RAM Upgrade?

[cgentil 1]

Hi,

 

I'd like to know if there's any benefit to FSX upgrading my 8 GB RAM.

 

Here I describe my PC:

 

i5 3570K - 3.40 Ghz

Asus P8Z77-V

G.Skill 8 GB RAM

Asus GTX 670 2GB

 

Any benefit to upgrade RAM?

 

Using FSX, there's any hardware upgrade I should do to get better performance?

[gboz 157]

Hi,

 

I'd like to know if there's any benefit to FSX upgrading my 8 GB RAM.

 

Here I describe my PC:

 

i5 3570K - 3.40 Ghz

Asus P8Z77-V

G.Skill 8 GB RAM

Asus GTX 670 2GB

 

Any benefit to upgrade RAM?

 

Using FSX, there's any hardware upgrade I should do to get better performance?

Probably better to think about overclocking the i5 before changing the RAM.

 

When you say "upgrade the RAM" do you mean more RAM or faster RAM?

 

gb.

[cgentil 1]

Probably better to think about overclocking the i5 before changing the RAM.

 

When you say "upgrade the RAM" do you mean more RAM or faster RAM?

 

gb.

Yes, about more ram.

[martin-w 3,234]

I would say no. I would say don't waste your money.

 

If you have a system now with 8 gig then fine. On the other hand if you are building a new system then yes spec 16 gig. Simply because RAM is cheap so why not.

[TurboKen 221]

What speed is your current ram?

[z06z33 763]

You can always try to OC your ram

[SAAB340 28]

Yes, about more ram.

There is NO performance improvement to be had with more than 8GB RAM. FSX is a 32bit program and is therefore not able to ever use more than 4GB of RAM. That's why we get Out Of Memory crashes when we turn up the settings too much even thou many people have 16GB or more RAM in their computers. As you have 8GB RAM and FSX can use 4GB, that leaves you with 4GB of RAM for the OS and all other background applications that you might have running. That is way more than enough for background processes.

 

Depending on the speed and timings of your current RAM you might be able to get about 10% more FPS with faster lower latency RAM. But that depends on what you use at the moment. Kind of a bit of a waste though to buy new DDR3 now though. You are better off saving that money towards a Skylake build with DDR4. If you are on the standard Intel cooler you can spend less than what new faster RAM would cost on a new Cooler and then overclock the CPU. Overclocking will yield a lot more performance. Its overclocking your system that will give you most bang for the buck at the moment. If you're already on a 3rd party cooler it might even be for free.

[cgentil 1]

I have the RAM Gskill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600MHz.

 

Also got water cooler.

[martin-w 3,234]

FSX is a 32bit program and is therefore not able to ever use more than 4GB of RAM. That's why we get Out Of Memory crashes when we turn up the settings too much even thou many people have 16GB or more RAM in their computers.

I think you've got that wrong. OOM's are nothing to do with physical memory. Virtual Address Space is the Issue. :smile:

[Luke 782]

I think you've got that wrong. OOM's are nothing to do with physical memory. Virtual Address Space is the Issue. :smile:

 

No, you're both saying the same thing and in agreement.

 

One thing, however, that SAAB340 has omitted is that there is one other (critical) use for RAM - file cache. Having a 16GB machine allows the operating system to cache more of the disk in memory. Given the price difference, I don't think there's a good case to be made for 8GB over 16GB unless one is very tight on budget.

 

Cheers!

Luke

[martin-w 3,234]

Right, fair enough, he 's talking about the 4GB hard limit on virtual address space.

 

With you now.

[SAAB340 28]

Yeah, the 32bit virtual address space used thay gives you the 4GB hard limit. We totally agree.

 

If you were building a new machine and need to buy new RAM it's obviously not a bad idea to go for the 16GB instead if the 8GB. But as the OP has 8GB already it's not gonna make a difference for FSX to upp that to 16GB.

 

Getting 2400MHz CL10 RAM would yield another 7% FPS. But overclocking the CPU will yield about 15-25% more performance alone. Without paying for the new RAM. Sure enough, both overclocking AND using faster RAM would be even better. But personally I'd be inclined to save that money towards a Skylake system with DDR4 instead as the RAM will have to be changed at next update.

 

A 3570K with a z77 MoBo and water cooling is just waiting to be overclocked. Read up on it and try it. I'd guarantee you'd notice the difference in performance, and it is for free, ready to be done now.