The advantage of 4gig memory over 2

[clif9710]

I'm running the minimum system and started with 2gB of memory. Civ 5 ran ok (on strategy screen) so I wondered what difference another 2gB would make.

BIG difference - the game runs slightly faster but the swapping in/out of the hard disk no longer makes my PC unusable when I close Civ 5. With 2gB it took about five minutes before the computer was usable for other things and I couldn't have Civ 5 running with anything else or the "else" would be too slow to use.

Now Civ 5 closes instantly, or it can be left running while I run other software without any evidence it is resident.

Interestingly, scraping by with this minimum system, I haven't had any crashes. (Athlon dual core, WinXP, ActiveX 9c)

So if you are thinking of getting more memory, do it.

 

[sav]

On the same system, I found the game pre-patch to be unplayable due to slowdowns and crashes. Now, without changing anything at my end, it runs okay.

 

[JBConquests]

I was wondering if upgrading from 4GB to 8GB of RAM would make any differences in performance?

 

[gstommylee]

I noticed improvements in how the game loads save games/new maps and the performance as the game goes on since i went from 2gigs of ram to 6gigs

 

[Oerdin]

Memory is so cheap you might as well upgrade it. Online you can find 2X2GB 1600 hz simms for $49.99

 

[Lord Tirian]

Something to mention: If you have a 32-bit OS, you can only utilise up to a bit more than 3 GB of RAM. If you make your machine a 4 - 8 GB monster, please have/get a 64-bit OS or your shiny new RAM will be pointless. And WinXP 64-bit is... not so good (shoddy hardware/driver support, worse than early Vista).

Also: RAM *never* hurts - it will make everything smoother and allows you to have more stuff in the background. And modern programs can be insanely memory-hungry (I'm looking at you, Firefox and Chrome!). Having more also makes your machine more tolerant towards crappily written programs that leak memory (i.e. they don't free up unused memory properly while running, so their memory footprint gets larger and larger the longer it runs).

Cheers, LT.

 

[timtofly]

Having more also makes your machine more tolerant towards crappily written programs that leak memory (i.e. they don't free up unused memory properly while running, so their memory footprint gets larger and larger the longer it runs).

Cheers, LT.

That should be the programmers problem, not ours. I propose a "take back our memory" revolution.

 

[Lord Tirian]

That should be the programmers problem, not ours. I propose a "take back our memory" revolution.

Oh, of course, I fully agree - I really the philosophy of letting software bloat since new hardware can cope with it (that's pretty much why Windows is so bloated and a good Linux distro is mean and lean). And memory leaks are flat out bugs - but they happen.

But ultimately, bugs and bloat aren't desired but part of reality, it's just a side-effect of projects getting bigger and larger than ever before (to compare, look up Steve Gibson, he handcodes everything in assembly and has a fully working DNS Benchmark with graphical interface that's less than 200 kB big! - but he's the only guy working on it, hence the efficiency). The programmers do their best to fight it from their side... and extra RAM is the thing *we* can do to cope with bloaty/buggy software (plus extra RAM has other benefits as well).

Cheers, LT.

 

[OrsonM]

Oh I actually play this on a 8 gig computer... it still runs slow, so what type of monster does this game needs to be played well??

 

[JBConquests]

Something to mention: If you have a 32-bit OS, you can only utilise up to a bit more than 3 GB of RAM. If you make your machine a 4 - 8 GB monster, please have/get a 64-bit OS or your shiny new RAM will be pointless. And WinXP 64-bit is... not so good (shoddy hardware/driver support, worse than early Vista).

Also: RAM *never* hurts - it will make everything smoother and allows you to have more stuff in the background. And modern programs can be insanely memory-hungry (I'm looking at you, Firefox and Chrome!). Having more also makes your machine more tolerant towards crappily written programs that leak memory (i.e. they don't free up unused memory properly while running, so their memory footprint gets larger and larger the longer it runs).

Cheers, LT.

I've been running windows 7 64 bit and the drivers seem pretty good. I haven't had any troubles with any games except for fallout which I couldn't play for about 6 months after release.

I probably will pick up 4 GB more. I upgrade from 4GB to 8GB a few months ago and within a few weeks of moving up to 8GB my original 4GB of RAM went bad...

 

[Soronery]

That should be the programmers problem, not ours. I propose a "take back our memory" revolution.

memory leaks usually arn't easy to fix...finding what is causing the leak is usually the hard part.

 

[JBConquests]

Oh I actually play this on a 8 gig computer... it still runs slow, so what type of monster does this game needs to be played well??

If the programmer writes inefficient code then no amount of hardware will make a huge difference in performance. In that case we just have to wait for the programmer to re-factor the code for performance.

 

[JBConquests]

memory leaks usually arn't easy to fix...finding what is causing the leak is usually the hard part.

Totally agree. I have lost way to much of my life to tracking down memory leaks...

Though I've heard there are some fancy memory managers out there that, if used, can make this easier. I've never used one myself - I always had to do it the hard way.

 

[AdamMorva]

I was wondering if upgrading from 4GB to 8GB of RAM would make any differences in performance?

No, it would hardly increase your performance.
It has a fairly complex answer, but it's very likely that you'd get close to 0 performance improvement.

 

[lynxxyarly]

I'm running the minimum system and started with 2gB of memory. Civ 5 ran ok (on strategy screen) so I wondered what difference another 2gB would make.

BIG difference - the game runs slightly faster but the swapping in/out of the hard disk no longer makes my PC unusable when I close Civ 5. With 2gB it took about five minutes before the computer was usable for other things and I couldn't have Civ 5 running with anything else or the "else" would be too slow to use.

Now Civ 5 closes instantly, or it can be left running while I run other software without any evidence it is resident.

Interestingly, scraping by with this minimum system, I haven't had any crashes. (Athlon dual core, WinXP, ActiveX 9c)

So if you are thinking of getting more memory, do it.

Using xp will only net you about 3.2gb of ram. 32-bit OS don't support anymore than that. I'm assuming of course you aren't using xp-64 since its a pile worse than windows mmmeeeeeeee

At any rate do yourself a favor and get win7 x64 in any flavor you wish. Its ridiculously optimized and scales amazingly well with older hardware. I put a copy on an old dell lappy that's over 5 years old and it runs better than it did on xp. This is a core solo lappy at that.

I was wondering if upgrading from 4GB to 8GB of RAM would make any differences in performance?

Any game that exists right now can not use more than about 3gb of ram. Getting more ram will not directly make any game run better. You can multitask better however. There are apps that utilize a lot of ram though. -read: CAD-

 

[raglam]

Note that (as far as I know) Civilization5 is a 32-bit process. Normally 32-bit processes can address a maximum of 2GB only. So more memory won't make a difference if you run 32-bit programs and games on a 64-bit OS.

 

[CivDude86]

Civ5 is large address aware so it can use 4GBs under a 64bit OS.

 

[zarakand]

I don't have many issues running the game, but I have a ridiculous amount of ram 12gb. The only area where I notice a slow down is on large maps when I'm ending turn from the Industrial Era onwards.

 

[Smote]

Something to mention: If you have a 32-bit OS, you can only utilise up to a bit more than 3 GB of RAM. If you make your machine a 4 - 8 GB monster, please have/get a 64-bit OS or your shiny new RAM will be pointless. And WinXP 64-bit is... not so good (shoddy hardware/driver support, worse than early Vista).

Also: RAM *never* hurts - it will make everything smoother and allows you to have more stuff in the background. And modern programs can be insanely memory-hungry (I'm looking at you, Firefox and Chrome!). Having more also makes your machine more tolerant towards crappily written programs that leak memory (i.e. they don't free up unused memory properly while running, so their memory footprint gets larger and larger the longer it runs).

Cheers, LT.

This is not true. RAM can hurt, because using more DIMM slots requires more work by the memory controller in the processor, which can lower performance and increase heat output, which means you cannot overclock your processor as far (or cause overheating in a badly-designed system even without overclocking).

However, maximizing your RAM without using the full 6 DIMM slots that some motherboards allow is a good idea.

Maximizing your computer's performance is necessary for multiplayer CiV, because if you can move first during simultaneous turns then you can win more combats.

 

[timtofly]

Oh I actually play this on a 8 gig computer... it still runs slow, so what type of monster does this game needs to be played well??

A well optimized one:

This is not true. RAM can hurt, because using more DIMM slots requires more work by the memory controller in the processor, which can lower performance and increase heat output, which means you cannot overclock your processor as far (or cause overheating in a badly-designed system even without overclocking).

However, maximizing your RAM without using the full 6 DIMM slots that some motherboards allow is a good idea.

Maximizing your computer's performance is necessary for multiplayer CiV, because if you can move first during simultaneous turns then you can win more combats.