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How much RAM do you have?

peachoftree

By peachoftree
in KSP1 Discussion

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How much RAM do you have?  

407 members have voted

  1. 1. How much RAM do you have?

    • 4 GB
      52
    • 8 Gb
      163
    • 16 Gb
      157
    • 32 Gb
      29
    • 64+ Gb
      3

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UniQueKakarot

UniQueKakarot

Posted
Posted

Currently running on 16gigs, and if that is by no means enough when they get out the 64bit version of KSP and I'm done going ham with the mods I'll just get around to upgrading. Even tho running the game now as the 32-bit version and still fitting in the mods I "need" while still beeing under 3.6gigs of mem during a gaming session :)

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Renegrade

Renegrade

Posted
Posted

I'm surprised by the lack of memory in systems.

Nowadays, memory is one of the cheapest components, and is useful even if you don't directly use it. Modern OSes* turn unused memory into disk cache, which greatly speeds up access for all types of drives, even SSDs (SSDs are measured in fractions of milliseconds of access time and hundreds of megabytes/sec of transfer rate, main system RAM is measured in dozens of nanoseconds and dozens of gigabytes/sec).

So instead of spending nine hundred (million?) dollars on a video card that will be obsolete in literally three months (actually it was obsolete before it hit the shelves), it's better to spend a bit less there and upgrade from the $8.99 memory package to the $16 one.

(* Windows 95 onwards, NT onwards, Linux, BSD, Mac OSX, etc)

I find your lack of memory disturbing! /force_choke~ (I have 32GB with four empty DIMM slots)

TSR's have been a non-issue since Windows XP... Those were DOS problems using old config.sys and autoexec.bat files which are long gone(I'm an old-school/new-school cp/cpa/administrator). And I've been running Windows 10 for well over a month, and I know hardware which is why I know how much the new version is crippling. Lets put it this way, I made assembler programs for the z80. If you don't know what assembler or the z80 is, then i won't bother explaining how I've been in the software/hardware game far too long lol

If we're going to be pedantic, I get to join. That's rule #3692 on the forum, FYI.

So, here we go: You mean since Windows NT~

(technically they were largely a non-issue in the 95/98/ME era as well for 'decent' systems)

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Majorjim!

Majorjim!

Posted
Posted
I'm surprised by the lack of memory in systems.

Nowadays, memory is one of the cheapest components, and is useful even if you don't directly use it. Modern OSes* turn unused memory into disk cache, which greatly speeds up access for all types of drives, even SSDs (SSDs are measured in fractions of milliseconds of access time and hundreds of megabytes/sec of transfer rate, main system RAM is measured in dozens of nanoseconds and dozens of gigabytes/sec).

So instead of spending nine hundred (million?) dollars on a video card that will be obsolete in literally three months (actually it was obsolete before it hit the shelves), it's better to spend a bit less there and upgrade from the $8.99 memory package to the $16 one.

(* Windows 95 onwards, NT onwards, Linux, BSD, Mac OSX, etc)

I find your lack of memory disturbing! /force_choke~ (I have 32GB with four empty DIMM slots)

If we're going to be pedantic, I get to join. That's rule #3692 on the forum, FYI.

So, here we go: You mean since Windows NT~

(technically they were largely a non-issue in the 95/98/ME era as well for 'decent' systems)

I don't see the issue here. 8GB is plenty for playing modern games. Anything over that is only really worth it if you are a professional editor/game developer/insert thing that require lots of memory here.

The fact that KSP can take up huge amounts of ram is simply due to the way it was made, ie not correctly. What other game uses so much memory? I know of none.

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Renegrade

Renegrade

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I don't see the issue here. 8GB is plenty for playing modern games. Anything over that is only really worth it if you are a professional editor/game developer/insert thing that require lots of memory here.

Again, any extra memory you have that's not immediately used by application data is available and automatically used for disk caching, and even the fastest SSD is a tiny fraction of said RAM. I never have to load any data from disk more than once in any given session.

The fact that KSP can take up huge amounts of ram is simply due to the way it was made, ie not correctly. What other game uses so much memory? I know of none.

Games usually don't these days, thanks to console-itis. Dumpy little obsolete machines that were already completely obsolete long before the initial specs were even laid down. 64-bit KSP though, won't solve ANY of the memory leaking issues, so you might find it using more than that, even assuming your base mod install isn't already over 8GB. Trust me, pretty mods are a slippery slope.

Also the "correct" method that people talk about is a DOS-ism/console-ism; I'd much rather not have stutter due to dynamic asset loading when playing thank you very much (I think people call that 'micro lag' or something?). Caching helps reduce that stutter, of course, but direct memory access would improve it even more (no processor overhead from caching algorithms and file system drivers).

Right now a 32GB kit is $237.00 CAD; that's almost half the price difference between a GeForce 970 and 980 (~400 CAD and ~700-900 CAD respectively). My own rig is about three to four years old at this point, and I still have yet any need to upgrade anything aside from the video board (and since I tend to buy the GTX x70-type cards, I could have easily upgraded with each generation and still spent less than a single Titan Z). Which reminds me, I really SHOULD upgrade the video board at some point (GTX 670)...but that's a different topic.

Going aggressive on the memory (and CPU socket, LGA2011 forever~) has given me a fair amount of future-proofing. Plus it doesn't hurt when I start up my digital raw processing software and easily blow past 12GB+ (machine has more than a single use, yay!).

Heck, Firefox may actually become 64-bit one of these decades, and I'll be ready for that too.

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cantab

cantab

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Posted
I have 32GB with four empty DIMM slots
I on the other hand am dead ended with 4 GB of DDR2 and no empty slots. To add more RAM I'd need to get a new motherboard. To buy an ancient motherboard would seem questionable, but a new motherboard requires a new CPU and possibly a new disk drive (since one of mine is PATA). By that point I'm looking at practically a whole new PC. Not cheap unless I buy low-end stuff and even then it's a non-trivial cost.

EDIT: When you start talking about x70 cards and LGA 2011, you're immediately in a price bracket beyond my and many other people's means.

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xtoro

xtoro

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So, here we go: You mean since Windows NT~

(technically they were largely a non-issue in the 95/98/ME era as well for 'decent' systems)

Nobody games on Windows NT, which is what we're talking about, on a game forum. To be technical on client machines, XP used the NT kernel. And DOS drivers were still used quite a bit for network and sound cards up to 2000 when they changed the HAL.

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borzwazie

borzwazie

Posted
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I have an older i7 960 with 16GB. I would put more in (I have 24) but Win7 Home won't use more than 16. Everthing works fine at 16GB anyway, that's a bunch of ram for a desktop machine.

Running in career mode with no mods, so I haven't done anything crazy with part counts. ~300 runs just fine. That one was expensive :)

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Alshain

Alshain

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Best reason I've heard yet to take advantage of the free Win10 upgrade. :)

I reverted. Too invasive, too annoying, and it kept forcibly installing the newer nVidia driver that constantly crashed Elite Dangerous. Windows 7 is clearly superior. I can't recommend Windows 10.

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Renegrade

Renegrade

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Posted
I on the other hand am dead ended with 4 GB of DDR2 and no empty slots. To add more RAM I'd need to get a new motherboard. To buy an ancient motherboard would seem questionable, but a new motherboard requires a new CPU and possibly a new disk drive (since one of mine is PATA). By that point I'm looking at practically a whole new PC. Not cheap unless I buy low-end stuff and even then it's a non-trivial cost.

What, really? It's about $1200 CAD every four-ish years - 225 USD/year or 150 GBP/year. (Yes, CAD is basically worthless. I know.)

Well, every four years assuming I upgrade later this year or early next year. Signs point to 'no' as I've been utterly underwhelmed by anything post Sandybridge-E. Not spending $1200 again for a 3% speed gain loss.

By the way, as an alternate to buying new hardware, you might be able to find a used rig from one of the 'bleeding edgers' for a decent price (obviously only do this from a trustworthy person). Also I picked up a P5G41T-M LX plus to replace a failed (extremely displeased to find capacitor rot in a post-2001 board - displeased enough that I no longer buy Asus components at all after the P5G41T) P5B board; it was like sixty CAD and supports DDR3 for Core 2-based systems. Not an 'uber' board, but it does have a PATA controller (intended for the optical drive, I'm sure, but PATA nonetheless).

Nobody games on Windows NT, which is what we're talking about, on a game forum. To be technical on client machines, XP used the NT kernel. And DOS drivers were still used quite a bit for network and sound cards up to 2000 when they changed the HAL.

I did plenty of gaming on NT4* - although it's a lot fatter than 95/98, it did run a lot more smoothly (I suspect the higher update rate for the timer interrupt in NT was helping in that regard. There's probably other reasons too), and had OpenGL support (DirectX was, and is to this day, utter trash, so NT4's limited DX support was a non-issue largely). None of my drivers (including NIC) were 16-bit. Well, except the command-line utility that changed the IRQs for my SoundBlaster 16 - you only need to run that once though for initial card setup. It wasn't a driver.

(I used that SB16 until it stopped working sometime in 2002-2004)

* - back in the day. Obviously I haven't used that outside of VM since the 90s. Emulator/retro PC guys often still use it.

Best reason I've heard yet to take advantage of the free Win10 upgrade. :)

Even better reason to switch to Linux. Windows 7 Pro is my last Windows, ever (it's confined to being desktop-only at this point). I was especially pleased (er..not) when the Win10 upgrade begging crapplication started crashing on a regular basis. That was....impressive. Fortunately I only had to uninstall update KB3035583 and reboot *cough*...

Microsoft is going to have to do a lot better than "free" to get my business ever again.

Also little note: Microsoft's stupid sappy Web-2.0ish FAQ doesn't make it clear of Retail licenses retain their Retail properties after an upgrade. An alarming omission...

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