elidion Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 So I finally got caught up reading this entire thread...I'm sorry the OP had to put up with so much crap. First Lion says it is SWTOR and not the OPs hardware...Lion says you need 4Gb minimum, OP clearly said he had only 3Gb, Lion still argues with OP that he doesn't need to change anything and calling logic fails. Lion says his friends computer that matches his exactly except for a slower video card actually runs smoother. I'll tell you this Mr/Ms. Lion, sounds like something might be wrong with YOUR system and instead of giving crappy advice to other people you should get your own situation fixed. OP if you are using 3x 1g sticks that is definitely hurting you, on your motherboard 2 of the slots she be marked in some way, usually color coded to show where to identical ram sticks to run in dual channel mode, which means you have 2 direct pipelines to the CPU instead of 1. So you typically buy in pairs (unless you are using an oddball triple channel chipset). Also when buying ram, don't buy what is labeled as the fastest Mhz or Ghz speed. IF you're not overclocking you don't need that as it ties in with the CPU multipliers and stuff I won't get into here. Typically the faster the Ghz the slower CAS Latency you will find on the ram. So if you're not into overclocking, you should find ram that matches the bus speed of your motherboard/cpu for best performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeckTator Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 So I finally got caught up reading this entire thread...I'm sorry the OP had to put up with so much crap. First Lion says it is SWTOR and not the OPs hardware...Lion says you need 4Gb minimum, OP clearly said he had only 3Gb He had 8GB in one of the machines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillionsKNives Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 You should also make sure you know what RAM your motherboard can take. If it can only handle DDR2 RAM you don't want to get something that's DDR3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNewell Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 This is the interesting about this problem. And it SCREAMS drivers/firmware of the hardware, or other applications in memory. Computers are deterministic so you can't just say "bad engine" unless you're suggesting they built randomness of performance into the engine. And not just true randomness... one set of hardware is ALWAYS good and one set is ALWAYS bad. So the random performance degredation method must be tied to hardware IDs of the machine. Oh yeah I agree with you, it probably is drivers/firmware on the different machines. And i am no expert by any means. But it seems like with game engines some work better with a variety of drivers/firmware and some dont. TOR engine maybe just does not work as well with such a large variety of drivers/firmware as some others. And how does one fix that on the user end? If its grafix drivers sure, but what if its firmware on something obscure, or a soundcard issue, ect. One with a high performance system buys a product and naturally assumes it will work well with that system. Maybe they shouldnt, but they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeckTator Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 You should also make sure you know what RAM your motherboard can take. If it can only handle DDR2 RAM you don't want to get something that's DDR3. If it can only take DDR2 he might as well change Motherboard, CPU and RAM. DDR3 is alot cheaper than DDR2 (atlast in Norway) coz DDR2 isn't produced anymore. I remember when DDR1 came after SDRam, then EDO that was before that was insanly expensive since it wasn't produced anymore. You got 4x DDR1-266Mhz for the price of 1x EDO-66Mhz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A/ ^ that's my mother board. Currently I have 3 DDR 2 800 (400 MHz) installed. Mobo is rated for DDR 2 1066. Should I get two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148286 And leave two of my current sticks installed (in the color coded slots) or will that hurt me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lonkley Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 In a perfect world, you really should just get a new mobo/cpu/memory. Being imperfect, you can probably spend a bit to get minimal performance increase. Definately add the stick of memory, It'll cut down on the paging to the hard drive which would be a huge help. Also, you may want to consider trying Readyboost if you have usb 2.0, not sure if it lives up to the hype, but it would be cheap and something worth trying. Just make sure the usb drive is fast. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNewell Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 NEWEGG.com has DDR2 everywhere and very cheap. 4gb G skill ddr2 800 for $46 bucks. Not sure about overseas, but in US RAM is easy to find and cheap on newegg and tigerdirect.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valkirus Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Then there is something seriously wrong with your system. Coz my game runs like a motherf... on a worse comp, never under 100 FPS. Many games have problems with the I7 though coz of hyper threading. Each core is simulated as 2 cores, thus reduced speed. And even in a threaded environmenr, many times all the other cores actually have to wait for a calculation to be complete in a single core before they can thread the rest. So I5 is in most cases a faster CPU for gaming than a I7. While the I7 would performe better in a Windows srv 2008 system handling background tasks. Many games have problems with the I7? I donot think so. Some maybe...but "many" is not true. I have a I7 and it runs all the games I have tried flawlessly. If a player should run into a issue, you can disable Hyperthreading in the system bios. Now for the money difference versus performance, I would agree the I5 is a better buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNewell Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A/ ^ that's my mother board. Currently I have 3 DDR 2 800 (400 MHz) installed. Mobo is rated for DDR 2 1066. Should I get two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148286 And leave two of my current sticks installed (in the color coded slots) or will that hurt me? It may be that you will have to OC the RAM to get that 1066 speed. If you know how then buy it, if not buy the 4gb G Skill off newegg for $46 bucks IMO, its ddr2 800 which is what you have now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 (edited) It may be that you will have to OC the RAM to get that 1066 speed. If you know how then buy it, if not buy the 4gb G Skill off newegg for $46 bucks IMO, its ddr2 800 which is what you have now. Okay. 800 it is then. Thank you. Edited January 12, 2012 by Chevex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daeseer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A/ ^ that's my mother board. Currently I have 3 DDR 2 800 (400 MHz) installed. Mobo is rated for DDR 2 1066. Should I get two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148286 And leave two of my current sticks installed (in the color coded slots) or will that hurt me? Well, your MoBo is undoubtedly dual channel. You should always put in RAM in matched pairs. If you have 3 1GB sticks, you should buy 2 2 GB sticks and put those in the color coded slots and then take 2 of the sticks you already have and put them in the others. You'll end up with 6 GB total. Is your original RAM all the same model and manufacturer? You want to make sure you use the same exact type of RAM in the matched pairs. So if, of your 3 sticks, you have 2 of the same model and one oddball, make sure you use the ones that are the same model. You should have 4 RAM slots. Look at your MoBo's manual and look for recommended memory configurations. Put the new 2 GB sticks in the first recommended slots, and the 2 1 GB sticks on the others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 Well, your MoBo is undoubtedly dual channel. You should always put in RAM in matched pairs. If you have 3 1GB sticks, you should buy 2 2 GB sticks and put those in the color coded slots and then take 2 of the sticks you already have and put them in the others. You'll end up with 6 GB total. Is your original RAM all the same model and manufacturer? You want to make sure you use the same exact type of RAM in the matched pairs. So if, of your 3 sticks, you have 2 of the same model and one oddball, make sure you use the ones that are the same model. You should have 4 RAM slots. Look at your MoBo's manual and look for recommended memory configurations. Put the new 2 GB sticks in the first recommended slots, and the 2 1 GB sticks on the others. Indeed, all 3 sticks are exactly the same. Manufactured by Crucial. I used to have four but one of them had issues and caused corrupted memory blue screens all the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daeseer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 (edited) Okay, I looked at your MoBo's manual online. You should put 2 new 2 GB sticks in the yellow sockets, and 2 of your 1 GB sticks in the black sockets. By chance, do you recall if your original RAM was dual channel? It probably is. Edited January 12, 2012 by daeseer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 Okay, So what about this motherboard with 4 of these? Any criticisms on that setup? $20 a stick means I could get 8gb of RAM for $80. Or should I just get two of the Crucial sticks for $60 total? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 Just to update the thread. My wife kicked on my home PC for me and I remoted in. I am running a AMD Phenom 9600 Quad-Core Processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daeseer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 (edited) Okay, So what about this motherboard with 4 of these? Any criticisms on that setup? $20 a stick means I could get 8gb of RAM for $80. Or should I just get two of the Crucial sticks for $60 total? I'd probably go with 2 of the 2 GB DDR2 800 sticks with 2 of the sticks you already have. 6 GB should be enough. I'm not sure about your CPU though. Your RAM is certainly low, but I don't know enough about that generation of AMD CPUs to know if it's a bottleneck for you. Edited January 12, 2012 by daeseer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeckTator Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A/ ^ that's my mother board. Currently I have 3 DDR 2 800 (400 MHz) installed. Mobo is rated for DDR 2 1066. Should I get two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148286 And leave two of my current sticks installed (in the color coded slots) or will that hurt me? HyperTransport 3.0 There is probably one roadblock specially on AMD, their cores arn't that fast, thats why they use more cores and more L2 and L3 CPU cache on their CPU's. and with Hypertransport (AMD's version of hyperthreading) each core simulates 2 cores, thus half the speed for each logical core. And even in a threaded environment often all other cores have to wait for a single core, or in ur case half a core. I would just get a socket 1055 MB, a I5-2500K (those chips is just begging for a 35-40% overclock) and DDR3 ram (get 1600Mhz, like a penny difference from 1333mhz) Although you could wait a bit coz the new intel socket is launching now so the old socket stuff should fall in price any day now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LionRampant Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 So I finally got caught up reading this entire thread...I'm sorry the OP had to put up with so much crap. First Lion says it is SWTOR and not the OPs hardware...Lion says you need 4Gb minimum, OP clearly said he had only 3Gb, Lion still argues with OP that he doesn't need to change anything and calling logic fails. Lion says his friends computer that matches his exactly except for a slower video card actually runs smoother. I'll tell you this Mr/Ms. Lion, sounds like something might be wrong with YOUR system and instead of giving crappy advice to other people you should get your own situation fixed. OP if you are using 3x 1g sticks that is definitely hurting you, on your motherboard 2 of the slots she be marked in some way, usually color coded to show where to identical ram sticks to run in dual channel mode, which means you have 2 direct pipelines to the CPU instead of 1. So you typically buy in pairs (unless you are using an oddball triple channel chipset). Also when buying ram, don't buy what is labeled as the fastest Mhz or Ghz speed. IF you're not overclocking you don't need that as it ties in with the CPU multipliers and stuff I won't get into here. Typically the faster the Ghz the slower CAS Latency you will find on the ram. So if you're not into overclocking, you should find ram that matches the bus speed of your motherboard/cpu for best performance. I'll tell you what genius - why don't you run SWTOR and then hit ctrl-alt-delete and check your task manager - tell us how much available RAM you have. See unlike you I'm not just GUESSING I have the FACTS at hand. Memory is almost completely irrelevant so long as you have enough. We are talking about the difference of half a percent from the slowest to fastest DDR2. You know *nothing* about hardware, please be quiet from now on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chevex Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 (edited) I'd probably go with 2 of the 2 GB DDR2 800 sticks with 2 of the sticks you already have. 6 GB should be enough. I'm not sure about your CPU though. Your RAM is certainly low, but I don't know enough about that generation of AMD CPUs to know if it's a bottleneck for you. Okay but is there any reason to go with the $30 sticks over the $20 ones? Edited January 12, 2012 by Chevex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeckTator Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 It may be that you will have to OC the RAM to get that 1066 speed. If you know how then buy it, if not buy the 4gb G Skill off newegg for $46 bucks IMO, its ddr2 800 which is what you have now. Not if he buy 1066 rated RAM and his MB has ratios between Front side bus and memory clock. I would in any case just swap the MB,CPU and RAM to a intel system. Much better overall than AMD. Hope AMD can strike back coz we need competition on the CPU market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daeseer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 I'll tell you what genius - why don't you run SWTOR and then hit ctrl-alt-delete and check your task manager - tell us how much available RAM you have. See unlike you I'm not just GUESSING I have the FACTS at hand. Memory is almost completely irrelevant so long as you have enough. We are talking about the difference of half a percent from the slowest to fastest DDR2. You know *nothing* about hardware, please be quiet from now on. When I'm running TOR on Win 7 Enterprise, with very little else running, I'm usually over 4 GB used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daeseer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Okay but is there any reason to go with the $30 sticks over the $20 ones? Well, the ones you have are DDR2 800, so if you run the $20 ones it might downclock the others. Probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but I'm not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orizuru Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Not if he buy 1066 rated RAM and his MB has ratios between Front side bus and memory clock. I would in any case just swap the MB,CPU and RAM to a intel system. Much better overall than AMD. Hope AMD can strike back coz we need competition on the CPU market. AMD is down for the count on desktop CPUs. And for good reason. I read something about a month ago that basically said they all but pulling out of the market and are going to focus almost exclusively on their mobile chip designs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilford Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Don't upgrade anything for SWTOR unless you are having problems in another game. This game is terribly optimized for a number of computer configurations. I have: i7 2600K @ 3.4ghz 16GB Ram 2 GTX 580's in SLI I'd have to run it again cause I haven't in a couple months but my computer averages over 70fps on the Unigine DX11 benchmark with 4x AA and tesselation on extreme... Yet I get bogus fps in SWTOR... Sounds like some terrible optimization to me. And I get worse performance than people with half of the hardware that I'm running. Bioware will eventually fix their game like Trion World did with Rift, Funcom did with Age of Conan and Mythic did with Warhammer Online's performance. The funny part of that statement is all those games failed because of their terribly optimized launch... Maybe Bioware should have taken note. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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