added more ram aquamark score goes down? 1

[cdouglas1]

hi, wondering if anybody could help me out... i just added an extra gig of ram to my system (1.5 now) and my aquamark3 scores gone down by about 3000 (2700 originally to 2400 now). can that be right? any ideas? help much appreciated

had 1 x 512MB 184 - PIN DIMM DDR 2700 UNBUFF
added another 2 of the same spec ram
(now 3 x 512MB 184 - PIN DIMM DDR 2700 UNBUFF)

motherboard : Asus A7N8X-X (takes 3 gig apparently supports up to pc3200 ram)
proccessor : athlon xp 2500+ barton (unclocked just now 11 x 166)
Graphics : geforcefx 5700 ultra

 

[cdogg]

Well, it shouldn't have gone down that much. If a benchmark is barely affected by the amount of RAM, then a decrease can be expected when going from 1 DIMM to 3 DIMMs, which is less efficient. But losing 300 points seems a bit unlikely.

Make sure you reboot and run the benchmark at least one more time. Then pull the extra 2 DIMMs and run it again to be sure you still get close to 2700. If the 300 point difference still exists, then perhaps there is a low-grade quality associated with one of the extra DIMMs you purchased.

Other suggestions...try each DIMM by itself to possibly isolate an underperforming one, and also try other benchmarks that are more RAM dependent.

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[cdouglas1]

thanks for the advice cdogg much appreciated. i tried the various combinations of the ram and got pretty much the same scores each time (25,500) each ram seperately got the same also. i was convinced earlier that i had gotten 2700 without clocking the machine, but i'm not so convinced now... and i cant check anymore anyways. I spent 100 quid hoping to improve the performance of the machine in games and i just worried that my ram isnt running as good as it should speedwise. know of any better benchmarking tools that would test my ram was working fine? (in games if poss) i tried fraps but i aint sure that its working right (deus ex 2 runs the same fps with 512mb ram than it did with 1.5gig ram dosnt seem right....) thanks anyways

 

[cdogg]

When it comes to benching your system, you'll find that many game benchmarks are GPU dependent stressing the video card more than anything else.

While it is true that the video card is the most influential component, additional RAM can help games like Everquest that need to render thousands of objects in main memory. The more memory your video card and system have, the more objects that can be rendered at once saving time when one is needed. A benchmark doesn't normally take that into consideration, because most games don't require that many memory-resident objects (at least not enough to warrant over 512MB of system RAM).

Typically 512MB is the point of diminishing returns (meaning as you go over that, you start getting less and less of an increase in performance per megabyte). It doesn't hurt to have a larger amount, however, especially when some applications and games will make use of it.

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[cdouglas1]

thanks again for your post cdogg, you're spot on there with your second comments. ive tried running various other games and some of them have really benefitted from the ram (where as some don't), c&c generals especially which could be very stuttery when lots of units were running bout on screen with 512mb ram. thinking about it now though, i probably shoulda gone for just a gig of ram first, but hey we learn from our mistakes. I'm determined to get doom3 and halflife 2 working nice and I know i havn't got the most out my kit yet, so im probably gonna buy a new heatsink and fan next and get into overclocking my cpu (havnt really had the chance to look into the how(or why)i can overclock my ram).

 

[paparazi]

I think many users get the wrong end of the stick when it comes to ram.
Many wrongly assume that ram actually increase performance where as, all you are doing is provided a larger amount of temorary storage to be written to, if the application or game doesn't use, say, more than 500mb any more than that will have very little benefit.
I will contradict what has been said as well, because large amounts of ram have actually been shown to have a very slight negative effect to overall performance but to most power users and for things like video editting and rendouring large files etc, the benefits outway the VERY SLIGHT performance hit.
I would suggest that the best configuration for this platform would be:

Just the two matched 512 modules because this is a "DUAL CHANNEL MOTHERBOARD" ????

I know this next suggestion is a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but:

The £100/$180 would have been better spent on something like a new Nvidia 6600GT
I'm guessing you would get £75/$130 for your 5700ultra so you could have just added another £75/$130 approx and got yourself a graphics card that is as much as twice as fast as the one you have at the moment and (basically spent less than on the memory upgrade)

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[Freestone]

The A7N8X-X is not a dual-channel motherboard, and besides, a dual-channel motherboard is not necessarily restricted to using only two DIMMS. For instance, the Asus A7N8X-Deluxe maintains dual-channel when all of its three DIMM slots are populated.

 

[cdogg]

Actually, tests have shown that having large amounts of memory (up to 2GB) does not generally hurt performance when only 1 or 2 DIMMs are used. XP's memory management is far superior to old OS's like 98, ME, and NT. Back then, the notion that too much memory can hurt was absolutely true.

But I will confirm that there are many applications out there that recommend in their tech forums in having a 1GB of RAM or more for optimum performance (Adobe Premiere 7.0, Everquest, etc). Most other applications, as paparazi and myself pointed out, will not likely see any noticeable improvement over 512MB.

But as I said in my first post, using 3 or more DIMMs can start to hurt performance a tad, because latency increases as the memory controller takes longer to store and retrieve data.


Freestone,
Yep, that's right. Some mobos out there do in fact support dual channel using an odd number of DIMMs. For others curious to see this, check out page 27 of the manual:

http://www.asus.com/support/downloa...&m_id=1&f_name=e1292_a7n8x_deluxe.zip~zaqwedc

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[cdouglas1]

ive been testing games throughout the week and i havnt mananged to get one of them so far to use the 3rd stick of RAM so i dont think i need the 1.5gb, and ive managed to sell 1 of the 512's for £45 already. im gonna go with what paparazi said and try sell my video card and spend some extra to get the 6600GT card which id get for £145 (paparazi tad optimistic gettin £75 for the card though... up here in scotland folk are a bit tight... yer paying for the warranty with a gfx card anyways...) hopefully il get £60 though.. and with the 45 i got back for the RAM... i wouldnt have to cough up to much more and im sure it would be a decent performance boost...