What a difference RAM makes...

[Silverleaf]

Greetings and Happy New Year,

I've had a brand new system sitting here for the last 9 months or so, never fired up and essentially saved "for emergency" purposes. I decided to load SH3/GWX 2.1/SH3 Commander onto it and see what a RAM upgrade would do.

Both systems in this comparison have identical features:
Dell Inspiron 531
AMD 2.8 gig Processors
Nvidia 6150SE NForce 430 on-board graphics card

Here are the only 2 differences:

Ram:
CPU 1: 768 meg
CPU 2: 3 Gig

OS:
CPU 1: XP
CPU 2: Vista Home

****
JSG Mods enabled:
OLCE2
OLCE2 Adjusted GWX2.1 Enhanced Damage Effects

Load times to main menu:
CPU 1: 1 minute 12 seconds
CPU 2: 14 seconds

Much quicker, no surprises..

Load time with new career:
Cpu 1: 10 minutes 26 seconds
CPU 2: 1 minute 53 seconds

Holy carp! I went to make a glass of green tea, and glance back and my watchman is standing looking at me.

CPU 1: Coming out of base Wilhemshaven I always had slow down, and sometimes a sound would repeat 3 or 4 times until the processing was complete. Overall a good experience with slow downs occuring in/out of port and if I used external camera to view a wreck/torp hit up close.

CPU 2: No slow down, a squadron of planes flew over as I was leaving port, while 4 ships (3 merchants and a fellow sub) plodded along. Experience was quite eye-opening, given previous example.

SH3 End Game/Return to desktop:
CPU 1: 4 minutes 17 seconds to CPU Idle status
CPU 2: 29 seconds to CPU Idle status

This was not expected. Nice! Obviously I knew ram would make a difference, but until you actually see it for yourself you can only go by what others have experienced. The speed difference is night and day, but more importantly the gameplay and enjoyment factor just went up a hundredfold more.

I still prefer XP (Win 98SE is still much better) over Vista *blech*

Lastly - come January 10th (or thereabouts) I'll be updating to the best card I can find - Nvidia preferred so if anyone uses Nvidia, I'd love to see some recommendations. Money isn't so much an issue at this point, but I would like a card that embraces the new system.

I'd think 512 meg on board would be an advantage - but again I'm open to suggestions.

Cheers and thanks,

R.S.

[Lzs von swe]

Yes, confirmed.
I replaced my 1024MB of Pc5300 Ram with 2048MB of Pc 6400 Ram.
Without touching anything else inside I get much higher Fps in any App I try.
I can use higher settings on graphics and still get higher Fps.

As for graphics cards I have Nvidia 8800 GTS with 320MB memory. Got it as a replacement for a faulty card. It works really well but the extra memory you get on a 520 card is probably needed in some games.
Check that your new card fits in your cabinet, some of them are really long.
And that your Psu can deliver the needed power.

[Wreford-Brown]

I've just installed a GeForce 9800GT (512Mb) card and it really made a difference to my system - SH4 went from 5 to 8 FPS to over 40 and SH3 is like a different game. Just make sure that your PSU will cope with the increased load as I had to upgrade my PSU to 480W to get the card to run properly and, truth be told, I probably need over 500 if I want to run any more peripherals.

The 9800 series is a repackaged 8800 series, so either one should be good (8800s seem to be more difficult to get hold of as they are 'old' cards).

[Task Force]

The 8800gts 640 mb is a good card. Im running one now, im getting a average of 170 fps in sh3 with bad weather with GWX 3.0.

My processor E8400 3.0 ghz

3 gigs of ram

vista 32 bit

8800gts 640mb.

[Silverleaf]

Thanks for the comments and recommendations.

I've done a bit of research and found that probably the best card for this system is the Nvidia 8600GT 512 MB DDR2 PCI Express. It's approximately 70 bucks at a couple sources, so coupled with a Saitek EVO Cyborg, and a second 20" monitor, I'll be good to go.

Cheers,

[nikbear]

That sounds top