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Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-27 13:33:12 |
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Thought I would throw this out there for anyone interested in helping out. I just ordered some new RAM yesterday [4GB] which will replace one of the two 1GB slots that are on a new laptop I recently got from my Dad that he was sent to replace an old one. Now, with 5GB of RAM on the laptop [4+1] and a stock video card [Windows 7, Compaq Presario] I was wondering if that will make most games I need to run, run well and without any major lag. The types of games include; • Minecraft • Vindictus • FlyFF • Rumble Fighter • Grand Fantasia and I am also wanting to record gameplay, specifically of Minecraft, but attempting to do that on the laptop now is impossible -- it lags and skips around in-game far too bad to do anything worthy of uploading as a Let's Play or something. The software I plan to use for recording is Camtasia Studio. Anyway, Just wondering if the added RAM will solve my gaming-lag issue. The video card shows everything fine, so I'm thinking as long as I have the added memory I should be able to play games fine. Just want to know if that added RAM will cover it. Thanks for any feedback ~ |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-27 15:20:43 |
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In most cases yes, however with MMOs it's mostly the internet (to a big extent). But with 4GBs of ram, that's pretty good however you don't want to run multiple huge sources that need CPU at the same time. I mean the newer 17" MBPs have dual-core 7s and can run like 2 Adobe After Effects at the same time without flaw. But again you're only going to be playing like one game at a time, and 4 is more than enough. You don't want to fry anything. 
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-27 15:59:17 |
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With something like agame running and then a recording software going, would that be fine with just having the more ram? Minecraft takes up like 500-800k MB while I know Vindictus takes like close to 1GB when running. If I added on a recording software, should it be alright? Cause yeah, I'd like to not fry my laptop from trying to get too crazy. |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-27 18:00:08 |
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You should be fine, you can always task manager delete unused programs that are stupidly opened. But yeah 2GB is what I have on my Macbook (default), but 4 is more than enough. But it also depends on if you have a million Firefox taps open, maybe photoshop open, etc. If you just want to live record gaming sessions, the game and video software should be all that's opened. But only you would know how much CPU is being used up, I won't be able to know myself. I wish I upgraded to 4GB but never knew my PC would bluescreen forever on me. Although in the future I'm planning to upgrade to an iMac when I make it big, and customize it as well with color and like 8GB with the biggest screen.
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-27 18:26:15 |
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Ahh, yeah, I plan to just have those things open. Especially so Im not putting so much strain on it that it overheats on me too bad. As far as upgrading goes, this is the first time I've ever bought ram or anything like that to upgrade a computer of mine. My desktop [what I use every day] is old, almost 5 years I think [around when Vista was first coming out] and only has 2GB of memory. The laptop I just got is new with Windows 7, but only has 2GB ram as well. I've never experienced a computer with more than that [well, my dad's laptop has 3, but I only use it for things during the semester sometimes] so me upgrading with 4GB to give me 5GB total [replacing one of the 1GB with 4] will be a whole new world for me. I've also never used a mac, so, I'm not quite the way those would handle. |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-28 04:04:10 (edited 2011-05-28 04:18:36)
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Having a 4GB RAM is good for playing MMO Games like those. But, sometimes it gives your PC a strain to emulates graphics and animation. If you can upgrade your GPU or graphics card in your laptop, it may give you great help. But some reason, upgrading a GPU of laptop require great knowledge on modifying/upgrading laptops. I have a Dell Vostro with Intel Core2Duo T7250 2.66GHz with 2GB RAM and I can't play Cabal or Red Alert 3 in that thing and gives me blue-screen-of-death when playing Granado Espada for couple of minutes or more while using the stock graphics card. When I upgrade my stock graphics card to GeForce 8400M GS 256MB, it gives me a good play now. By monitoring the system performance, it doesn't gives my processor a lot of strain while playing 3D Games under WindowsXP. But in Windows 7 it gives me an even great performance with it. (Don't mention VISTA, I know it will be crappy ^_^) CPU, RAM, and GPU is helping one another in processing Animations and 3D Effects in some Computer Applications like Games and Graphic Editors. There is a news that they will merge GPU and CPU in order to fasten the performance of CPU in processing graphics and animation. So we might not buy additional hardware for graphics processing unit. FYI: I have a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz with 2GB of RAM and with ATI 512GB Graphics Card. Knowing the Red Alert 3 System Requirements, to run this game in a computer like this is impossible because of CPUs low Speed and can't even attain the minimun system requirements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert_3). But I run Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 in this settings with good 3D Effect and without crashing my system. This is one of the reasons why GPU is important no matter how. |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-28 06:37:25 |
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Yeah, I was thinking about if I should look into upgrading that, but since it's my first time really upgrading anything about one of my computers, I want to be sure I would need something like that. If I did, I may be kinda screwed for awhile. That's pretty intense you can play that with those specs, though. And at the mention of Cabal, I should add that to my list of games. I use to play it [got just to like level 39 or something] and if I had the ability with this laptop to make my gaming easier, I could easily add that into the list of games I plan to put on there if the Ram does do what I need to. I'll prolly have to look into a new Graphics card and whatnot in the future, especially if I start getting serious about recording gameplay and doing commentary stuff. Thanks for the help Ruy! |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-28 21:45:49 |
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Just speaking out of experience, if you use one for school related work, I'd always back up whatever files onto your other machine. Cause just from personal experience, I had my desktop (PC), had it for like five years, but eventually one day it randomly got blue screen, and a bad one which would later make me use my Macbook full time. I only bought my Macbook for school, but didn't expect my PC to finally fail on me, so I later would have to get Adobe suite for my Macbook which runs slow sometimes only cause I always have like 20 FF tabs up. lol I didn't need anything from my PC other than music and anime but I backed anime over to an external HD beforehand, but my one friend up in college at the time helped me access my HD via terminal and I got access to any files I needed (music, anime, pictures, pr0n, etc.). So after that I gave him my HD and we later worked out a deal for it (he bought me AC:B). But yeah, so these days I use my Macbook with my PC's screen (I dualwield) and speakers. Although I really want an iMac to make things easier for me since I never really move my Macbook around, however right now I'm in NJ for the night and yeah dragging an iMac down just to visit your grandparents would be hella annoying.
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-30 22:46:52 |
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I've used my desktop itself for years as my only computer, and incase something is bound to happen sooner or later, I'm thinking of backing up all my music [or at least most of it] to the Laptop and some other external devices if I can find some cheap. For school stuff, anything I've done computer wise like papers or projects, I keep on flash drives and on the computer itself for double protection. With me having my own laptop now, instead of using my dad's for classes, I can also back files up on there, on my desktop if need be, and my flash drives. I need to maybe see if I can get my old hard drive from my old Windows XP computer that was hit with a bad virus that makes it not turn on more than a few seconds, and get it totally wiped, and see if I can salvage it as just a storage unit. Not sure if it's possible or how much it would cost, though. I've never tried out a Mac. I'm kind've curious since I hear it's easier to do stuff like graphics or video editing on them. May be something to look at in the future if I have the money to spend. |
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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on 2011-05-30 22:59:11 |
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You can get half TB drives these day for cheap, and even TB drives cheap as well which I recommend. The Time Capsule is also amazing, but unless you're sharing it with a huge family, don't buy it. Flash drives can easily be corrupted, so just be careful ejecting it at times. You can definitely get access to your older HD with the right people. My one friend did that to mine, which is how I got most of my Japanese music back and other media (via Terminal through Macbooks). Not sure how it would work on Windows though, I've never seen it done (or what Windows specially uses for something like Terminal). Or maybe Windows does have Terminal itself, maybe it just looks different I'm not sure. Command prompt? The name Mac and "other non-Mac" is nothing to brag about, but when it comes to aesthetics, other products can still beat Macs of course. In general, I prefer Macs cause they're the best overall product for me personally. Using Photoshop on a Mac or a regular Windows based PC or laptop wouldn't be different (unless one has more power vice versa). But if you look at a lot of professionals in art studios and whatnot for movies as well, you all see they use iMacs and Macbooks. More old school companies still use the older Windows XP still (which is like a big "WTF?") but it's hard to convert I guess? You just what, got a new laptop, just keep it clean for as long as you can. I've had my Macbook for about two years now and not a single virus or anything even relatively close to harming my Macbook. It's as healthy as ever. Try saying that for other non-Mac products. That's right you still need to use anti-viruses and whatnot.
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Re: Will more RAM ease the stress of Gaming?
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you canalso reduce the process in the background everytime your PC starts up. go to msconfig and untick any programs that you dont need to be run the whole time at the "boot" and "services" tab. remember though that some programs are persistent and will still find their way back to the background process(such as IDM). ~____~ |