Upgrading RAM on Win7-32bit

Boss Tweed

Boss Tweed

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So I've been playing Crysis 2, and its been crashing and it turns out that my video card isn't getting enough RAM (needs about 1 more gig of RAM). Right now I have 4GB of RAM in my computer as is, however I wanted to upgrade (possibly to 8GB because I can get a good deal) so that I can still play Crysis 2. When I looked online it said that Win7 32bit OS are limited to 4 GB of RAM that can be used at a time, regardless of what is in the computer. However, when I told my roommate this (who is helping me with most of this tech stuff) he said that it is possible that because my processor is a dual core, that I would be able to get 8GB of RAM because each core would be able to hold 4GB of RAM individually, making 8 total (as far as I could understand).

I just wanted to know if he was right in his assumption, because he wasn't sure. I want to know that before I order the RAM online if I'll need to upgrade my OS to a 64-bit before the RAM will actually be worth while.

Thanks in advance for helping a computer noob such as myself!
-BT
 
I'm not sure you need to upgrade your RAM, I think it's your video card.
 
I don't think its my video card, because its a GeForce 9500 GT, and the minimum requirement is an 8800 GTS I believe. When I talked to the tech support, he said the video card was only getting about 2 GB of RAM from the overall total, when it needs 3 (the minimum RAM requirement for the game)
 

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Not sure if it matters, but I just looked it up, and the minimum is only Geforce 8800 GT, not GTS (speaking of which, the 9500 GT is my roommates spare video card. We put it in thinking it was just the higher number the better the card, but I have a e-GeForce 8800 GTX and I wasn't sure if that was better than the 9500 GT)
 
Yea, 8800 is better than 9500.
 
If you want more RAM, you're gonna have to go into the 64bit territory (I think the OS also calculates both VRAM and RAM to determine what to use). IMO, the 512MB is kind of at the minimum requirement level. If you're gonna upgrade both video card (or get another of the same model if both your motherboard supports SLI and that your video card does have SLI capability) and RAM, you may wanna play it safe and install a 64bit OS.
 
so I would need to also upgrade my video card in order to play this game as well? or is that just a recommendation to help it run better?
 
If you're buying a video card make sure you have enough power wattage to run it. I almost spend £70 on one of them before I checked and when I did I realised the power requirements almost doubled what I had :lol:
 
Boss Tweed said:
So I've been playing Crysis 2, and its been crashing and it turns out that my video card isn't getting enough RAM (needs about 1 more gig of RAM). Right now I have 4GB of RAM in my computer as is, however I wanted to upgrade (possibly to 8GB because I can get a good deal) so that I can still play Crysis 2. When I looked online it said that Win7 32bit OS are limited to 4 GB of RAM that can be used at a time, regardless of what is in the computer. However, when I told my roommate this (who is helping me with most of this tech stuff) he said that it is possible that because my processor is a dual core, that I would be able to get 8GB of RAM because each core would be able to hold 4GB of RAM individually, making 8 total (as far as I could understand).

I just wanted to know if he was right in his assumption, because he wasn't sure. I want to know that before I order the RAM online if I'll need to upgrade my OS to a 64-bit before the RAM will actually be worth while.

Thanks in advance for helping a computer noob such as myself!
-BT
Click to expand...

Oh, and number of cores (or even number of processors) doesn't have any effect at all on what a 32-bit OS can recognize for RAM.
 
ok, real quick questions...

1-I have an Geforce 8800 GTX, which I'm not sure if everyone noticed, and knowing that would you still recommend getting a new one?
2-how to you check to wattage to see if I can run it, because I have no clue
 
Boss Tweed said:
1-I have an Geforce 8800 GTX, which I'm not sure if everyone noticed, and knowing that would you still recommend getting a new one?
Click to expand...
In looking at Newegg's inventory. They list that model as out of stock and more than likely Nivida discontinued that model since it's a four year old card. Plus, the video card meets the minumum requirement for your game. If you want to play it on decent settings instead of low, you're gonna need more VRAM.

Boss Tweed said:
2-how to you check to wattage to see if I can run it, because I have no clue
Click to expand...
It varies on the retailer. On the more newer cards on Newegg, they will list it on the system requirements (eg. System Requirements: Minimum of a 600 Watt power supply. (Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 42 Amps. For the GeForce GTX 580))

The PSU would also list it's wattage rating right on the unit itself, though that would involve opening up the computer case to look.
 
so if the video card was the only problem, how come I couldn't run it on my 8800 GTX on the lowest quality settings? was it just because it was a 32-bit OS, or was it just that the video card is really old and probably isn't running at its best?
 
An 8800GTX should be able to run Crysis with high settings. My 8800GT did well with only 2 gigs of RAM and a Q6600 2.4ghz CPU on WinXp. And Crysis 2 didn't have much higher reqs iirc though I don't know how well an 8800GTX will do on it.

What CPU do you have? And also though it might be fine, what wattage does your PSU list? (Should say on a sticker on it).
 
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
The PSU lists 750 W it looks like

it is getting a little old (if you didn't guess from the age of the video card, so is it possible that the heat sink compound has just gone bad and its over heating the processor? and that when I play crysis (or other highly detailed video intense games) it heats up the video card which eventually just causes the PCU to heat up faster? That was the only thing that I could think of that could be causing a problem
 
750 watts is more than adequate, you won't need to upgrade that until it starts dying (mine (700w) just died a couple of weeks ago, and I got a new 650watt one).

I assume the CPU should do well enough. Remind us again what exactly was the problem? Because overheating of the video card results in graphical glitches and overheating a CPU usually shuts off your computer.
 
when playing intense visual games (eg-Crysis 1,2, NOT civ III that I can remember) the game would crash. This crash was one of 2 things:

1- it would go to the blue screen of death (not long enough to read it at all) and then restart automatically
2- freeze the screen so I'm unable to do anything (such as move mouse, ctrl-alt-del, etc...) with the same audio just repeating over and over like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-msujgDmsU

I'm not sure how hot a computer normally has to be to stop working, but I tried to download a heat monitor that records the temp once every minute and ran it while playing crysis. After about 20-30 minutes it crashed, and while running the game it was about 55-60C, but I haven't found a specific answer on how hot a CPU can run before it crashes.


[EDIT] - the second happens more often than the first
 
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