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bigstone

2GB RAM to 4GB RAM?

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Hi I have a 8800 GTX 768MB card...Will going from 2GB RAM to 4GB RAM increase card performance in Arma? I have XP 32. Thank you smile_o.gif

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One thing to bare in mind about XP32 is that if you stick 4GB of RAM into it, you'll only get to use 3GB of it. The extra gig might make a bit of a difference, but not too much. Still, with memory being so cheap these days, it's not a bad idea. What CPU do you have?

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.6Ghz oclocked. I looked in my systems properties and it states 3.5GB of RAM.  I have the Corsair brand DDR2 RAM...

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For such cases, as x86 OS and more than ~3,2 GB of RAM, there exists RamDisk Plus application. It creates a ramdisk in unused part of RAM (in your case there will be approximately 800 MB). This ramdisk may be used for storing your pagefile, for example. This will lead to increasing performance while pagefile operations.

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I have also that 4Gb with xp32 (Knew about 3Gb situation but got the pair so cheap)

Anyways.. out of curiosity I once added the 3Gb switch in the Boot.ini file just to see what happens.

Result:

Started ArmA and it just vanished. Started again and it vanished and the pc went very slow. Then I noticed both games were running but they were only seen in resource manager.

Funny thing.

So I don't recommend what I tried. biggrin_o.gif

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Yeah, I have yet to hear of any of the so-called workarounds for the 3GB problem actually working.

EDIT: Bigstone: Do you have an AM2 motherboard, or an AM2+ one?

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Yeah, I have yet to hear of any of the so-called workarounds for the 3GB problem actually working. And VanhA: Do you have an AM2 motherboard, or an AM2+ one?

socket 939 biggrin_o.gif

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Sorry, that was meant for Bigstone. Got names mixed up.

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For such cases, as x86 OS and more than ~3,2 GB of RAM, there exists RamDisk Plus application. It creates a ramdisk in unused part of RAM (in your case there will be approximately 800 MB). This ramdisk may be used for storing your pagefile, for example. This will lead to increasing performance while pagefile operations.

ha-ha-ha

if your OS can see only 3.2Gb of memory you can't use more then 3.2Gb. RamDisk software is just like any other software on you PC. It works with the RAM through the OS.

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ModeZt makes a very good point there. And the site in English that you linked doesnt have anything to say that it is magically able to access the extra RAM that nothing else can access. If there's anything on the Russian one, maybe you could translate for us? I'd use Babelfish except it tends to spout out an illegible mess when translating Russian.

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yep. confirmed.

i got 4gb installed. using XP 32-bit. 3.2Gb ram are usable.

i created a 700mb virtual drive that does not affect the "used memory" bar in the task manager.

RamDisk Plus 9.0.3.0 32-bit

Plus is important. when i used a non-Plus version there was no "unmanaged" section in the controls of this software.

software help says using this "unmanaged" memory may lead to system instability on some chipset/cpu configurations. i haven't tested anything yet.

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in the mentioned article it is said about common problems with memory allocation process in windows. first of all, the author asks himself, why server x86 versions of windows can manage more, than 4GB of RAM, while "home" versions has ~3.2GB limit, or sometimes less, depending on current hardware. so, the author supposes, that there exists some artificial barrier, which may be overcome. next, the author says a few words about windows RAM addressing "blackbox" mechanism. as a result, we can see, that x86 operating systems can "see" and "touch" such "unmanaged" partitions of RAM through special API, built in OS. in the end of the article, the author speaks about RamDisk Plus application, which helps to get control over all installed RAM even if user has x86 OS. though RamDisk Plus is very useful, it has several unpleasant bugs. the author had problems with allocating new partitions on physical drive, illegal number of memory pages reported through RamDisk Plus and got his bootsector being corrupted (BUT this situation took place only once). hope these bugs will be fixed in future versions of RamDisk Plus. well, thats all, thank you)

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Ive checked how much my computer use when i play ArmA. The total ammount always stops at around 1.4gb with windows included. Dont know if this goes up with more RAM? Will it use more because of that?

I got 4GB as well but use only 2 to utilize the dual channel function. Will switch to 64bit system for ARMA2 to use all 4GB.

Alex

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You might as well use it now, you'll still get about 3GB to use.

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Why? total usage is 1.4gb and im using dual channel.

Dual channel = RAM modules read and write at the same time insted of Single where one module at the time reads and writes. Kinda like RAID with harddrives. Faster. And since it doesnt even use 2gb i see no use. Unless adding the rest would make ArmA use more? But if i add the rest i definatelly go 64 bit to get 4GB + dual channel. seems way smarter than 3gb single.

Alex

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Not sure what you mean. I assume you currently have 2x1GB sticks? If you put in an additional 2x1GB sticks, you will have two dual-channels there won't be a performance drop. If you have the RAM, you might as well use it.

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