Ram Advice?

[louisv]

Originally Posted by Tim1981

I have made a few upgrades since last posting in this thread. I upgraded my GPU to a 2 gig ATI 6950 and I also bought a solid stat drive for Clod to run off.

I still get the odd stutters and realize that its the optimization of this game. I'm looking at a ram upgrade. I have 4 GB in 2 GB sticks (1066) installed with 5:5:5:15 timing's and at 1.9 Vcore.

The ram I have been looking at specifies 2.2 Vcore. Will I be OK running my current ram at that higher voltage?

Which slot should I put the extra stick in on my motherboard?

Any help, much appreciated.

No, the voltage rating of one is not the other, verify the specs of that stick otherwise you could burn it. I am sure the stutters will not be affected by a small change in memory speed. And 5:5:5:15 at 1066 MHz is fast. At 1600 MHz (triple channel if you have it on your motherboard) you will not get much faster than 8:8:8:24 and it will not make a big change.

What you could do is add more of the same memory, it will give you more RAM for 64 bit apps and some more for 32 bit apps too. It will not fix the stutters...people with the the best rigs still get the odd stutters: I have a 980x and a GTX580 and I still get some low altitude or smoke stutters.

Let them fix it, its a basic graphic bug that they can't fix (or will not), so they are changing the whole graphic system for the next update.

Just wait a little.

Lou

[dnr]

As I progressed into complex engine management my rig started to freeze with increasing frequency so after a series of diagnostics and dumbing down the Win 7 graphics it got a bit better. My error log listed numerous warnings and critical events but it seemed that data thrashing is the culprit. This discussion string certainly sounds like the same problem I've experienced because after about 1 to 1.5 hours it seems that the memory loads up, tries to dump back onto the hard drive but eventually fills up and locks. I have to do a hard boot, but then the computer starts up as if nothing was wrong. I've increased the available space on my drive from about 8MB to 30MB aval as memory but it still locked up over the weekend. Last night I completed a Spit iia mission from Hawkinge with two Spits in tow, flew to Saint-Omer to intercept a FW 200 with ME 109 escort with about twenty AA guns waging war on the deck, and then returned with no issues over a 1 hr, 22 min period. CLoD and graphics were perfect (0500 hrs over the Channel, what a sight). I am opting to upgrade my RAM from 8 GB DDR3 1600 Kingston Hyper to 16 GB DDR3 1600 G.SKILL Ripjaws. I'll drop by Wed or Thurs and let you know how it worked. Hopefully the programming issues will be dealt with in due course and the RAM can be fully utilized as I want to crank the graphics to high in all settings.

P.S. No issues with the dual 6870/Crossfire setup.

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2063 120mm LQ, Phenom II X6 1090T(3.2GHz), ASUS M4A87TD EVO MB, 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM, 2TB HDD, Dual 1 GB AMD Radeon HD 6870 (Crossfire) GPUs, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, Saitek X52 Pro stick/thrust/rudder, Cyborg, 70” Sharp Quatton

[klem]

Originally Posted by dnr

As I progressed into complex engine management my rig started to freeze with increasing frequency so after a series of diagnostics and dumbing down the Win 7 graphics it got a bit better. My error log listed numerous warnings and critical events but it seemed that data thrashing is the culprit. This discussion string certainly sounds like the same problem I've experienced because after about 1 to 1.5 hours it seems that the memory loads up, tries to dump back onto the hard drive but eventually fills up and locks. I have to do a hard boot, but then the computer starts up as if nothing was wrong. I've increased the available space on my drive from about 8MB to 30MB aval as memory but it still locked up over the weekend. Last night I completed a Spit iia mission from Hawkinge with two Spits in tow, flew to Saint-Omer to intercept a FW 200 with ME 109 escort with about twenty AA guns waging war on the deck, and then returned with no issues over a 1 hr, 22 min period. CLoD and graphics were perfect (0500 hrs over the Channel, what a sight). I am opting to upgrade my RAM from 8 GB DDR3 1600 Kingston Hyper to 16 GB DDR3 1600 G.SKILL Ripjaws. I'll drop by Wed or Thurs and let you know how it worked. Hopefully the programming issues will be dealt with in due course and the RAM can be fully utilized as I want to crank the graphics to high in all settings.

P.S. No issues with the dual 6870/Crossfire setup.

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2063 120mm LQ, Phenom II X6 1090T(3.2GHz), ASUS M4A87TD EVO MB, 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM, 2TB HDD, Dual 1 GB AMD Radeon HD 6870 (Crossfire) GPUs, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, Saitek X52 Pro stick/thrust/rudder, Cyborg, 70” Sharp Quatton

Be warned. One of my Buddies is running 16Gb RAM on a 2011 hot rig and he still gets the same problem. I think it may be an adressing issue rather than RAM availability. Like mine, his rig freezes in the 5Gb+ memory usage area.

[dnr]

Thanks Klem,

Once I get them installed I'll see if I can track my memory usage and time from start up to freeze up. Last night after posting I ran a scenario for just under two hours then started up a new one and it froze during engine warmup when one would not expect a lot of memory usage, so you're probably right.

[klem]

Originally Posted by dnr

Thanks Klem,

Once I get them installed I'll see if I can track my memory usage and time from start up to freeze up. Last night after posting I ran a scenario for just under two hours then started up a new one and it froze during engine warmup when one would not expect a lot of memory usage, so you're probably right.

If you get (free) memboost
http://memboost.sourceforge.net/
and run it in the background it will show you your memory usage and you will see it slowly climb as you play. Its not easy to see what's causing it, sometimes I play for over an hour and the usage doesnt reach 3Gb, then it may more quickly rise to over 5Gb. Perhaps its better over the Channel and worse when ground objects and/or other aircraft are loaded in. In any case the problem will hopefully be fixed in the next patch.

If in doubt I restart the game when it gets over 3Gb+.

[dnr]

I ran a baseline tracking my memory usage through Win 7 Resource Monitor hoping to find evidence of memory leakage as the cause by my thrashing problem. Taking cold start data I ran the same scenarios in sequence and recorded the memory allocation at the conclusion of each mission. Most of the time it all looked pretty normal, but after the third mission on Thursday 16 Dec 11 as I pulled up the resource monitor window the standby memory was filling up before my eyes as the free space dropped to zero. I think this might have been a memory dump from the virtual memory paging setup back to the RAM. Needless to say my rig didn't respond well to that so I shut down and followed the same sequence on Fri night (17 Dec). The system finally locked up after about three hours of run time. I then swapped out the Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 for some sexy new G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 PC3 12800 16GB. I can say that there is a noticible difference in CLoD performance as motion tracking is smoother, less judder on the geo layers and my rid remained stable for over four hours through three full missions and a couple of hours in mission builder setting up and testing new scenarios. At about 0017 hrs Saturday morning CLoD had finally had enough and it frooze. Difference was that my rig kept running just fine. I pulled up the resource monitor and still had bags of free memory remaining. Data that I collected is attached if its of use to anyone out there considering adding more RAM as a solution to their memory leaks and thrashing problems. I think Klem was right, this does not solve the programming problem, Win 7 might not even be using all that RAM properly, but this does delay total lockup long enought to get a more enjoyable experience out of CLoD.