Upgraded RAM = No FPS Improvement

[James22 10]

Hey all.

I was wondering if anyone had an idea as to what is going on here.

I'm running a E8400 @ 3.95ghz, Nvidia 9500GT, Vista 32bit, and 3Gb of DDR2 Ram.

I bought some ram and upgraded from 2gb to 3gb of ram, but it has not changed the FPS one little bit. I was expecting to see some sort of increase, but no joy.

I tried to run Armamark, to get a comparison. But for some reason after updating to 1.03, it now just crashes to desktop halfway through loading.

I ran another benchmark (provided with Company of Heroes) and I also noticed that my FPS didn't increase with that either.

25-27 FPS - Normal settings, AA & AF Off, 1280x800 res

Any ideas?

[Flash Thunder 10]

CPU and VRAM and maybe the OS will be the only thing that will improve your preformance not System RAM.

[bhaz 0]

Chances are, if you were running two identical (or quite similar) sticks of RAM and your motherboard supported it, your memory was running in dual channel. Upgrading to an odd amount of sticks or non-identical CAS speed / size of RAM may have disabled this.

Though this may not be to blame, my finger would be aiming at the 9500.

Also TBH, 25-27 isn't all too bad as long as its stable.

Edited September 11, 2009 by bhaz

[BCA Cat Toaster 10]

Arma2 hardly uses more than 500MB RAM at all times i took a look.

[James22 10]

Now that you mention it, It DID run in Dual channel mode before. But now its running in Flex mode instead

Originally 2 x 1gb chips - Now 1 x 2gb and 1 x 1gb.

---------------------

500mb - Thats preety lame?

Whats a decent graphics card then, that wont make me broke lol

[Maddmatt 1]

More RAM does not mean more FPS, it doesn't work that way. Unless you have too little, which could case freezes and bad FPS.

The game has some more memory to load things in so you might have some faster load times and less chance of seeing objects that are not fully loaded.

The game itself can't use more than 2GB since it's a 32-bit program. So past 3GB total RAM in your PC wont benefit it at all unless you run other programs in the background.

If you want a major performance improvement, replace that graphics card! The 9500 sounds like it would be terrible for ArmA 2.

[Fudgeblood 10]

Whats a decent graphics card then, that wont make me broke lol

Nvidia GTS 250, RRP $180 AUD, But if you want something more... hardcore, I'd go with the Nvidia GTX 260+, RRP 260~ AUD, it's apparantly what BIS used in their ArmA 2 videos.

[Murklor 10]

32 bit operating systems basicly cant use above 2gb ram anyway (2.5 or whatever it is). Getting 3gb+ is fairly pointless and will do little.

I agree on the new graphics card instead. 2xGT295 should do the trick ;)

[Relemar 10]

New CPU = Better fps

[spec_ops_sniper 0]

Get a 9800, i got one and it runs fine at max, ofcourse with some tweeking. :dancehead:

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

Waiting for Patch1.04 is not a bad idea I think, maybe the overall qualities of the game will be greatly enhanced as well as FPS.

[Viral.BadKarma 10]

Now that you mention it, It DID run in Dual channel mode before. But now its running in Flex mode instead

Originally 2 x 1gb chips - Now 1 x 2gb and 1 x 1gb.

---------------------

500mb - Thats preety lame?

Whats a decent graphics card then, that wont make me broke lol

Dual channel needs to be same size does it not? (I think even having ram from the same manufactuer is recommended?)

[Stugwi 0]

I did a little digging and from i recall your graphics card memory counts as system memory. I have 2 gb memory so i add 512mb from my graphics for total system memory.

[InFireBaptize 0]

Waiting for Patch1.04 is not a bad idea I think, maybe the overall qualities of the game will be greatly enhanced as well as FPS.

yes, yes wait till a performance patch is released. He has OCed his CPU to 4Ghz which is good. E8400 are magical, you can over clock them to 4Ghz with stock cooler, unbelievable.

[Alex72 1]

I got boost when i went from 1gb - 2gb (quite obvious). But since i hear ARMA2 doesnt run more than 2gb(?) i cant see that 3gb would help. Unless you run other stuff at the same time maybe.

[Murklor 10]

I did a little digging and from i recall your graphics card memory counts as system memory. I have 2 gb memory so i add 512mb from my graphics for total system memory.

No it doesnt.

[kklownboy 43]

opps..

[Stugwi 0]

"your system IS using the GPUs memory.

32-bit x86 OSs like Windows are limited to a 32-bit addressing space, which maxes out at 4GB. All of your system devices, like the GPU, sound card, network card, etc, need memory addresses for their own memory. Your 256MB video card takes a 256MB chunk out of that 4GB. Your sound card, network card, etc, also take their own chunk (usually much smaller) out of the RAM as well. Whatever is left, can be used to address RAM. Think of it like a pie. After slices are taken out by the GPU, etc, whatever is left can be used as RAM.

Most of the time, you'll end up with 3.2-3.5GB left.

If you run a 64-bit OS, you'll have enough addresses for whatever cards you have, plus however much RAM you have, so neither one will "steal" RAM from the other.

(64-bit Windows still has a finite addressing space, but because it's 64-bit, the number of available addresses is astronomically large, so we probably won't run into this limit while we're using 64-bit OSs.)

"

[VariousArtist 19]

I got boost when i went from 1gb - 2gb (quite obvious). But since i hear ARMA2 doesnt run more than 2gb(?) i cant see that 3gb would help. Unless you run other stuff at the same time maybe.

Win32bit cant assign more than 2gb to a running program. But usually Win eats approx. 400mb before any progs launch, so there are no 2gb left for arma2 when you have only 2gb installed. Yes, it means that Arma2 has a limit on 2gb max - afaik MS let this limit stay in Vista64, too cos of stability issues and other companies that didnt want to change to a higher mem-model.

@stugwi: What you posted is rubbish or prove otherwise! At least I know that my vidram of 1gb does not use up system ram.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Zothen

[Stugwi 0]

Ach i'm no techie minded and what i have posted is just a quote from a message board. So i can not prove or disprove it may be gospel or just bull :D

[VariousArtist 19]

Well, then just keep your hands off the keyboard before you try to post! Will help us alot! thx!

[Joseph Archer 10]

I would be thinking graphics card as a useful upgrade rather than ram also.

[manzilla 1]

I got an HD4850 1GB and I can run the game on the highest settings with out problem. Everything maxed out except AA. The game runs beautifully in all situations. I had an 500mb HD3870 but if I played with anything higher than Normal for the video memory setting I'd get "out of memory" errors in medium to large mission quite frequently. The upgrade to 1GB made all the difference for me. Of course the rest of my system specs are pretty damn good so that makes a difference as well.

As for which card to get, I'd say just make sure there's at least 1GB of video memory in it. That's just a personal preference of mine arising from past experience though.

Good luck.

[echo1 0]

@stugwi: What you posted is rubbish or prove otherwise! At least I know that my vidram of 1gb does not use up system ram.

He's actually correct in a somewhat roundabout way. In a 32bit system, the computer can only address 4GB of memory (well, if we exclude stuff like PAE) the top 1GB or so is reserved for various black magic and also the dedicated memory on hardware like graphics cards, and this always takes precedent over the amount of usable RAM. This is why you can only use at most ~3GB of RAM on a 32bit OS. However, I've heard of cases where people have used cards with 1-2GB of VRAM, and this adds to the system's reserved memory mappings, and this results in the OS only being able to access about ~2.5GB of RAM. A similar situation existed with MS-DOS back in the days where it only supported 1MB of RAM. In fact, 320KB was reserved for low end system stuff, and only 640KB was readily usable by the system. Various procedures had to be undertaken to use anything more than 640KB. Either way, as stugwi points out, a 64bit system can access more than enough addresses as to accommodate the entirety of the system's RAM, and all the system reserved stuff.

It's not that the graphics card uses the system's RAM, it's just that it blocks the OS from being able to use a corresponding amount of the computer's RAM.

Edited September 11, 2009 by echo1

[Thirdup 0]

@stugwi: What you posted is rubbish or prove otherwise!

Actually, there are hundreds of tech articles and discussions on the topic over the years. It was (is?) widely accepted by many that physical memory address space (limits) on 32bit OS can in encroached on by devices.

Rubbish or not, I've always found the topic interesting.

http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/604006158831

@stugwi: At least I know that my vidram of 1gb does not use up system ram.

Here's an interesting take (theory?) on why GPU memory doesn't map 1:1

http://www.computerforum.com/150015-32bit-4gb-barrier-demystified-much-possible-pics.html