Crysis System Memory Requirements 2 vs 4 gigs

I

iqwertyi

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 4, 2006
Messages
167
Do you think it will make a difference?
I'm currently ordering 2 gigs, but if 4 will make a huge difference, then I'll scrape up another $60 or so for it.

Thanks.
 
I have 4gb in my system and watching crysis eat over 1.5gb of memory I'd say 4gb will definitely help.
 
Ive got a dual boot. Vista recognizes my 4 gigs. XP only sees 2.75?????
 
You will need to get a 64 bit OS to address more that 2 gigs of ram. Even if you can see all four gigs in 32 bit, it wont matter. XP32 bit is restricted to a 2 gig address for software to utilize.
 
XP is not restricted to 2 GB.

XP can address up to 4GB, but usually mmio takes up around 500MB, so realistically you can get 3 - 3.5 GB of usuable memory.

More importantly if peak memory usage while running crysis does not exceed 2GB, then there is no benefit to having more than 2GB. Is anyone able to report typical memory usage for crysis?
 
jimmyb said:
XP is not restricted to 2 GB.

XP can address up to 4GB, but usually mmio takes up around 500MB, so realistically you can get 3 - 3.5 GB of usuable memory.

More importantly if peak memory usage while running crysis does not exceed 2GB, then there is no benefit to having more than 2GB. Is anyone able to report typical memory usage for crysis?
Click to expand...

I was somewhere upwards of 1.2 or 1.3gb for crysis alone but quit looking.
 
Just get 4gb, RAM prices are extremely volatile and at the moment you can pick up 2x1Gb sticks for ~£32 which is about $64, eventually it will shoot up in price again so get it while it's cheap is what I say.
 
Frosteh said:
Just get 4gb, RAM prices are extremely volatile and at the moment you can pick up 2x1Gb sticks for ~£32 which is about $64, eventually it will shoot up in price again so get it while it's cheap is what I say.
Click to expand...

I'm just curious...why do you think there will be an increase in the price? Personally, I don't see why there would be.
 
l3ender said:
I'm just curious...why do you think there will be an increase in the price? Personally, I don't see why there would be.
Click to expand...

That's just the way RAM prices have behaved over the past decade. It's like the stock market.
 
If you're contemplating getting more RAM, RIGHT NOW would be a very good time to do it if it's DDR2 you're looking for. The prices will almost certainly go up very shortly, very much. I remember at one point a few years ago DDR was $85 for a 1GB stick of PC3200 CAS2 Corsair XMS, and literally 2 weeks later it was $110 for a 512MB stick of the same memory.
 
l3ender said:
I'm just curious...why do you think there will be an increase in the price? Personally, I don't see why there would be.
Click to expand...

RAM is a fairly basic technology with little R&D costs and is fairly easy to manufacture. The driving factor behind its price is actually the supply of the raw materials and the fluctuation in supply/demand.

RAM prices can half or double in just a few weeks, I paid £180 for 2x1Gb sticks when I got my first 2Gb, the price dropped to about £90 for 2 sticks in about a month and now its £30, before long it will be back up and probably be at least 2x the price it is now, it's very hard to predict, best bet is to always buy up when it's very cheap before it has chance to rise again
 
cpt.whistlepants said:
You will need to get a 64 bit OS to address more that 2 gigs of ram. Even if you can see all four gigs in 32 bit, it wont matter. XP32 bit is restricted to a 2 gig address for software to utilize.
Click to expand...

WRONG!!!!!!
soo wrong

a 32bit OS can only address 2^32 memory locations
From this hardware Must be addressed in a memory-map to expose to the CPU... NIC as a memory location, HD as a memory location....

once all the hardware as been mapped the remainder is avail to RAM and memory-mapped files. Ususally this would result in the machine being able to address ~3.8Gig of RAM BUT GFX cards with large amounts of RAM take alot of the addresses from that pool

The only way XP-32 would be limited to 2Gig of RAM was if you had a GFX card with 1.8Gig of memory which isn't likely.

Assuming the average for gamers is 512Meg of GFX memory, this leaves XP-32 (or ANY 32bit operating system for that matter, bar PAE magic) 3.4Gig to play with in address-space
 
Also don't forget that there is only a 2gb user space allocation for software which is why games like SupCom would crash out.
 
eeyrjmr said:
WRONG!!!!!!
soo wrong

a 32bit OS can only address 2^32 memory locations
From this hardware Must be addressed in a memory-map to expose to the CPU... NIC as a memory location, HD as a memory location....

once all the hardware as been mapped the remainder is avail to RAM and memory-mapped files. Ususally this would result in the machine being able to address ~3.8Gig of RAM BUT GFX cards with large amounts of RAM take alot of the addresses from that pool

The only way XP-32 would be limited to 2Gig of RAM was if you had a GFX card with 1.8Gig of memory which isn't likely.

Assuming the average for gamers is 512Meg of GFX memory, this leaves XP-32 (or ANY 32bit operating system for that matter, bar PAE magic) 3.4Gig to play with in address-space
Click to expand...

You're right.

However...each application that is run can only be assigned upto 4Gb of Virtual memory, Virtual memory includes both RAM and the pagefile, and possibly other cache systems like USB memory in Vista (?).

Of that 4Gb, 2Gb is reserved for the operating system and 2Gb for the application, so for example if you have approx 3Gb of available RAM and approx 4.5Gb of pagefile on the hard drive, giving a 32bit OS a total of ~7.5Gb virtual memory each application can still only use 2Gb of virtual memory.

You can set a switch for the OS which splits the virtual memory so the application gets 3Gb and the OS gets 1 but this can often lead to problems such as blue screens and other hangs.

So while typically a 32bit OS will never see all 4Gb, but rather closer to 3Gb, for most people, it's a moot point anyhow because the application can only address 2Gb of virtual memory to begin with.
 
eeyrjmr said:
Not on XP, that is something MS added to Vista
Click to expand...

Source/links for this?

I think you're talking about the application virtual address space which is a limitation of 2Gb on 32bit OS's due to 2Gb (of the addressable 4Gb) being reserved for the OS. XP 32bit has this issues as does Vista 32bit, but the 64bit versions the limit is far higher.
 
firebane said:
Also don't forget that there is only a 2gb user space allocation for software which is why games like SupCom would crash out.
Click to expand...
You can configure up to 3GB of address space for userland, but by default it is 2GB IIRC.
 
Yeah, memory prices right now are pretty good.
Went ahead and ordered 4 gigs. I figure, sometime down the line, I'll probably upgrade the OS and I'll go 64 bit next time. :)
 
*patiently waiting for someone to actually BENCH 2 vs 4*

If I get 3 frames each for a Quad, 64 bit OS, and 4GB, I'm totally down. :p
 
I have 4 gb installed in my system, but atm only running 32bit xp and so it only see's 3.50 gb of ram. Which until I upgrade my OS is more than ample, although in rendering and such I wish I could use all 4gb.

2 - 3 for Crysis should be just fine.
 
Jodiuh said:
*patiently waiting for someone to actually BENCH 2 vs 4*

If I get 3 frames each for a Quad, 64 bit OS, and 4GB, I'm totally down. :p
Click to expand...

System specifications:
E6600 @ 3.4GHz
4x 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 @ 450Mhz
Vista 64-bit
169.04

Game settings:
All in-game presets set to High
1280x1024
No AA


2GB:

============================================================ ==
TimeDemo Play Started , (Total Frames: 2000, Recorded Time: 111.86s)
!TimeDemo Run 0 Finished.
Play Time: 50.92s, Average FPS: 39.28
Min FPS: 29.77 at frame 1959, Max FPS: 50.42 at frame 1004
Average Tri/Sec: 38391120, Tri/Frame: 977348
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.94
!TimeDemo Run 1 Finished.
Play Time: 48.05s, Average FPS: 41.62
Min FPS: 29.77 at frame 1959, Max FPS: 52.79 at frame 95
Average Tri/Sec: 41013468, Tri/Frame: 985406
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 48.06s, Average FPS: 41.61
Min FPS: 29.77 at frame 1959, Max FPS: 52.79 at frame 95
Average Tri/Sec: 41039296, Tri/Frame: 986183
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
!TimeDemo Run 3 Finished.
Play Time: 48.04s, Average FPS: 41.63
Min FPS: 29.76 at frame 1959, Max FPS: 52.79 at frame 95
Average Tri/Sec: 41019092, Tri/Frame: 985257
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
TimeDemo Play Ended, (4 Runs Performed)
============================================================ ==

4GB.

==============================================================
TimeDemo Play Started , (Total Frames: 2000, Recorded Time: 111.86s)
!TimeDemo Run 0 Finished.
Play Time: 51.41s, Average FPS: 38.90
Min FPS: 28.82 at frame 1958, Max FPS: 48.26 at frame 95
Average Tri/Sec: 38020456, Tri/Frame: 977318
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.94
!TimeDemo Run 1 Finished.
Play Time: 49.21s, Average FPS: 40.64
Min FPS: 28.79 at frame 1961, Max FPS: 51.96 at frame 90
Average Tri/Sec: 40026404, Tri/Frame: 984928
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 49.21s, Average FPS: 40.64
Min FPS: 28.79 at frame 1961, Max FPS: 51.96 at frame 90
Average Tri/Sec: 40076284, Tri/Frame: 986125
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
!TimeDemo Run 3 Finished.
Play Time: 49.21s, Average FPS: 40.64
Min FPS: 28.79 at frame 1961, Max FPS: 51.96 at frame 90
Average Tri/Sec: 40023428, Tri/Frame: 984797
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.93
TimeDemo Play Ended, (4 Runs Performed)
==============================================================

As you can see, my average FPS in the Crysis Demo GPU benchmark actually decreased! I believe this is due to the way my motherboard handles 4x 1GB modules, though. If I don't enable the "Memory Remap" feature in the BIOS, I can only see around 3.3GB of RAM but the performance is exactly the same as it was with 2x 1GB. However, if I enable the "Memory Remap" feature, although I can now see all 4GB of RAM the performance decreases.
 
iqwertyi said:
Wait...

I'll be using XP.
Will that be a problem?
Click to expand...

Somebody already explained this.XP x86 can't dedicate more than 2.5gb per application, thus it will not even see all your ram. You will not see any advantage of 4gb under XP. If you switch to Vistax64, all of the ram can be dedicated to a single app if needed, that will not happen however, but makes Vista run really good since it has so much room to manuver.
 
Mansize_tissue said:
As you can see, my average FPS in the Crysis Demo GPU benchmark actually decreased! I believe this is due to the way my motherboard handles 4x 1GB modules, though. If I don't enable the "Memory Remap" feature in the BIOS, I can only see around 3.3GB of RAM but the performance is exactly the same as it was with 2x 1GB. However, if I enable the "Memory Remap" feature, although I can now see all 4GB of RAM the performance decreases.
Click to expand...
That's too bad. I was looking for an excuse to pick up an extra 2GB...
 
Just an FYI, in August Anandtech did a three part article talking about memory and the 4 gig barrier.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

It is a good read, and could help clear up any misinformation in this thread.
 
^^Thank you. Anand explains it more clearly than I can. This thread has derailed and its partly my fault.

The OP wants to improve his performance by adding ram, upgrading ram is a win win situation for overall performance, but games usually only benefit in load times. It does have an effect on high resolutions. As some have stated getting more memory now while its cheap is a good idea.

The future is 64 bit for using more memory. The average user does not know how to change their boot ini. Thats why I recommended the 64 bit.

64bit versions of Windows(i.e. XP and Vista) do not suffer from the traditional 2GB barrier, as all the kernel mode addressing is usually moved to well above the confines of the limited 32bit addressing area.
Click to expand...
We are in the PC Gaming section , right? PC gaming and the limitations of the memory games use is what we are discussing, right?
 
I agree that 64bit is the way to go, but that doesn't make your original statement any less incorrect.

The biggest benefit to getting more ram is for when the "actively" used address space exceeds that of the physical memory, at which point the application is going to start running into a lot of page faults, and your disk will start thrashing like crazy. In games, this usually causes an abrupt and massive slowdown as soon as that limit is reached.

It seems like for the built-in crysis benchmark, this limit is below 2GB.
 
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