Is 1gb of ram enough?

[Guest planeman223]

My computer:AMD AM2 Athlon 64+ 3800 ProcessorBFG 7900GT 256MB GRAPHICSASUS M2N-E 571 ULTRA MOTHERBOARD160GB WESTERN DIGITAL HARD DRIVE500 WATT POWER SUPPLYI AM RUNNING WINDOWS XP HOME AND FS 2004 WITH THE 747-400 PMDG ADD ON. MY COMPUTER IS BEING BUILT SHOULD I BUY THE SECOND GIG OR NOT?THANKSAL

[Mats_J 2]

Al,My experience is that 1 Gb is well enough. I'm sure the 2Gig boys will tell you otherwise though ;-)Cheers,

[Guest D17S]

Yea, I have a gig and the big sceneries are using 700+ meg of it. I'll bet if I had 2, it would fill that up too. The only real problem I see is switching in and out of flight sim. My laptop has 512 and it can take up to a minuite to get back to the desktop from the sim. Memory standards are all about to change, fast. This Conroe (Core 2 Duo, Intel's new CPU) will use DDR2. I think that if I was at a gig already, I don't think I'd buy any more DDR memory right now. But, if you are at 512, bite the bullet. DDR of not, you gotta get a gig to run this thing. Your next system will use DDR2 stuff for sure. That means that you will not be able to move any DDR to a new system. If you have a gig now, my advise is to hold tight for now. When you're ready to build, get 2 gig of DDR2-800 mhx stuff. So far, main system DDR3 is just an AMD dream - - - thank goodness. The DDR2 should be with us, at least for an upgrade cycle or two.

[Guest tmanaon]

Al,I have 1 gb on my pc and i have to say that i will upgrade to 2 gb soon. I use Activesky, Radar Contact and AISmooth whenever i'm flying the PMDG 747 and at some airports (Kennedy, Ohare, Heathrow) my framerate really sucks (ranging from 5 fps to 12 fps).If you intend to fly with all these addons, i will say go for 2 gb immediately.Anthony

[clayton4115 56]

2 gigs definatelythen you wont see those terrible texture loadings on the planes which i hate so much :-(

[Guest 102301636]

I have 1Gb DDR2 and my sim runs fine, i run all the major sceneries VOZ,FlyTampa,Project Canarias (the list goes on and on) I also run fs at 1920X1200 resolution on full sliders. I run ACtivesky,RC4,AIS,PAI,UT,and a whole host of other stuff.my framerates are always good enough to be enjoyable but with all that ai you will notice that it takes a while for the textures on the ai aircraft a bit of time to load upI reckon it will be 2Gb for me next time round but if i were buying right now i'd be happy with a gig all the same

[Guest tmanaon]

Alan,If your pc is running so well using 1 gb, i wonder why my framerates suck so bad especially in the major airports. Do you have any suggestions on things i could do to improve my framerates?Anthony

[Guest Loiosh]

I have 2 GB of RAM in my current system (and plan to buy 3 for my next system November), but it makes little difference to FS9. FS9 is heavier on your CPU and GFX card (plus GFX ram) than system ram.

[Guest]

Al:I have been doing some research on this. Some 'experts" on the net claim that one gig of very fast ram is a better buy if funds are a consideration. As some of the other users explain it is the CPU and Graphics card that do most of the work. I am planning on getting another gig and disabling the paging file. Ram is faster than using virtual memory which uses the hard drive. At the present time I am using a program called FreeRam. I can get 875 megs of free ram before starting FS. It helps. Also I have pruned all 'services' down to bare minimum. This also helps. Frames are in the 18 - 20 range in most views with a low end machine. Heavy scenery or traffic near airports slows it up a bit but it remains acceptable. Hope this helps.RegardsRick

[Guest Celt]

Simple answer. If you can afford it, get 2GB. With the way programs are trending (including FSX) you will need it at some point anyway. Sure it may be cheaper in 12 months time, but you will see a benefit in there being fewer paging operations to disk (and youcan enable a registry tweak that prevents kernel paging which is useful).Memory cleaners can be both a good and a bad thing, as they can cause excessive paging, but the best memory tweak is to keep control of all that stuff that sits in your system tray, and runs on startup. I only have the bare necessities in my systray, which are the firewall/anti-virus and spyware protectors, the bluetooth manager for my mouse and PDA connections, and my joystick manager. No motherboard tuners, no media helpers, no quick start utilitis for PDF readers, no sound card or graphics card property adjusters . . . nothing. All those use (or waste) memory, get them out of your startup folders/registry.

[windycloud 30]

Don't get value rams. In my case I bought double side value ram for my first GB. When later I got another GB I realized my mobo doesn't support 4 double side ram sticks at DDR400. It can only run two at DDR400 or 4 at DDR333. I had to return the ram because I don't want to have my memory running at a slower speed.Get decent single side ram sticks.Jason

[Kosta 122]

2 GB definitely. My overall performance improved, not to say no more swapping, and also things get loaded and that's it. I wouldn't ever wanna have less...only more :-)

[Guest 102301636]

Anthony,I'm not sure what to say really, you could devote an entire article (and people have) to answering your question and the answer may still not suit your individual machine.A computer is more than just RAM, you really have to pick a machine that is good all round and the bits and pieces must complement each other nicely in terms of speed. What you want to do is minimise bottlenecks in your hardware as much as possible.In short I don't know why your frames suck at major airports. I will say this, when I'm at KSEA (the flyTampa version), my frames are fine but it does take upto 30sec to load up the textures for my AI, that really is the only annoying thing about my FS experience.Some people are very surprised when I tell them my config;I have a PM 1.87Ghz processor with 2MB L2 Cache (v important) and 533MHz FSB (this is also important), this chip is a little behind now but it's still up there as one of the best to have, most people don't know that the PM chips are faster than the P4's cus of the 2MB L2 cache!Onto your RAM, is it DDR or DDR2 or something else?DDR2 RAM is twice as fast as DDR for reasons I'm not going to get into here.in short on the FS side you could try 2 things, most people gain some benefit from this;1) Bring the sliders back on your cloud draw distance and visibility slider. This will help alot.2) modify your fs9.cfg, there are plenty of articles out there with good advice, mostly it's trial and error to see what works for you but you can make very good progress with this to squeeze out a couple of more frames.In the end however you will probably have minor hiccups here and there , what can i say?...c'est la vie! best of luck though, hopefully you will be able to improve your fs experience!