Upgrading RAM = better performance

[ispano]

If you want to play on insaneley good AA i think ram was the thing that made it happen

GPU RAM, not System RAM.

---------- Post added 2011-04-23 at 05:12 PM ----------

4 GB is plenty for gaming, as long you dont run them simultaniously with other (heavy) programs. If you want to upgrade anything from, you should start with the GPU. An ATI Mobility Radeon HD5370 isnt a gaming card.. Sadly, finding a vendor for notebook GPU's is hard, and replacing a notebook GPU is even harder if you don't know how to

Not to mention, most laptop GPUs that aren't high end, ie 460M/470M/6870M/6970M and others, are typically not replaceable in the first place.

[Cilraaz]

WoW is a 32-bit non-LAA program and as such will crash if it attempts to use more than 2GiB of RAM.

However, Blizzard has come out to say that they will not action accounts that are using a copy of WoW.exe with LAA enabled. That said, I haven't noticed any real difference between LAA and non-LAA executables.

[Asera]

However, Blizzard has come out to say that they will not action accounts that are using a copy of WoW.exe with LAA enabled. That said, I haven't noticed any real difference between LAA and non-LAA executables.

I noticed a fairly big difference on my AMD system, not so much on the 2500K.

[Deleted]

4GB is more than enough. Upgrading RAM does not increase performance very much, even if you go from DDR2-800 to DDR3-1600

You're just saying what has been said 10 times before, maybe with different wording.

Lets face it though, not all of us only run WoW and nothing else. Getting more RAM isn't going to hurt you either, other than your money maybe.

[Deleted]

Civ5 can quite happily push most machines to using more than 4.

This is probably one of those exceptions to the rule. I have 6gb RAM and the campaigns still chug horribly later into the game

Generally speaking you won't see any performance gain going above 4gb RAM - A more noticeable step up is from 2gb to 4 but again it is fairly dependent on the game(for instance anything running on an old engine like source will be fine either way)

MMOs typically use more RAM that single player or FPS do, but this is not set in stone based on how the game was optimised.

---------- Post added 2011-04-24 at 12:08 AM ----------

You're just saying what has been said 10 times before, maybe with different wording.

Lets face it though, not all of us only run WoW and nothing else. Getting more RAM isn't going to hurt you either, other than your money maybe.

This is also true. Unless you are looking at really high end RAM it isn't going to put too noticeable a dent in your pocket. Truth be told I went to 6gb just because I could.

---------- Post added 2011-04-24 at 12:09 AM ----------

If you want to play on insaneley good AA i think ram was the thing that made it happen

I would imagine your VRAM has the biggest part to play in running any of the higher end detail settings.

[nwo]

I noticed a fairly big difference on my AMD system, not so much on the 2500K.

That's probably because you have 8GB on your AMD rig and 4GB on your Intel rig. Blizzard recommends at least 6GB.

[Asera]

That's probably because you have 8GB on your AMD rig and 4GB on your Intel rig. Blizzard recommends at least 6GB.

When I tried it on the 2500K, I had 8gb in. WoW ran fine on the Mushkin kit, but stress tests killed it, so I switched it out for a different kit.

[Deleted]

That's probably because you have 8GB on your AMD rig and 4GB on your Intel rig. Blizzard recommends at least 6GB.

With or without the exe mod WoW doesn't even come close to that combined with the OS you're running. I'd like to see proof of Blizzard stating you need at least 6GB.

[Cilraaz]

With or without the exe mod WoW doesn't even come close to that combined with the OS you're running. I'd like to see proof of Blizzard stating you need at least 6GB.

The only place I remember seeing that is if you use the LAA-enabled version of WoW.exe. They don't suggest enabling LAA unless you have at least 6GB.

[Deleted]

The only place I remember seeing that is if you use the LAA-enabled version of WoW.exe. They don't suggest enabling LAA unless you have at least 6GB.

Yeah well that's the point. Ever since I read up on LAA I enabled it and I have only 4GB ram, and I never see my ram usage go above 75% (Can't say exact numbers, I read the percentage on my G13's screen)

[nwo]

Yeah well that's the point. Ever since I read up on LAA I enabled it and I have only 4GB ram, and I never see my ram usage go above 75% (Can't say exact numbers, I read the percentage on my G13's screen)

I have 4GB of RAM as well and my RAM usage never goes up above 79%. Here's a scenario: I'm using 79% RAM, launch a game (which takes forever because my HDD light is constantly on) and I'm still at 79% while playing the game. So it may have something to do with that but I don't have a technical explanation for it. I'd like to hear one though.

[ayako]

The problem was only here a few patches back when it seems like Blizzard made changes to their garbage collection where it would run into the cap and crash, but it seems to have since been fixed, and I haven't been able to get it to crash from out of memory errors again.