Memory upgrade helps?

[gojozoom]

Hi there,

I run FS9 on an ACER laptop. Specs are 1.5 GB RAM, 1.6 AMD Dual CPU (so actually 3.2 all together ), Ati Xpress video card with 256MB. So it's a low-end machine, but I could manage to "balance" it to a level where the flightsim runs pretty smooth even with some nice addons. I'm planning to buy a proper "tower" power-toy next year but till then I was wondering if a memory upgrade to 3GB RAM would help or not.
I know most of the things are up to CPU and video card but I'm not able to upgrade them because of both financial and technical issues (integrated video card, dont wanna mess with CPU either...).

Would it give me a reasonable amount of FPS?

The memory I found for the upgrade is only $48 so that's why i'm thinking about it.

Thanks for the help

Daniel

[Adamski]

QUOTE (gojozoom @ Oct 21 2008, 10:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi there,

I run FS9 on an ACER laptop. Specs are 1.5 GB RAM, 1.6 AMD Dual CPU (so actually 3.2 all together ), Ati Xpress video card with 256MB. So it's a low-end machine, but I could manage to "balance" it to a level where the flightsim runs pretty smooth even with some nice addons. I'm planning to buy a proper "tower" power-toy next year but till then I was wondering if a memory upgrade to 3GB RAM would help or not.
I know most of the things are up to CPU and video card but I'm not able to upgrade them because of both financial and technical issues (integrated video card, dont wanna mess with CPU either...).

Would it give me a reasonable amount of FPS?

The memory I found for the upgrade is only $48 so that's why i'm thinking about it.

Thanks for the help

Daniel

I'd say .. at $48 .. go for it!!

However - I'm not sure whether it's true for FS9 ... but FSX/Vista needs some kind of a registry tweak to get it to recognise/use memory over 2Gb. May be worth Googling that one!

It may not affect actual FPS much (as that's CPU or GPU dependent) but it would probably help in load times and general stability.

[toprob]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Oct 21 2008, 12:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd say .. at $48 .. go for it!!

However - I'm not sure whether it's true for FS9 ... but FSX/Vista needs some kind of a registry tweak to get it to recognise/use memory over 2Gb. May be worth Googling that one!

It may not affect actual FPS much (as that's CPU or GPU dependent) but it would probably help in load times and general stability.

Yes, I'd be very surprised if extra RAM improved frame-rates, but you may get a performance boost. You really need to look at what happens when your system gets low in RAM -- normally it 'pages out' the less-likely-to-be-used areas of RAM to disc, so if your system is continually hitting the RAM ceiling, then it will periodically need to access your hard drive to write the memory it needs to store. This may result in slight stutters now and then, but it doesn't lower the normal frame-rate.

However you will notice that FS shuts down a lot quicker, and should load quicker the second time around. (When you shut down FS with limited RAM, Windows needs to reload the memory it needed to store on your hard drive to make room.)

If you use Vista, and shared graphics RAM, then you would benefit more so that with XP.

[gojozoom]

Thanks for your advises,

I'll have a look at the task manager memory monitoring and see if the RAM usage is high or not.

Cheers again


PS: Vista doesn't even start with these specs

[mfraser]

Instead of using Task Manager - run 'perfmon' and setup the realtime monitoring for RAM and PAGEFILE errors - and anything else you want to look at for that matter. Run FlightSim with that in the background and it will give a more accurate indication of the overheads the system is using. The more errors produced the more 'stutters' you will notice. And as Adams already pointed out, Windows cannot use more than 2GB ram without a registry tweak and even that has little benefit.

If you look at Toms Hardware and other system builder sites, it will give you a good idea on the best combinations for a kick @ss system without spending many thousands of $$$. The main issue is to get the combination of motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card working in combination with each other without creating a performance bottleneck! It can be quite difficult if you're like most of us with a limited budget!

Let us all know how you get on, what you end up buying and how well it works, as I'm looking at upgrading myself.

Best of luck,
Mat

[gojozoom]

I really appriciate your help Mat, I'll keep you guys in the loop.

All the best