will increasing memory improve performance?
 

My system has a 3.2 pentium, 1gb memory, nvidia 6800 gt video card and a audiogy 2 sound blaster card. I notice some significant performance drops when the graphic settings are maxed out (the mouse moves like it is in molassas). will increasing the memory to 2 gigs make much of a difference?

Memory upgrade will help for sure, I have 2 Gig, makes a difference. Not sure about the card, somebody will answer that. CPU looks fine.

It should make an appreciable difference. Just going from 1.5 to 2 gig helped me noticeably.

Adding more RAM is a cheap and easy upgrade that should definately help, but you might also want to think about upgrading your card as well.

Absolutely !!!!!
 

I can tell you that an extra GIG of RAM(adding up to 2 GIGS) will make a huge difference. I added a GIG of PC3200-DDR(400) two days ago and SH4 loads much faster, the graphics are way smoother, screens switch instantly, the navigation map cursor moves instantly from point to point, etc. Best $90 I have spent in a long time for an upgrade. It also helped many of my other games.

I second this, going to 2GB RAM never hurts. That being said....I have 3GB RAM in this machine (which anything over 2GB is mostly useless in XP), and a GeForce 6800 Ultra video card. My CPU is a P4-3.6GHz. And on higher graphic settings my mouse definitely lags.
So in your case...the RAM upgrade won't hurt, but probably wont completely solve the laggy mouse either.

I've been looking for the answer to the same question for a while, I have a AMD 1.8Ghz prossessor, 1Gig of RAM, and an ATI 200m Graphics card, will a second gig at least add 10FPS?

Two gigs is the best RAM solution for playing games on XP. It doesn't help game speed as far as the 3D animation though. CPU, mainboard design, and graphics card drive performance more than anything else. What it will mostly do is speed up load times where disk cache might be used. You cannot get rid of the use of disk cache in XP (or any Win OS) but you can reduce it a lot. Also, if your graphics card is AGP, those cards use system ram for aperature. The more system RAM you have, the more you have left for the software when the graphics card grabs it. If your RAM speed is less than 400 you'll suffer a bit there.
-Pv-

I had a P4 3.2, 4GB (3.5 effective) and a 6800GT ... still had serious performance problems.

Upgraded on Friday to a C2D 2.4, 4GB RAM again (and 4GB effective thanks to running a 64bit OS), and a 8800GTS (320MB RAM). Night and day of course.

I did a test a few weeks ago, and I think SH4 uses about 800MB ram (if it can), so going to two gigs is always good, so XP is free to do whatever it does in the background.

But I have to say, buying the C2D 2,4ghz is the smartest thing I ever did. (Not that I notice that in SH4, but almost everywhere else)

I have an identical setup to yours except with 2 gb of memory and SH4 plays well enough....and for my tastes looks pretty darn sharp on it....BUT...I have graphics set on medium. I turned eveything up and the sim slowed way down. On medium I get 60 fps and that rate is pretty stable even in high traffic.

I'm not a computer expert and don't even pretend to be one on the net...;) ...but I expect an extra gb of memory will speed up your loading times and may improve your gameplay a bit. However, from seeing my system run it with 2 gb, I suspect you shouldn't expect big miracles if you opt to add another gb. Probably the money would be better spent towards a dual core machine running 2 cards sli....unless you are stuck with using that system long term....then my advice would have to be...add the extra gb.

That is what I am planning for. I am waiting for the prices for dual cores to come down which ,I suspect they will, in the not too distant future. At least I hope so. I just know ,from a long history of jumping in and buying the "latest" computer technology...that as soon as I buy a dual core...they will come out with a quad core running 4 graphics cards...:yep:...and then I'll need a backyard nuclear power plant to provide the necessary wattage and a 1,000 gallon tank of liguid nitrogen to cool it.

But hey...thats computer life.

You sure about that??? I checked with MemStatus 2.50 tonight after killing all unnecessary stuff with EndItAll (running XP Pro SP2 on a system with 2gb system memory) and the peak system memory usage was 1975 MB!!! I think no matter how much ram you have, SH4 will eat nearly all of it. I mean, I was using 96% of 2GB, I bet if I dumped in another 2GB I'd still be at 96%. Not even FSX eats ram the way SH4 does!

Unless you're using Perf Mon and checking the Committed Bytes counter for the process, you're not going to get an accurate number.

I have a 3.2 P4 with 2 gigs ram and a ATI 1600 with 512 ram on the audio card and I am getting just 7-8 fps with enviro off.
Jeff

Im running a 2gig P4 with 1.5 gig mem and 256 meg ATI Radeon 9550 and I was getting about 8-9 FPS on medium. I reduced my AGP apeture from 256 to 64 and gained about 3 FPS , small diff but it helps, mouse moves alittle faster anyways.