Upgrading RAM for gaming?

Hey,

I have a Dell Vostro 1500 with 1gb of ram. A couple of the games I play (EG. Medieval 2 Total War) don't run very well. I can play on low settings but that's it, any higher and it gets really laggy and slow.

I don't know much about computers/technical details. Will increasing my ram improve gaming performance? Is there any other things I can upgrade (fairly cheaply) that will improve performance?

I'm thinking of buying the following but like I said, I don't really know what I'm doing here so if anyone could advise better, please do:
http://www.crucial.eu/upgrade/compatible-memory-for/Dell/Vostro+1500/list.html?click=true

Thanks a lot

 

Adding more RAM sure couldn't hurt! 1GB is usually not enough, but I'm not sure that will speed up your games significantly.. What are your computers specs?

 

Which OS are you running? Adding any amount of RAM would be a great decision considering you one have 1gb. if we had you specs we could help you some more

 

Hey guys,

Thanks for the help, here's some more info:

Windows Vista Business

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5470 @ 1.60 GHz 1.60 GHz
32-bit operating system

I don't know how to find out much more about the specs, however, I found the following page:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3918

I would guess that's probably the same specs as mine.

 

With Vista adding RAM would help you. Even general computing tasks will be faster.

 

Your GPU is going to make the big difference. Do you have the 8600M GT, or an X3100? (Don't know what other options the Vostro's had) This is crucial to the in-game performance.

 

Yeah and if it's general laggyness, RAM upgrade might not really help and you may just be bottlenecked by the GPU or maybe the CPU in your case. However if it's stuttering you're experiencing, another GB of RAM will probably reduce this.

 

8400M GS as well, but regardless of the GPU, 1GB of RAM is adequate for Vista, but probably not particularly good while running games as well.

 

you think 1GB or RAM is enough for vista? I'm usually at like 1.4gb of Ram usage on idle

 

Yea, 1 GB is manageable, not great, by any means though. Also depends on what settings you have it running at.

 

On IDLE? That's not healthy... my Windows 7 installation uses about 600MB on idle.

 

Visit the Windows 7 forums about RAM usage. Windows Vista and 7 actually make USE of your RAM unlike XP, so don't let it alarm you if your RAM is actually being used. That's good, better than caching from the hard drive. It's all managed well and used for gaming when the need arises.

General rule of thumb these days for gaming is 2GB and in dual channel mode (1x1GB, not single 2GB stick). RAM is still relatively inexpensive, and for $75 you can get two 2GB sticks of DDR2, compared with about $45 for two 1GB sticks.

It can actually help with stuttering, depending on the game.

 

1GB in Vista is severely hampering your overall user experience. 2GB is my recommended 'minimum' for Vista. I recommend going to 4GB if you have $70. You'll notice a huge difference.

 

You can scrape by in Vista with 1 GB. It's a very netbook-like experience, but far from unusable.

In fact, given the popularity of netbooks, I'd say that many people would be satisfied with 1 GB of RAM in Vista...

 

Most netbooks are Windows XP, and quickly transitioning to 7. There were restrictions by Microsoft not allowing netbooks to ship with Vista, but this was lifted for 7.

 

windows 7 and vista are different. 7 is more optimized. Doesn't really matter though, I got 4GB of RAM to play with.

 

i would get 4GB but 2GB is a minimum. I use 1.2GB in Vista and WIn 7 on idle so that great Thinkpad... how come u have such low memory usage?

 

Vista and Win7 scale the OS' memory usage according to how much total memory you have. Win7 uses approximately:

400-450MB if you have 512MB
~700MB if you have 1GB
1-1.5GB if you have 2GB or more, depending on just how much you have

So if you have 4GB of RAM, your OS memory usage will look nothing like someone who only has 1GB.

Vista is similar, though it's been a while since I ran those tests so I forgot the exact numbers.