RAM Questions...
 

S! Ya'll....

I'm in the middle of a yearly upgrade of my beast, and have couple of simple, if stupid, questions regarding RAM....

My current setup is based on a Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 motherboard, equipped, at the moment, with 2x 512mb DDRII 667 ram (I believe its the 5-5-5-15 type)...

Now my question is this; to upgrade the RAM, what should I do...?

Its difficult to find the same type of RAM, being 5-5-5-15 (or what ever it is) and its seemingly cheaper (almost) to simply buy 1gb sticks...

Do I buy two 1gb sticks, and run 3gb of RAM? Would this work? Does it even need to be 667?

And on that note; how about mearly buying a 1gb stick, and running that with the 512's (like above)...?

Obviously I'm not too concerned about running it 'dual-channel' or anything, mearly wanting to know what I can do to increase my RAM count....

Check your motherboard manual to see if there are any limitations with different RAM size and speed sticks, although generally if you add a stick that's faster (DDR2-800 for example) it'll work at a slower speed to match your current ram sticks. The only problem I can think of is the motherboard requiring paired ram sticks (this will also be noted in the manual if it's required), ie 2x512mb DDR2 + 2x 1gbDDR2, other than that it should work just fine.

RAM question
 

Hi Razor,
My advise is to buy the 1MB sticks of RAM -if your Gigabyte board takes 3Mb - get three MB's of RAM. The reason for doing this is that quite a few of Oleg's maps require intensive random access memory to function smoothly - the more RAM you have the better your mission's run in IL2.
When BOB is released, you will need plenty of RAM to run the game effectively, so the extra investment won't be wasted.
DFLion

cheers guys.

the Mobo can handle upto 16gb apparently (according to the manual) - having an OS that takes advantage of that is another story....

It doesn't say anything regarding mixing different RAM (for example 2x 512mb + 2x 1gb) though.... but as you say, this should be ok?

yep yep

Remember, don't mix ram of different speed and timings, this can cause trouble and all sticks will function at the level of the slowest one. It's best with ram as cheap as it is just to buy a 2g kit of 2 1gig sticks of fast DRR2 800.

This little number sequence is probably the number of 'clock cycles' for each phase of accesssing ram. Essentially the lower the numbers the faster the ram.
That '15' at the end is a bit worrying - It's the ram recovery time.
:)

Forgot to add: some bios's allow you to play with these timing parameters... But you have to know what you're doing of course.
The worst you can do is crash the system at startup, so you can reset and change these parameters until it works.

If you got a Windows XP or Vista 32bit version than i advice you to use 2x 1024mb DDR2-800 in Dual Channel, the closer they are matched, the better so best would be to buy a set.
2Gb Dual Channel gives you much more performance than 3Gb Single Channel.
You enable dual channel by sticking the ram modules in slot 1 & 3 or 2 & 4.

If you got a Windows XP Media Center Editionb 2005 32bit (4Gb max), XP 64bit or Vista 64bit you can stick 4x 1024mb DDR2-800 in your Mobo, than 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 will go into Dual Channel mode.

There are also 2Gb DDR2-800 modules that are not to expensive, so for a 64bit OS you could stick 4x 2048 in your Mobo.

Paired modules in Dual Channel are faster than double the amount in Single Channel.

That's a gross exageration. The theoretical benchmarks show at most 40% improvement (or even less for Core2Duo, because of its higly effective cache). What's really relevant is that (with a top-end machine!) you'd see at most 5-10% improvement in Sturmovik FPS coming from dual-channel; to believe it, just try your memory sticks on non-channel paired slots (like 1&2, if you use 1&3 for dual-channel).
Anything under 2GB is sub-par, and 4GB RAM is becoming the de-facto standard for gaming rigs. If only Vista-x64 SP1 would behave more nicely...

Thanks for the responses... but I'm still confused...

Well I've managed to find ram sticks the same speed as my current 512mb sticks, and I'd like to know:

Can I run these two 512mb sticks, as well as, the two 1gb sticks as well, bringing the total to 3gb total...?

The speed of the sticks are all the same, but is just different sizes... that wont be a problem?

I won't be a problem to get 3gb detected. Now if you want it to work in dual channel mode I'm not sure if it would, if I'm not mistaken all your motherboard's manual mentions is to put same size sticks in their corresponding colored slots

If you got 4 slots you should be able to pair the modules, your manual should tell you wich slots to use.
so pair 2x1024 and 2x 512, aslong as there matched you should be ok.

If your running a 32bit OS there is no point in using more than 2Gb for a game because the OS can only asign 2Gb Max...

@whitesnake

"If your running a 32bit OS there is no point in using more than 2Gb for a game because the OS can only asign 2Gb Max..."

that is not correct, a 32bit OS can address 4 gB of Ram but because of needed Address translations it can effectively only use 3.5 gB of the 4 gB for programs.

Is there any technical reason that will justify to go for a 4GB RAM setup in a PC dedicated to almost exclusively play il2?

Now with 2GB Corsair 800MHz in Windows XP Pro.

Flying online with HL, Ventrilo or Teamspeak, TrakIR, usually il2 compare...
Can this be considered as multitasking?

Salutes, All.
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/v...apin&id=332560

No, 2g is plenty for il2.

I said it can only Asign 2Gb to the game, or any aplication, if you stick in 3 or 4Gb it will try to use that also but like you said it will only use 3.5Gb for Vista 32bit and 3Gb for XP 32bit, and still it will only asign 2Gb to an aplication maximum, meaning the rest will be left for system resources, and i dont think anyone running a 32bit OS will need an extra Gb or more for that.

With a 32bit OS you be much better of just buying a 2Gb Dual Channel kit of 2x 1024mb modules because it will give you the most value and speed for your money.

All my XP 32bit based rigs run 2Gb Dual Channel, and my Vista 64gb SLI rig runs 4Gb Dual Channel. non of my 4 computers have any problems running IL2-46 at the highest settings (including conf.ini settings) so i really dont see why sticking in more than 2Gb would help running IL2 better.