Question about RAM...

[xxhieixx]

Okay, I only have 384 RAM with one 256 and one 128. I wanted to buy a 1 GB but it costs too much and I'd like to spend $30 or less so I was wondering if I bought a 512 MB and used it with my 256 MB would the game run smooth? Right now I can't even go into stormwind or ironforge or I'm going to be there for at least 30 minutes just to do one thing. I'm also afraid of going to certain dungeons because of the lag, even in the deadmines when I go through the portal it takes forever to load and sometimes when I die in the deadmines my pc freezes and I have to turn it off. So if I had 768 MB (thats the 512 and 256) would it stop lagging or do I need to have a 1 GB for this to stop completely?

[snowieken]

I have 512 Mb and it lags in major cities, but after the initial lag has worn off (less than half a minute) it is very doable. In order to stop completely, you would indeed need at least a Gb, and on higher settings probably even more, but 768 Mb should normally be very playable already.

[Kalos]

Be wared though, some brands don't like working with certain others. Buy a new stick that's the same speed, at the same timings, from the same company, and in the same quality bracket. Mismatched ram can cause crashes, instability, or just make Ram sticks run slower than they're capable of. The whole ram system can only go as fast as the slowest ram stick. If you had two sticks rated at PC 3200 with 2-2.5-2.5-5 timings, but added an extra new stick rated at PC 2800 (a slower speed) with 3-3-4-12, the system would perform worse.

Just be careful what Ram you have, know its statistics, and buy something that's very closely related. Extreme differences will result in gross underperformance, or a completely useless unstable OS that won't clear up until you resolve the conflict.

[xxhieixx]

Oh okay, thanks, that helps a lot ^^ I'll be sure to look into the 512 mb then. And I've already looked into to all of that, I was really confused at first but I went to Dell's website and it was able to scan my system and tell me everything. I took it out and looked at it but I still didn't know what was what and thanks for telling me all of that, I'll be sure to by the same or at least closely related to the one I have.

[Areeker]

Don't forget that the lag isn't all caused by RAM or a lack there of, your video card will play a roll in that very heavily too...

[IRID1UM]

after what he describes the ram is the major problem. my experiences with WoW were, that it runs very choppy on machines with 512 mb ram, especially when entering new areas or cities.
the game uses around 900 mb ram on average, with 1gb ram you can run WoW pretty well.
512 mb will be a huge difference to your current ram, and 768 mb will be a lot better than 512, but for the best performance you'd need 1280 or more ram.
reducing texture settings in the video options and disabling the anisotropic filtering helps much though, specially on video cards with low memory. but video cards aren't what is important, it depends much more on your system memory, as long as you have much of that, the game runs smoothly ;)

[Areeker]

So you're saying that if I were to drop another 1GB of RAM into my comp in addition to the 1GB I already have would make the game run even better on my system? I'm running

WinXP Pro
Asus P5ND2-SLI
Intel P4 3.06 HT
1GB RAM DDR2 533Mhz
ATI Radeon X1900 512MB RAM
All drivers up to date.

If dropping in another 1Gb of RAM is going to make it run better then I'm gonna head to the store right now...

[Kalos]

I wouldn't think so. Netburst architecture (AKA the super heater), the Pentium 4, would probably be holding you back more than anything else. There may be some improvement, but it would be far more noticable with a more advanced processor. Anything above 1 gig is not likely to do much with a six year old architecure like Netburst slugging around.

[Areeker]

So I'm always lookn for a excuse to upgrade my system...what about going to a Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz chip? Same video card and 2GB of PC8500 RAM? That ought to give a very noticable boost all the way around right?

[IRID1UM]

well, the difference between 1gb and 2gb is not very big. I have 2gb and half of my ram is empty when I play WoW. WoW itself doesnt require 1gb, but windows and all services etc plus WoW require in total just a little more than 1gb.
the difference is, that IF you run out of ram, for example when leaving an instance while being in a 40 man raid, you don't have to store the excessive data on your harddisk, which has a way lower read/write speed.
but as you already have 1gb of ram, the data to be written would not be a very large amount and your disk can write it somewhat quickly.
with 2gb ram you only access the disk to read textures and other data, but not also to buffer data that the ram can't hold anymore, speeding up things in crowded areas, specially when entering crowded areas (ironforge, anyone?).

the game doesnt require you to have a good processor and a great video card, it just requires you to have lots of ram and a fast hard disk (or two).
I could run the game smoothly on my Athlon 2400+ 1,5gb ram with geforce4 4400 at 1600x1200 before I upgraded.
even a X6800 processor couldn't make the game run smoothly if you have too few ram. because the harddisk is again limiting the fun. CPU doesnt really matter, most of what a cpu does is some artificial intelligence (ever seen that in WoW) and physics (almost non-existant too).
buying 1066mhz ram is stupid, if I may call it that. the C2D doesn't profit from faster ram, so if you don't want to increase your FSB to 500, then slower and cheaper ram will also do. DDR2 800 or even 667 will do too and not perform worse.

[Kalos]

Completely correct. Until the FSB bottleneck on Intel's own design is cleared up by Bearlake, it's pointless buying high speed DDRII for Core 2 Duo. However, the Pentium 4 had horrendeous connections to the primary memory controller; bad design doesn't help memory to be used well or effectively.

[Areeker]

first off, xxhieixx sorry for the thread hijack.

secondly, what do you all think would be the best setup to run WoW? My system isn't horrid, but as someone stated ealier the cpu technology is aging. I'm sure my video card can handle it, but if there is a better choice please suggest one. I'm just tired of watching my FPS dip into the red while in a 40-man raid.

[Kalos]

first off, xxhieixx sorry for the thread hijack.

secondly, what do you all think would be the best setup to run WoW? My system isn't horrid, but as someone stated ealier the cpu technology is aging. I'm sure my video card can handle it, but if there is a better choice please suggest one. I'm just tired of watching my FPS dip into the red while in a 40-man raid.
Ideally for WoW, a E6600, Core 2 Duo processor and a compatible motherboard based on the 965 chipset. An extra gig of Ram, and the same graphics card. Those would be pretty much perfect specs. But it could be your connection letting you down, the investment could be for nothing. It depends how bad you think it is, and how much of a boostt you can see from the parts. It's all about personal pespective really.

[IRID1UM]

your video card is fine, it is way stong enough to display the game smoothly.
try to disable the anisotropic filtering and setting the game to 1x multisampling.
if that doesnt help, then there must be something else wrong with your system, as all the components are way above the minimum requirements.
as I said earlier I played the game with a geforce 4, which is nothing compared to your video card.