Dumb Question:What does the 4 gig patch do?

[Tonga]

Originally Posted by fred8615

Let me ask this outright since I'm still not sure. I have Win 7 64 bit. Should I use this?

I also have Win 7 64 bit. You can give it a try, absolutely. The patching tool should make a backup by itself, but as privateer said, make sure you have one.

Originally Posted by Jan Kyster

Why would we use this for SH IV?
AFAIK we don't have issues with unstable or crashing SHIV due to lack of memory? Or at all? Don't ever recall it crashing...

I myself only found some improvements concerning SH3, a better overall performance, almost no program crashes etc. any more. However I did never experience that much of an improvement with SH4, so I guess it really depends on the system one uses. SH4 is indeed quite stable, but with SH3 that's still a different story. There you would never go without...

Just on a side note - there are other games that may also profit from this patch. German Truck Simulator for example now rewards me with almost 15 fps more since I patched the exe. Saint's Row 2 also shows a better fps performance (about 15-20 fps more on my notebook here). I am still testing this with Battlefield 2 and several mods as well as with GTA 4. The most obvious effect you might notice is a considerable decrease in loading time.
As long as you always make a backup, testing this with other games might prove quite useful.