HANDS ON GUIDE

Add more memory

Price:

4GB (2x 2GB) Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400C5 DHX - £67.73;

2GB (2x 1GB) Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400C5 DHX - £34.83;

Total price: £35

Supplier: www.scan.co.uk

This is an interesting time for the memory business, as most PCs are close to the 4GB limit of a 32-bit operating system, which makes memory upgrades beyond 2GB difficult. The 4GB limit applies not only to system memory but to all the memory in your system, from the RAM on your graphics card to the cache in your CPU. For example, if you upgraded to 4GB of RAM and used a 3-Way SLI system, there would be less than 2GB of system memory available, as the OS reserves 2.3GB of system memory for the combined video memory of your three 768MB GeForce 8800s.

One way round this is to use Vista 64-bit, which increases the maximum amount of memory available to the system: 16GB in Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and 128GB in Vista Ultimate 64-bit. However, Vista 64-bit has its own issues. For a start, it requires certified drivers for all your hardware. The 64-bit version also has compatibility issues with games. Guitar Hero 3 struggled with bugs at launch, and some titles, such as Command & Conquer 3, only work on the 32-bit version of Vista.

We decided to try installing 4GB in a test system running 32-bit Vista. Many 2D benchmarks (including our own) showed little benefit from having access to more than 2GB of RAM. In fact, the extra RAM increased performance only in the image editing test, and even then by a measly ten points. Our benchmarks don't have masses of applications open at the same time, though, so our results don't necessarily mean that 4GB of RAM won't make your PC quicker.

We tried a 4GB kit from Corsair, and found that it made switching between multiple applications a little quicker, especially when you have multiple tabs open in Firefox, and very large image files open in Photoshop. The only games that will benefit are those that hog memory, but as Crysis regularly uses more than 1.5GB, having the extra RAM gives your system more space to breathe.

This was best demonstrated in Company of Heroes, in which we set up an eight-player skirmish on the extra large Montargis Region map. After a few minutes, the game stuttered when panning quickly round the map, but this improved significantly with 4GB of RAM fitted. This stuttering can't be recorded in a benchmark, but it makes a big difference visually. This occurred while playing at 1,280 x 1,024 using the DirectX 9 renderer, so you don't need to max out your system to notice a difference.

The extra memory improved the minimum frame rate in Supreme Commander as well, as a large-scale map with lots of events taking place will eat up memory.

While 4GB is the 'icing on the cake', it isn't a necessity. You'll easily get away with having 2GB of RAM in your PC, but if you're a perfectionist, 4GB of RAM is a real treat. As memory is so cheap these days - a 4GB Corsair DHX kit costs £67.73 - it's worth looking at 4GB if you're upgrading your memory. If your PC has just 1GB of RAM, amend this right now. It costs just £34.83 to upgrade to a decent 2GB kit of memory, and will make a big difference to games, as well as Windows apps.

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