Memory Speed
 

OK I have 2 256 PC2100 DIMMs in my system for a total of 512megs. Question is what kind of performance jump would I get replacing them with PC 3200?? My system is a P4 3.0 800mhz 865i chipset, so it supports the faster memory, but I happened to have the PC2100 laying around went I build the system..

My main issue is I'm getting lag in some games and I'm wondering if this might help.

Wow, I'm surprised that the system even boots up with 2100. What motherboard do you have?

Back to your question: I think you'd see a performance jump. Mainly because you'd have an increase in the amount of data you can push through the RAM.

This thread has some good information about RAM basics.
http://www.dalantech.com/ubbthreads/...393/Main/31393

Hmm, just be aware that DDR2 is not the same thing as Dual Channel DDR which seems to have confused the author of that article. =P

Very true, DDR2 will not work in your motherboard bitrunner. But dual-channel would be good if your motherboard supports it.

You'd see a marginal increase in performance (maybe 5-10%). It's true that better performance results from having matched RAM and CPU speeds, but having MORE ram is almost more important than having synched RAM. This is theoretically incorrect but tends to be the commonplace. Your speed difference is rather big, however, so buying the correct ram speeds will probably yield better than average performance (hence my 5-10% estimate).

Summary: if you buy more ram, your system will run faster, but games won't increase in performance that much. Benchmarking applications care more about the synchronization of your ram and CPU while games care more about how MUCH ram you have.

I consider 512 MB of RAM in today's games unplayable with the settings I want. Your lag is likely being caused by a shitty videocard or a simple lack of adequate ram.

-Lasereth

I have an ATI 9600XT card, and I'm playing Desert Combat Final. That's why I was guessing it was memory related.

Well, I broke down and installed the package from the SuSE DVD, but I'd still really like to know how in the world to get this stuff to compile so I can get some more experience with this type of stuff.

Well, I did something experimental to me and used the autopackage binary. This stuff is easy as hell to install and worked perfectly. I'm now enjoying the 1.1.2 version of Gaim, so I'm happy. If anyone would like to explain how to get the cvs and source compilation to work, however, I'm still very much listening.

The Battlefield games take RAM as much as World of Warcraft do, and that's saying a lot. I can't play the Battlefield games on PCs with less than 512 MB of RAM. Adding more RAM will actually increase raw FPS in the Battlefield games.

-Lasereth