[Rythos]

If you're running 32bit at the moment, I doubt you'd see vast improvements from upgrading your OS. I think the main benefit to 64bit as far as gaming is concerned is that it gets you past the 4GB (or whatever it is) RAM barrier.

[FaDeHellfyre]

Originally Posted by Rythos

If you're running 32bit at the moment, I doubt you'd see vast improvements from upgrading your OS. I think the main benefit to 64bit as far as gaming is concerned is that it gets you past the 4GB (or whatever it is) RAM barrier.

This is the major benefit from x64. As a 32 bit system, 4gb is all you get. 4gb Ram is now becoming the low end of the scale, and you're probably going to need 8-12gb soon to run games like Battlefield 3 and MW3.

To the person who posted the question, upgrade if you can to 64 bit.

[Aean(:]

Originally Posted by Hellfyre

4gb Ram is now becoming the low end of the scale, and you're probably going to need 8-12gb soon to run games like Battlefield 3 and MW3.

RAM has very little to do with running games, so I don't know what your on about. The only reason you would need more then say.. 3-4GB RAM is if you have 100 unnecessary programs running. I'm running off of 2GB RAM and I can have chrome open, itunes playing, sc2 open, msn, and a whole lot of other junk and I don't even surpass my memory capacity. I mean, maybe its 'cus I learnt to be efficient - I've been gaming on a 1GB RAM comp for a few years before upgrading to 2GB.

[FaDeHellfyre]

Originally Posted by Aean(:

RAM has very little to do with running games, so I don't know what your on about. The only reason you would need more then say.. 3-4GB RAM is if you have 100 unnecessary programs running. I'm running off of 2GB RAM and I can have chrome open, itunes playing, sc2 open, msn, and a whole lot of other junk and I don't even surpass my memory capacity. I mean, maybe its 'cus I learnt to be efficient - I've been gaming on a 1GB RAM comp for a few years before upgrading to 2GB.

Dunno about hundreds of unnecessary programs, but with all my gears drivers running, steam, skype, Virus Scan software and daemon tools all running, not to mention windows 7's numerous background programs that they automatically run, I need more RAM. I think if you look at your processes tab in windows task manager, you'll see what i mean. Currently i'm at 79 different processes running. I'm sure that's a little excessive. But 40-50 is common. However you do have a point, if you have nothing on your computer in the way of extra programs running then you should be fine.

Also, RAM does affect games. Different programs access different amounts of the RAM at any one point in time. Thus the more RAM you have, the higher amount of RAM your game can access. Similarly, The CPU processes through either your Hard Drive, or your RAM. RAM is dozens of times faster than your Hard Drive, so the more ram you have, the faster your CPU can run programs. So while it is not necessary to have lots of RAM, if you ever experience long ass loading times, or a bit of lag in a game when you move from one section to another, that would be because you dont have enough RAM.