I noticed a big improvement on UT2004 and AOE3 going from 512mb to 1.5GB. What is the point of little return.

Question

Will there be any real difference in a 2GB or 4GB at this point in time for present day games. Is the current real threshold 768, 1gb 1.5 2gb. I have a few other computers I am looking to upgrade

Answer 1

For UT2004 of AOE3, there will be no with 2GB of RAM. For newer games like Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2, or the upcoming Crysis, 2 GB would be recommended, especially if you plan on using Windows Vista.
I don't think there is any need for 4GB of memory, at least not for the next 1-2 years.

Don't forget, you also need a good video card. A good video card and 1 GB of RAM is better than a poor VC and 2GB of RAM.

Answer 2

Not for present day games. I suppose with 4GB you could store most of a DVD in memory, so maybe loading times will go down, but actual game performance probably won't matter. Your graphics card has a bigger impact.

And UT2004 and AOE3 aren't exactly cutting-edge games, anyway.

Answer 3

Industry gurus predict that by 2008 standard memory will be 2Gb.

Looking at laptops today in Costco, all the decent ones have 2Gb, and some were placed on the shelf for sale in September 2006!

They were 1.6Ghz cpu units. Gateway, and Hp units ran really well with http://pclinuxos.com (Disc #3 of UT2003 is the Linux one. )

But right now, the point of diminishing returns is 1 Gb for most of us, and when we really need to address 4Gb or RAM, it will be 64bit processors, running true 64 bit applications, in GNU/Linux!

That is what Suse/Novell, Debian, *BSD, and Ubuntu are positioning themselves to do! (Linux and BSD have been developing and then running 64bit apps. since 1993).

Answer 4

Win XP will allow a maximum of 4GB of Ram, but 2GB is the sweet spot. You won't gain any additional performance if you have over 2Gb or Ram, in fact your pc may run slower if you have more than 2 GB.