RAM = Game?

[Carl0_17]

how does the ram of the comp affect your pc games?
do you think i should upgrade my ram? (512 mb)

[Allariele]

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

[Amryxx]

You can never have too much male sheep, I always say.

A minimum these days should be 1GB; obviously more is better. Bear in mind that 32-bit Windows can't "see" more than 3GB of RAM due to its inherent limitations.

[Carl0_17]

Allariele

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

so that means it can speed up the performance the game?

[Someones_stalker]

Carl0_17

Allariele

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

so that means it can speed up the performance the game?

yes, BUT note it is not certain it will, there might be another bottleneck,

[Allariele]

Carl0_17

Allariele

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

so that means it can speed up the performance the game?

'Speed up the performance' is a bit vague. I'd say your CPU's processing power & architecture and graphics card has a more notable effect on 'speedy performance', but yes. Do make sure you have enough RAM to meet the program's demands, without it, you'll notice it crashing and a slow frame rate because the program simply has nowhere to store new information until new memory 'slots' are freed from the old ones. So in a sense, yes, make sure you have enough, but if a game only can use a maximum of 2GB memory for the process and you have 4GB or 8GB ram, it won't be noticeable. (As noted above, the minimum recommended is around 1GB-2GB of RAM for typical modern day computing, if you only browse the web, 512MB-1GB is sufficient.)

The graphics card will determine how much can be rendered on the screen at a given time, how frequent or how consistent the video output is, the picture quality, etc. Buy a good card and you can expect high 'frame rates' and the capability to handle graphically complex tasks.

Whereas the CPU will be calculating instructions, such as, Shooting a target; mouse cursor is clicked at point X, calculate the angle from the centre of firing origin and draw a line to meet the target, ok, tell the graphics card to render that on-screen.
(note: clock speed isn't everything; the efficiency is. Some older high clock-speed processors get outperformed by newer but slower clock-speed processors, because the design allows it to shorten retrieval times from main memory, have wider bus widths, have better registers, etc)

RAM != GAME. Everything is important, when choosing to upgrade, be aware of what each component does and which isn't up to scratch for your needs.

[The Last Rydian]

Minion4Hire

Applications open and running (this includes games) need a sort of temporary "work space", somewhere that information can be handled and modified quickly and deftly. This information needs to be accessed by the processor and potentially other hardware as well (such as the graphics card). As such, it needs to be very fast. This is why computers have RAM. A processor has it's own temporary storage space in the form of L1, L2, and L3 cache. Even the slowest of these cache levels can be 10 times as fast or more as some of the fastest memory available today, and processors will often have to waste cycles even when waiting for these extremely fast caches to supply it with information. By comparison, your hard drive isn't near fast enough to accommodate all the various requests for data to allow for the fluid, perceived "real-time" execution of said data. They're hundreds, if not thousands of times slower than memory even when it comes to accessing the information, let alone transferring it.

So computers need these different buffers to keep everything running smoothly and to try to prevent major bottlenecks from occurring. This is why an initial game/level startup has a loading screen (since it's coming from the hard drive). Once everything that level needs is loaded into memory you can do anything and everything you need/want to within that level without having to wait for more information from the hard drive.

Faster memory clearly offers an obvious advantage since that information is getting to the processor faster meaning fewer cycles are wasted. Although the difference isn't that huge. You could spend 3 or 4 times as much money on faster memory than you would on basic/mainstream memory and only garner a 2-3% FPS increase in-game.

On the other hand, the outcome of installing more memory isn't necessarily the most obvious. If you have more memory available than an application needs, said application will (typically) not use any more memory than it actually needs and will fit entirely into memory without issue.. So if an app only uses 1 GB, and your OS and background apps use 512 MBs, you would see no performance improvement moving from 2 GBs to 4 GBs since not all of those 2 GBs are in use. You would only actually see a performance improvement in-game when the game isn't able to fit all of its information into memory. But since that information still has to be made available somehow, that information is then transferred to and accessed from the hard drive. When information on the drive is needed, something in memory has to be written to the drive, then the required data is copied into memory, and on up to the processor. This can become extremely slow, and a literal bottleneck. It's hard to say exactly how performance would be impacted by this (would depend on the game/app) but negatively is a for-sure bet.

All in all, if you have 2 GBs of memory, you have plenty and in most cases wouldn't have to worry about upgrading. If you have particularly fast memory, all the better, but you will only see small performance increases with faster memory so it really isn't worth worrying about. A faster graphics card or processor would be of far greater benefit than more or faster memory 9 times out of 10.

[I Beast I]

Allariele

Carl0_17

Allariele

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

so that means it can speed up the performance the game?

'Speed up the performance' is a bit vague. I'd say your CPU's processing power & architecture and graphics card has a more notable effect on 'speedy performance', but yes. Do make sure you have enough RAM to meet the program's demands, without it, you'll notice it crashing and a slow frame rate because the program simply has nowhere to store new information until new memory 'slots' are freed from the old ones. So in a sense, yes, make sure you have enough, but if a game only can use a maximum of 2GB memory for the process and you have 4GB or 8GB ram, it won't be noticeable. (As noted above, the minimum recommended is around 1GB-2GB of RAM for typical modern day computing, if you only browse the web, 512MB-1GB is sufficient.)

The graphics card will determine how much can be rendered on the screen at a given time, how frequent or how consistent the video output is, the picture quality, etc. Buy a good card and you can expect high 'frame rates' and the capability to handle graphically complex tasks.

Whereas the CPU will be calculating instructions, such as, Shooting a target; mouse cursor is clicked at point X, calculate the angle from the centre of firing origin and draw a line to meet the target, ok, tell the graphics card to render that on-screen.
(note: clock speed isn't everything; the efficiency is. Some older high clock-speed processors get outperformed by newer but slower clock-speed processors, because the design allows it to shorten retrieval times from main memory, have wider bus widths, have better registers, etc)

RAM != GAME. Everything is important, when choosing to upgrade, be aware of what each component does and which isn't up to scratch for your needs.

tl;dr: 512MB is too little 1-2GB should be fine. Gfx cards are more important than having RAM (GFX cards have dedicated RAM), if you want to game.

[machineman9v1]

Carl0_17

Allariele

Depends which games you wish to play. 512MB is sufficient for say, WoW but not for Crysis.

The program or application you wish to run needs to be loaded into main memory for the processor to 'fetch', decode and execute each instruction. The larger the amount of main memory available will determine the maximum amount of features you can run simultaneously, this is about as much as I can dumb it down.

so that means it can speed up the performance the game?

Do note that not all software can use more than a certain amount of memory. I think 32 bit applications cannot use more than 2Gb memory.

And remember, just because you keep increasing the memory (RAM) you have, does not mean the game will constantly keep getting better performance. For example, if a game was able to use 16Gb memory, chances are it would perform exactly the same even if you have 256Gb memory. The game may only need 4Gb memory to perform at its highest performance, so anything on top of that is a waste.

Other parts of your computer may bottleneck too. If you have 4Gb memory and a really terrible processor, then games will not perform well. You would need a better processor and then better graphics hardware and all that. It is about keeping your computer well rounded and have components targeted at the specific area about your computer you need to improve.