PCA Forums

Okay my system is running good but there are 2 important areas I need to adress...

memory and storage

I have a maxtor 40g 7200 ata100 thats been a great drive...However I just dont have any room left

I also sold off some ram a few months back for some quick cash and am now sitting at 256

Playing games like bf1942 and Mafia I can tell that I desperately need more ram

Here's the quandry...get 256 of samsung 2700 and a "regular" 40g hdd, or (what I'm seriously contemplating) get an 80g wd800jb se with that sexay 8 meg cache and 2 platter goodness and 128 of crucial 2700

Those are the options my budget allows (~150)

The pull of that drive is REALLY strong but im not sure if 384 will really be enough ram

What do yall think?


system specs in sig

Prices on hard drives always come down, ram is more unpredictable. I'd get another 256meg of ram, then the best and largest hd you can afford.

But I'd understand getting that hd and just 128mb of ram too.

384Mb should be enough for any game out there. Frankly, unless you're running a lot of background apps and a huge wallpaper there's no reason 256Mb shouldn't be doing the job. I grant you however that some installs of WinXP use more ram than others depending on how you set it up. More memory is definately better however - I consider 256Mb to the bare minimum on an XP or 2K system.

If money's tight, why not just keep the 40Gb drive and shop around for a 2nd HDD? Check the forums for a 2nd hand 40Gb. Also keep an eye out at Office Depot - they seem to have some some good sales on HDDs every month or so.

I tend not to run too many background apps and never use wallpapers (im a resource whore ) but in certain games the benefit of 512 is noticable,

I turned off all anistopy and AA to isolate things and still had a little swapping in games like morrowind and mafia (2 of the more expansive games im playing right now)

Not to mention more ram seems to speed up bf1942 load times immensley (gah that game drives me nuts.....)

I think what I'm going to do is buy 512 of corsair 2700 and if I don't need all 768 I can trade off my samsung 256 for a new hdd.

Then theres always that xbox I havent even touched since I beat Halo

I'd say get 256 megs of samsung pc2700 should find a stick for 60-70 used on the forums then spend the remaining 80-90 on a 80 gig HDD...

More than 512Mb is a waste unless you're a power user (10 or more windows open at one time) or use a memory hog app like Photoshop.

I had 512 MB of Corsair XMS PC2700 and when I started playing BF1942 I noticed some swapping going on. I have dual a dual display setup so I opened the task manager in XP and sorted by mem usage. I then fired up BF 1942. I then saw the game use over 300MB of RAM when I loaded a level!

I then proceded to newegg and ordered 1024MB of Corsair XMS PC3000 Platinum edition. Life is good now.

Here is some fun, load up BF1942 and play Gazala and watch the game use over 400MB!

I don't think over 512MB is a waste anymore!

Sheesh. I'm not sure I WANT to play a game that uses that much ram....

Its pretty graphics intense 512 for that game is a minimum i couldn't imagine playing it with 256...

Originally posted by PreDatoR
i couldn't imagine playing it with 256...

Lol gee thanks

Works great....until I need to load a map (I can actually go to the fridge, open a beer, drink it down, go take a leak, sit down and be back just in time to see the spawn interface come up)

Mafia is pretty bad too....any time I enter a big area I get annoying swaps...and I have swapfile at 1024 min/max (xp pro)

BTW: If you know where I can get an 80g for 80-90 bucks im all ears that's hella cheap

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
Sheesh. I'm not sure I WANT to play a game that uses that much ram....

LOL
Didn't Bill Gates say we would never use more that 640 megs of ram?

My brother has a dual PIII-1GHz setup with 1 gig of ram running XP Pro, as he uses his pc for audio editing and audio creation. I think if your running Win2k or XP and are a game player, you probably should have 512 megs of ram.

Mafia and BF1942 are currently the 2 biggest RAM hogs out there, hands down. When I upgrade I'm getting a gig of RAM, might as well, everything else is getting bigger and faster, might as well include the RAM...

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
Sheesh. I'm not sure I WANT to play a game that uses that much ram....

But imagine the game! It could have the potential to be freakin incredible with that much space. At least going by todays standards.