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Not to start a war, but 2GB is plenty for running BF2. Running BF2142 at almost max settings only uses about 40% of my 4GB. 32-bit will recogniza up to 3.2GB in most cases - is the .8GB worth reinstalling your OS? I did it but if you don't want to hassle with reinstalling everything, you certainly don't have to.
some games dont take much but when i was runing vista x64 with 2 gig, UT3 was taking 93% of my ram and so was stalker and a couple other games. that to me was plenty enough reason to get 2 more gigs. not to mention it was 60 bucks for 2 more gig of ddr2800 when i bought it. its worth it to meQuote:
Originally Posted by ChaosEnsues
UT3 alone was taking nearly 2GB? That doesn't sound right. Check your background processes.
RAM is dirt cheap so I recommend getting 4GB, I'm just saying that if you're using Vista32 right now, it may not be worth it to reinstall to Vista64 just to get that extra .5-.8GB of memory usage.
Vista uses memory differently than XP does. You'll probably notice near 100% memory usage in Vista with just about any game you play, and if you REALLY think about it... that's the way you want it isn't it? I mean that's what it's there for... to get USED. Hell what's the point of 4GB of memory if you're going to complain about 2GB's being used? Now if you close your game and your memory doesn't get released then you have issues.
Google around for VISTA MEMORY USAGE and you'll see what I mean.
No, I know exactly how Vista uses memory (I get complaints from customers daily about high RAM usage, only to explain to them that it's taking advantage of all available resources). But even Vista never goes above around 80% if it can help it - it will release resources it doesn't need when a game starts up. Unless the game itself is taking up that much RAM, 93% is rather extreme. At that point Vista will have released any non-critical processes. So either the game really is using 2GB (which I've never seen, even running games at 1920x1200), or there are a lot of background processes stealing RAM (Norton, Bittorrent, etc).
well i had already switched to vista x64 anyways when i only had 2 gig of ram. I did notice that vista x64 used more ram in general than 32 bit but as for the background progs, I dont have many that arent doing anything. Like I mentioned earlier, I do run a dual monitor and I have alot of things open at once but most dont use very much ram. Its still there of course but my ram was still hitting just about 90% when running some games. Not all of course, quake wars and WoW only used about 65-70% or so as other games might be lower or a tad higher. It was more of the newer games that were taking alot of memory. Hellgate London killed my ram but then again it had many many issues when it was released. Crysis used a crap load as well. UT3 was probably the worst and was used as an extreme example. It was still enough for me to just plunk down the 60 bucks and get 2 more gig. Now I dont have to worry about it at all :p