1 gig of good ram over two gigs of value Ram any day hands down no questions asked if you are a gamer. There are other situations though where more might be better...Just my .02,-PaulLiquid CooledAMD 4000 San Diego2 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2Dual 7800 GTX 24 inch widescreen dual 19 inch LCDRaid-0

Look, I have a hot 486DX2 with 8mb of ram but FS4 wants a min of 560k with just 80k or a less for DOS. I say drop HiMem386 down to the bottom of the autoexec.bat load all other device drivers first and just forget about it!What was that about a GIG of memory?

I was running a very lean boot of 18 or so processes and use ActiveSky, PMDG big birds, GroundEnvironment, ActiveCamera, FDCompanion and when I ran 1,500mb of swap file size, I would not run out of physical memory. When I set the swap file to only 2mb, I would run out of memory in very complex situations (PMDG jumbos, big terminals and weather and after sundown). By adding another GB of ram, I am able to run low or no swap file and not run out of physical ram. If you happen to have at least 3 HDDs you can use performance monitor to display swap file write activity on drive E: when you install the OS on drive C:, FS9 on D:, and the swap file on E:. You will find when you set the size of the swap file to a large amount, such as 1,500 mb for example, that lots of write activity occurs on drive E:. Not so when you set the swap file to 2 mb. It would seem there is less HDD activity when you config your set up this way. You can still set your swap file to a very small size when you have just 1GB of ram installed, but you may find like I did that complex situations will use up available free ram and you will get an out of memory crash.Noel

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It's interesting the different RAM mileage we all get running FS and a bunch of addons. After seeing this thread (had to wear a flame suit to get through the heat of the middle bit :-lol), I checked out memory use during a normal session on my two FS systems (see sig) that each have 1G RAM. On both systems, I had FS 2004 (of course!), FS global terrain, LDS 767, AS6, FSBuild, ActiveAirSource (online ACARS), and FS RealTime running. The results were very similar for both systems. FS memory use peaked at around 350K on load up, then settled down to 250K for the cruise. Once settled down, my systems were reporting around 400K of free memory.One thing I have done recently is started using FSAutoStart to close down unnecessary processes and applications while running FS, although I do this more for the smoothness benefit than for any physical RAM savings it may yield.Gary

Hey Neil, I've received a couple of e-mails from forum members who are curious about what in your FS9 install causes it to want almost 1Gb of memory. So if you really want to contribute something here how about doing some testing.Specifically, configure your Task Manager to show CPU, Mem Useage, Peak Mem Useage, and VM Size. Then crank up the sim and create a flight with your favorite and usual add-ons (basically make a short flight the way you usually like to fly) and then save the flight once you're in-cockpit. Once airborne and settled into the flight make a jpg of your Task Manager. Exit the sim to desktop. Now start Filemon before entering the sim a second time to create a log (of the entire in-sim session) while making that same short flight.Posting the TM jpg will give us a quick eyeview of what's happening in your system at that instant and the Filemon log will offer info during the duration of the flight.If there are additional add-ons not listed in your first post that info would be helpful, too.Greg

Greg, First off you come in here and tell Neil if he really wants to contribute something here.... Where do you get off? I am sorry are you the contribution police who determined nothing he said thus far was of value? That is your opinion and just rude, personally, I think he already contributed and here you are still bashing away. Someone else said it earlier and I totally agree, your presence in this thread has been nothing but annoying. From an outsiders perspective it seems like you are on a personal vendetta to prove your point. Just let it go man...(Also, why would he be using Task Manager LOL and not Perfmon to actually do performance monitoring of his box?) Them, I find it funny that if forum members wanted to know what about NEIL'S setup caused HIS memory usage to grow why would they e-mail you and not PM Neil? Why wouldn't they have just posted in this thread and asked him directly? Why go through you???Now, as for memory usage, no one needs to go through this exercise to prove anything to you. This whole pushing beyond 1 gig has only happened since the addition of all the sophisticated add-on heavies we have seen this past year in conjunction with all the other add-ons we were already using. It is not tough, Load up THE PMDG 744 and any add-on airport around NYC and you will quickly be at ~800 megs FS usage alone. This is upon your initial load of the airport. It is a combination of add-on A/C that use up anywhere from 3-500 megs of memory ALONE, then a sim that uses 250 megs minimum, an add-on airport that uses 50-100 megs and UT which uses 50-100 megs and it is really not tough at all to push FS way beyond its 250-400 megs it used out of the box. Just logically look at memory consumption of FS alone, all of these add-ons alone and throw them into one scenario and flight and it is very ease to push FS to a gig and beyond...It just takes a lot of add-ons to do it. Not sure why you (or other people like you say) are having such a hard time with that. Man, didn't we all say yesterday we were basically in agreement now you come back today and belittle him and tell him "if he really wants to contribute here" to do what you say. Come on Greg, I am sure you are a nice guy ( I don't know you so I can't judge) but let it go, -PaulAGAIN: For some people in certain situations utilizing a lot of add-ons simultaneously a second gig of Ram might help improve your FS experience. This is not an issue for the "average" user but if you like to specifically fly the add-on heavies (LVL-D PMDG and somewhat PSS) with a bunch of bells and whistles and all the eye candy, you MIGHT want to consider a second gig of memory.

Why wouldn't they have just posted in this thread and asked him directly? Why go through you???Dunno, Paul. Perhaps others who are curious about memory useage and demand from add-ons will add their ideas here.How about you offering up these tests (since you think I have a vendetta against Neil)? Feel free to use Perfmon, although I believe Filemon will be the most telling log.A few weeks ago you did some testing regading CTD's you experienced, so why not do these tests so that we all may learn more about what's going on in high memory useage FS9 installs.Greg

Greg, quite simply because I already know the answer... Like I said, it is all to do with the new add-on heavies that use up more memory than FS did originally out of the box LOL. Seriously, that is all it is. You will NEVER get anywhere CLOSE to a gig unless you are running one of the new add-on heavies that eat up hundreds of megs on their own in conjunction with a dense scenery area like NYC or LA or KSEA or London and an add-on airport to boot. I believe some of the new DreamFleet GA A/C can be pretty heavy on memory too.It is just the stacking of the add-ons and no one ever saw individual A/C in FS using more memory than FS alone until the LVL-D, PMDG 744 and somewhat the PSS. I say somewhat because with the PSS in NYC at ImagineSim KEWR I am still only at ~ 750 megs. Even still with O/S consumption and ASV running that still puts me close to a gig... It seems like PSS is a little lighter on the mem use than the others...Like I said, I don't need any tool to show me that when I load certain A/C my FS memory usage more than doubles and when I add a few more add-ons on top I am not surprised at all to see FS hovering right around a gig... I actually monitor my memory in real time with Pertelian. It is like an external perfmon you can watch in real time while simming... http://pertelian.com/index.php?option=com_...id=32&Itemid=38That is WHY and HOW I know what is causing the memory usage in FS, I watch it happen as I load different things up and watch their memory usage. I watch for increasing memory usage, memory being released properly, everything. On my box FS uses ~ 20-30 megs more memory at night than during the day. Could be because I am doing all h/w lighting but I immediately noticed that as well as the fact you typically use 60-70 megs LESS memory over the water. Pass over most add-on airports even at 35k feet and FS memory usage will increase by anywhere from 30 megs up to an additional 100 megs. Turn on the lights inside the PSS T7 and you will get an ~ 20-30 meg spike before that memory is recovered. Like I said, I know where my memory usage is going, I studied this intently while monitoring my OOM errors... I sat there for days just watching Virtual Bytes LOL, I am tested out.After all that testing I did, the ONLY thing I could do to EVER fully get rid of the Out of Memory errors was to delete UT. As soon as I re-install it my Out of Memory errors came back. No UT no error, UT error every time with 100% ability to replicate the issue...Best,-Paul Liquid CooledAMD 4000 San Diego2 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2Dual 7800 GTX 24 inch widescreen dual 19 inch LCDRaid-0

I'll tell you Greg, under normal circumstances, I would be happy to do a little testing. In fact, if you knew what I did for a living and who I worked for, you'd understand that I enjoy that kind of thing. In this case though, I'm going to take my bat and ball and go home. If anyone seriously has a curiousity and is unable to do similar testing themselves, PM me and I'll see if I can provide some information. I'm not taking the bait of putting myself on public show for your amusement.