs smoothly at 2Gb and more. Windows 7 is more similar to XP in terms of required resources. 3-4 is the average amount for most users and unless you're doing specific workstation applications(i.e. work, not games), you'll rarely need more.

Note that to properly address 4Gb+ of RAM, you need a 64bit OS.

And a 2.0GHz CPU is a bit weak for Total War since it's a RTS with lots of calculations. Most games aside from RTS and Flight Simulators can run well on a 2.0, but for Total War I'd recommend maybe 2.4 or higher to be safe.

 

RAM doesn't affect the performance of the game performance, but RAM found ON the videocard makes a relatively large difference between DDR2 and DDR3. For example, the 8600M GT DDR3 (found on XPS M1530) is quite a bit faster than the 8600M GT DDR2 (found on Inspiron 1520). ~1000 3DMark difference (no OC).

The optimal RAM space really depends on the purpose of your machine. If you are gaming, I would put the maximum amount of RAM in your machine. The hard drive is the slowest part of your machine, so you want the game files and cache to be loaded from the hard drive at the beginning of the game, not swapping page files during the game; this will dramatically affect the performance.

Sure, a quad core 2.0 GHz processor will play games like Total War just fine. But if you have a dual core processor, upwards of 2.2 to 2.4 would be better.

 

So since im an RTS fan for the PC (I shoot at ps3 ) I should get ownage CPU and a medium GFX like ait HD3670?

 

Well Total War is a medium heavy GPU game so get a decent GFX card and a good CPU yeah.

I like how idq kinda contradicts himself though lol(no offense meant). he says RAM doesn't affect games and then says if you're gaming to get the maximum amount of RAM lol Maybe I misunderstood mind you >_<