Source : Tech-hounds
For the full guide with images click here
We've finished our first article for 2006 and it's available on our website. In this article, we explore what can we do to avoid lag, stuttering, and performance - memory wise. It looks like 2 GB is a must if you want to run games at the highest details, but we think the major improvement of having 2 GB (or even 4 GB) of memory is not performance or lack of stuttering. It's game loading time - far shorter for newer games.
Intro :
At one time or another, all of us have complained of too low or choppy frame rates at least once when we're playing games. Low frame rates can be detrimental to the gaming experience, particularly if it happens at that critical moment when you've lined up for a frag and got fragged instead by the one on your crosshair. Naturally, we don't want any lag when playing games, so what can we do? A lot actually, but we must know what cause these problems in the first place.
When most people complain about lag, they either mean too low frame rates or choppy frame rates (stuttering). Actually, they are very different from one another - low frame rates are often caused by the lack of performance from either the processor or graphics cards in your PC. On the other hand, stuttering can be caused by a number of different things. Solving low frame rates problems are relatively easy: either get a faster processor, graphics card or both. A less expensive solution will be to turn down the details and / or resolution of the game you're playing. Stuttering problems are harder to solve - it can be anything from a software bug, either in the drivers or the game itself, to something else entirely. That's why people are always telling you to update your drivers and games with the latest drivers and patches.
So, if even after updating your drivers and applying the latest patches, you still have stuttering - what's next? Barring software bugs and hardware problems, stuttering problems are often caused by the game taking too much time retrieving or fetching data it needs - either from the memory or harddisk. In short, that could mean your PC's memory is too slow or too small. In this article, we look at what we can do to eliminate memory-related stuttering and what's the best solution to have a lag free gaming rig.
Conclusion :
Having more memory won't provide you with higher performance (lag free gaming), but it will help stuttering issues with some memory hungry games. Only timings does, but your mileage may vary with your processor. However, not all stutter will disappear, only those related to memory. Stutering caused by loading a map / level or saving a savegame will probably not disappear with having more memory. These are storage related stuttering, and we'll look into solving those issues in another article. As we said before, if you're experience lag in gameplay and you've updated your drivers and apply the latest game patches, you will likely have to use a faster processor and / or graphics card or turn down some details or the resolution you're using to play the game.
With an integrated memory controller, the Atlhon 64 is less prone to memory tweaks. Processors with less bandwidth potential such as a smaller cache processor (like the Sempron) or a bandwidth starved one (higher multipliers) will probably beneift more than our Athlon 64 3500+. However, the impact will likely be at most 10%, which is consequently the same performance difference between the Athlon 64 3500+ and it's higher clocked sibling (the Athlon 64 3800+).
Even with lower timings and Command Rate, you will likely experience an increase in performance no more than 3 to 7 percent, with the most gain (overall) is achieved by changing Command Rate from 2T to 1T. Using low latency modules does provide some performance increases, but they either don't have as big of an impact or you have to pay more for these low latency modules.
That said, there are other benefits to having more memory - if your applications and games are able to make use of it. Much less stuttering (what we're focusing on this article) and far shorter load times are what we've shown here today. Newer games are making use of higher resolution textures and more texture layers (texture, specular, normal maps, etc). If you're planning to run games at their highest setting, preferably with a fast, high end graphics card, your PC must have the extra memory to store all those data. 2 GB should be enough for these new games and for most users, but if you can tolerate the slightly lower performance of using Command Rate 2T, you can upgrade to 4 GB. For lag free gaming, we still recommend 2 GB over 4 GB, since games requiring more than that is unlikely to appear within 1 or 2 years down the road.
For the full guide with images click here
We've finished our first article for 2006 and it's available on our website. In this article, we explore what can we do to avoid lag, stuttering, and performance - memory wise. It looks like 2 GB is a must if you want to run games at the highest details, but we think the major improvement of having 2 GB (or even 4 GB) of memory is not performance or lack of stuttering. It's game loading time - far shorter for newer games.
Intro :
At one time or another, all of us have complained of too low or choppy frame rates at least once when we're playing games. Low frame rates can be detrimental to the gaming experience, particularly if it happens at that critical moment when you've lined up for a frag and got fragged instead by the one on your crosshair. Naturally, we don't want any lag when playing games, so what can we do? A lot actually, but we must know what cause these problems in the first place.
When most people complain about lag, they either mean too low frame rates or choppy frame rates (stuttering). Actually, they are very different from one another - low frame rates are often caused by the lack of performance from either the processor or graphics cards in your PC. On the other hand, stuttering can be caused by a number of different things. Solving low frame rates problems are relatively easy: either get a faster processor, graphics card or both. A less expensive solution will be to turn down the details and / or resolution of the game you're playing. Stuttering problems are harder to solve - it can be anything from a software bug, either in the drivers or the game itself, to something else entirely. That's why people are always telling you to update your drivers and games with the latest drivers and patches.
So, if even after updating your drivers and applying the latest patches, you still have stuttering - what's next? Barring software bugs and hardware problems, stuttering problems are often caused by the game taking too much time retrieving or fetching data it needs - either from the memory or harddisk. In short, that could mean your PC's memory is too slow or too small. In this article, we look at what we can do to eliminate memory-related stuttering and what's the best solution to have a lag free gaming rig.
Conclusion :
Having more memory won't provide you with higher performance (lag free gaming), but it will help stuttering issues with some memory hungry games. Only timings does, but your mileage may vary with your processor. However, not all stutter will disappear, only those related to memory. Stutering caused by loading a map / level or saving a savegame will probably not disappear with having more memory. These are storage related stuttering, and we'll look into solving those issues in another article. As we said before, if you're experience lag in gameplay and you've updated your drivers and apply the latest game patches, you will likely have to use a faster processor and / or graphics card or turn down some details or the resolution you're using to play the game.
With an integrated memory controller, the Atlhon 64 is less prone to memory tweaks. Processors with less bandwidth potential such as a smaller cache processor (like the Sempron) or a bandwidth starved one (higher multipliers) will probably beneift more than our Athlon 64 3500+. However, the impact will likely be at most 10%, which is consequently the same performance difference between the Athlon 64 3500+ and it's higher clocked sibling (the Athlon 64 3800+).
Even with lower timings and Command Rate, you will likely experience an increase in performance no more than 3 to 7 percent, with the most gain (overall) is achieved by changing Command Rate from 2T to 1T. Using low latency modules does provide some performance increases, but they either don't have as big of an impact or you have to pay more for these low latency modules.
That said, there are other benefits to having more memory - if your applications and games are able to make use of it. Much less stuttering (what we're focusing on this article) and far shorter load times are what we've shown here today. Newer games are making use of higher resolution textures and more texture layers (texture, specular, normal maps, etc). If you're planning to run games at their highest setting, preferably with a fast, high end graphics card, your PC must have the extra memory to store all those data. 2 GB should be enough for these new games and for most users, but if you can tolerate the slightly lower performance of using Command Rate 2T, you can upgrade to 4 GB. For lag free gaming, we still recommend 2 GB over 4 GB, since games requiring more than that is unlikely to appear within 1 or 2 years down the road.
