Why haven't I seen any performance gain from upgrading RAM

When I asked people on these forums what kind of upgrade (CPU or RAM) would see any noticable performance increase for games like FEAR, everyone told me that upgrading from my 2x512 sticks of pc4200 to two gigs would see a noticable fps increase. I got two sticks of RAM for christmas, installed them, and when I go to run the performance test in FEAR, I get the same test results as when I only had a gig:

FPS
minimum: 25
average: 40
maximum: 80

FPS distribution
0% below 25fps
62% between 25 and 40fps
38% above 40fps

They change slightly by a couple % points every time you run the test, but not anything significant or worth noting.

I ran the dxdiag and my computer is detecting both sticks. Everyone, including the moderators (whom I trust immensely), assured me that I would be able to notice the difference after the upgrade and there isn't even an increase to tiny to notice. What am I doing wrong here?

 

If you're referring to the system specs that's listed in your signature, the lack of change may be due to your a) go6800 card or b) your p4 processor.

Or maybe im wrong, but, Im sure doubling the ram will increase performance, just perhaps not in something like FEAR, or video-wise for gaming at all.

again, im all for being wrong.

 

I don't know how much memory the FEAR executable takes up, but my best answer to your question is that even with FEAR running, you don't use the full gigabyte of RAM.

 

Um did you not check your memory usage before you bought the RAM? If you have 1GB and whenever you are running FEAR, and you tab out and bring up the task manager, if you see that you still have 300MB of physical memory available then your bottleneck is not your RAM.

But don't worry, the RAM you bought will still be put to good use whenever you multitask or run memory intensive programs.

 

can you link us to the thread where you first asked the forum's opinion about upgrading your ram?

 

I don't know who told you that, but anyone who blindly tells others that "more RAM is better" ought to be shot...

More RAM is better *if you don't have enough RAM*.

Windows tries to keep all allocated data in RAM, as far as possible. So as long as there's enough RAM for everything, it will make absolutely no difference if you double your RAM. But when there's not enough RAM, some data has to go in the pagefile. If that only happens a bit, it's no problem (because the least used data will be put in the pagefile, which typically means Windows desktop stuff, antivirus and other stuff that isn't used when you play a game. And so, the game will get enough RAM to run, and you'll get fine performance)

But if you try to run a game that requires, say, 1.5GB memory on a 1GB system, it might start to get tricky, and you'll probably see some serious paging taking place, which will be slooow. That's when more RAM becomes a big advantage.

That said, don't despair. It won't be long before games become even more memory-hungry, and then you'll have a big advantage.

 

Ask these same people who have given this advice if they upgraded their system, in the same exact way as you have, to achieve noticeable fps increase, and see how many say yes

The internet is full of people who think they are experts, especially moderators, and they often hand out naive or incorrect advice.

The advice you was given:

"2x512 sticks of pc4200 to two gigs would see a noticable fps increase"

was wrong

 

I think with FEAR the performance increase will be seen most in loading new map areas etc. With 1Gb myself and a friend noticed skips and jerks when loading as there wasn't enough ram for all the files at once. Since upgrading to 2Gb the game runs smoother overall but without noticeable increases in fps, i think fps is more down to gpu and cpu related issues.

 

It should be loading much faster with ur new RAM..

other than that - hard to say...

 

FEAR doesn't seem to be as RAM-intesive as it is GPU-intensive. On a game such as Battlefield 2 & 2142, you would notice a significant jump in FPS, as well as load times, as these games tend to need at least 1.5 GB of RAM to run well.

 

He's right. Just because the FPS didnt change, it doesn't mean the game's preformance did not improve. I had some experience with this when I upgraded from 1 gig of ram to 2 gigs, and while the FPS readings were fairly similar, I noticed load times decreased drastically and freeze-ups occured much less; and it was really noticeable when I ran tests with Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. Some freeze-ups did not decrease FPS levels and I still registered respectible FPS rates with the 1 gig of ram, while noticing a bit of choppyness. With the second gig added, the FPS remained fairly similar but the choppyness disappered.

If you're sure there isn't much preformance difference, then either your cpu or gpu could be bottlenecking your setup.