Ram = Huge
 

Well, I can confirm it .... 2 gigs of RAM over 1 gig is AMAZING.

The game loads stations like it's butter now with 2 gigs of Ram installed. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E mobo with 2 matched sticks of Corsair TwinX 2048-3200CS ram. My CPU is a moblie that I have over clocked to 2.3 ghz (200 x 11.5) Ram is now in matching harmony with the mobo and I think I can see why the game under 1.2 was crashing now ....

For what its worth, if you have an old system like me ... the best upgrade you can get is the RAM .... cheap way to add a few more miles on this old bast...

That doesn't exactly help people like me, who built their AGP system when RDRAM was going to be the next big thing.

I've already got a gig in my system (4x256), and RDRAM is so hard to find, and so expensive, I'd be lucky to get 2 gigs (4x512) for under $800.

I did same thing too, went from 2x512 Mushkin to 2x1024 Kingston HyperX. I have a Socket 939, yes they dont support em anymore, but I am very happy with it and its DDR400 and I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with 2x1024 Cache I cant seem to find any for sale anymore. It must be rare now. the 2GB did help a lot. I have an ASUS A8N-E

For $800 you could get 2 GB and at the same time buy a new CPU and new MB, and even a enw vid card. Not sure why you'd hang on to old tech like that.

-S

Will it really help to have newer RAM?

I'm running 2 GIG PC3200 RAM. Quite old

The game runns well, most of the time :cool:

Newer RAM (meaning faster RAM) in your system will only run as fast as your MB can go so if you bought the fastest available RAM when you bought your computer... That's it! It's as fast as it can go! I think you're quite good with 2GB of PC3200.

So to fully enjoy newer/faster RAM you'd need a new MB and then a new CPU and... Buy a new computer!! :p

I've been thinking about getting some more RAM myself. My mobo can support up to 4 gigs, but I thought I read somewhere that more than 2 gigs on XP is useless. Is this true and if so, why?

Several reasons:

1. It still works.
2. Games still run fine on it after a much cheaper upgrade to the PSU and GPU.
3. I see no reason to throw $800 for a low-end system with the bare essentials when I can keep saving and build a top of the line system later on.

32-bit XP Pro and Home can handle up to 4gb of RAM and the 64-bit edition can handle up to 128gb, I think.

DITTO!!!!!!

XP, both Home and Pro, 32bit, can recognise up to 4GB RAM. However, except in certain setups, you will find XP will only show around 3GB. And in fact, will not really use more than 2GB. There is a boot.ini switch you can use (/3GB) that changes how much of your RAM is used by the kernel and how much by the userspace (where your programs run), that allows userspace to use up to 3GB RAM. However, a program has to be specifically written to take advantage of this, if not it will still be limited to 2GB RAM.

In my own experience, playing various games from STALKER to Supreme Commander, SH3(GWX) and SH4, and BF2 & 2142....I have never run out of physical memory with 2GB RAM and no page file.

My current machine has 3GB RAM in it, and I have ran different games with 2GB and 3GB RAM installed, with no difference at all (unlike going from 1GB to 2GB which can be huge performance gains). Generally I allocate 1GB as a RAM drive, leaving 2GB to my system. Then I copy part of the game installation into RAM to greatly improve loading times (note this has no effect on framerate). I did this with Sh3 GWX as well as with Battlefield 2.

I recently upgraded from my old custom desktop - 3ghz, 1gb ram and 256mb NX6600 to a Dell XPS 1710 with dual 2.16, 2gb ram and a 512mb 9750 GTX ... and my god what a difference. I noticed that my system was using 512 just to run windows, do upgrading from 1 to 2 is effectively tripling what you have available.

I'm running 4 Gigs Corsair Dominator,and if it doesn't help,than it sure don'hurt anything!?Plus when I finally get forced to Vista,I'll be ready;)
Pocatellodave

Upgrading from 1 to 2 GB will always halp. Beyond that (with XP) probably not. Vista, yes, once they get the memory handlers fixed.

SH4 on 1Gb will always have to use swap a lot.
For XP Pro, the memory footprint of SH4 is ~1.2GB
So jumping from 1GB to 1.5GB will also be a dramatic difference.

This info may help someone with a machine that has expensive ram...