DDR400 upgrade question

ElementalDragon

The One and Only
Joined
8 Aug 2002
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Ok, here's the thing. right now i have very close to enough money to buy another 512MB (2x256) of DDR400 to use in my dual channel setup, which if/when i buy it, will come to 1GB. The thing i'm wondering though..... is will i notice THAT much of a difference when i upgrade it? The one thing i think is kinda convincing me to buy it is the fact that after playing Half-Life 2 for a while, it will seem to hesitate a little longer just after loading another part of the map, and after a pretty long while, it will flat out freeze. my best guess on that one is that it ran out of free memory to use. Am i correct or possibly correct in saying that? anybody have any pointers? The main reason i'm asking is cause there's also a Gamecube game i'd kinda like to get too. (Baten Kaitos for anyone who might be wondering.)
 
if you multitaks heavy youw ill notice it and you will def notice it in a game. hehe

my set up is running half 2 so well. I give the probs to my gig of ram and of course my ati hehe.
 
ya. my setup right now runs it pretty swell too (cept for the slowing down after a while) so u think the lack of free RAM is why it slows down after playin it a while?

*off topic* How u like HL2? i absolutely love the game.
 
do you have 4 dimm slots? i'm pretty sure you do 'cause i built a p4 system similar to yours for someone a few months ago. but the thing behind dual channel is that if you already have 2x256 running in dual channel mode, adding another 2x256 won't really increase memory bandwidth. it'll basically be like having 2x512 in dual channel mode. it will, however, make a big difference because you're doubling the amount of ram that you have.

as for the half life 2 thing, 512 ram should be perfectly fine, i have no idea why it would freeze. doubling the amount of ram you have should increase performance, but the game shouldn't freeze in the first place. are you running anything else while running half life 2? also what gfx settings are you using?


and hl2: best...game...ever... (i'm on chapter 7, "highway 17")
 
When it starts to slow down press teh windows key and teh game will stay loaded in teh background. Then press CTRL+ALT+DEL and check teh amount of available PHYSICAL memory on teh Preformance tab.
 
ok, steevo, i'll try that when "teh" game slows down. lol.

Logisticprism: the only things i have running in the background are basic things like Trillian, Logitech mouse software, Antivirus. mostly the basics, and all in the system tray. And i know it wouldn't increase the memory bandwidth, but that's the only thing i can think of that would cause it to slow down and eventually freeze. If it was a driver problem with my video card or something, it would probably happen much sooner than it does.
 
try getting rid of antivirus, unless that hasn't slowed anything down before. i've had some bad experiences with antivirus slowing down stuff. other than that you may want to check video card drivers or just tone down the graphics a tad and see if that helps.
 
ya. antivirus never bugged anything else. and like i said, if it were video drivers or something like that, it would probably slow down earlier than it does.
 
well right now since we don't know enough information to really judge anything, you have to settle for trial and error. like i said before, try random things that you wouldn't normally think would affect anything, you might strike gold. first i would see if toning down the graphics in the game eliminates the issue.
 
It also could be a cooling issue with the CPU. Intel CPU's will clock themselves down to prevent heat damage. You might DL Aida32 or the like and check your temps at the same time.
 
if you wanna run many applications/programs and games at once then you will find a difference
 
Some motherboards support Dual Channel and bank interleaving. So 4 sticks of 256 MIGHT be better. I know my old mobo with a celery processor supported interleaving.
 
Steevo: using a P4 2.4 OC'ed to 3.0 and a GigaByte 3D Cooler Pro. it's definitely not a temp related problem. usually runs at like 52C when under heavy load. usually when i'm playin a game i have the fan speed turned up a tad higher than i would when it's just idling.
 
Thats the FIRST thing to try, turn it down to 2.8 and see if that helps.

126 at idle? I usally see a 15-20 temp jump while gaming. And I only OC 5%.
 
that temp change is pretty extreme stevo. i have an athlon xp 2500+ which is initially at 1.8ghz and i Oced it to 2.2 ghz. my idle temps are around 37C and load is around 45C.
 
F.


Not Celcius.

I have a thermaltake 7+ Xaser w/ AC5 but a O/Cd Prescott 2.8. Running FAH
 
How u like HL2? i absolutely love the game.

i love it. i think i sat at the playground for 30 mins just playing launch the brick hehe i just got the first machine gun so i dont think im that far in.

Hey can someone fill me in. do the face planters make anything elose but the walking zombish guys? where do they weird aliens come from again? (like the one that powers you up) ~ and before someone says it i have played half life and beat it aloooog time ago lol.
 
actually i knew you were talking in farenheit, but i just didn't know the conversions. sorry about that. anyway, i agree with steevo. 52C idle when overclocked could cause problems. the more you overclock, the more heat is generated at higher loads, i'd say you're pushing it ED.
 
sraycoz said:
Hey can someone fill me in. do the face planters make anything elose but the walking zombish guys? where do they weird aliens come from again? (like the one that powers you up) ~ and before someone says it i have played half life and beat it aloooog time ago lol.

there's a thread for that sraycoz, but no one's posted anything useful, if anyone has any good half life 1 background info, please post it here . Thanks.
 
I've not read the thread just the first post :p

However Crucial Ballistix PC3200 DDR DRAM is probably THE fastest ram on earth for pc's.

:)
 

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