Battlefield 3 8 vs 16GB memory any difference?

[Firehawk_1066]

Hey fella's. I have a quick question about BF3 and memory. I just had a birthday so I have some cash to burn and so I wanted to ask if anyone had moved from 8 to 16 GB of memory and noticed any difference in BF3? I can get 8 more gb for less then $50 so if I would notice any difference I would get it but if it make absolutely no difference then I wil spend my money elseware.

MY current setup:

Win 7 x64
gtx680
8gb DDR3
i7 2600k
x-fi titanium fatal1ty pro
24" monitor running 1900 x 1200
1000w PSU
WD 500GB 7200 RPM (will upgrade this to SSD in future)

[JonasBeckman]

32-bit game so it's limited to ~3 GB, Large Address Aware patching the exe might work but it would still leave a 4 GB limitation in memory usage though as a example 6 or 8 GB of total RAM in comparison to say 4 would still be a improvement even if rather minor as it means the OS and other programs still get enough RAM even if the game (somehow) manages to come close to a 3GB total usage.

[Darkest]

If I was you I'd put that toward an SSD now, I can't see upgrading to 16 gigs from 8 making a worthwhile difference, if any difference at all.

[kens30]

16gb will not make any difference in BF3 save your money for an 120gb ssd you will be amazed by its performance compared to your HD and you wont regret it.

[prof72]

Originally Posted by kens30

16gb will not make any difference in bf3 save your money for an 120gb ssd you will be amazed by its performance compared to your hd and you wont regret it.

+1

[lucidus]

I agree with the other posters too, a SSD would be a better upgrade than RAM.

[Agent-A01]

No difference.

[Firehawk_1066]

thanks guys. I can afford both but I am waiting for the price of larger capacity SSD's to come down a little more. For now I can live with load times of the old HD's. I was really interested in knowing if the game itself would play better with the 16gb vs the 8.

Thank you for the replies

[JmanEspresso]

You think you can live with the load speeds.. But really, you can't. Lol


Seriously, an SSD is the one thing you can buy for your computer that will make EVERYTHING you do on your PC feel faster, immediately.

If you need capacity, you can just raid a couple together. And then be blinded by speed.

[Solfaur]

Originally Posted by JmanEspresso

Seriously, an SSD is the one thing you can buy for your computer that will make EVERYTHING you do on your PC feel faster, immediately.

This, when I got my 80gb x25-M SSD 2 years ago the upgrade was one of the best I made in years. 16Gb ram is pointless, gaming wise at least.

[Darkest]

Originally Posted by JmanEspresso

You think you can live with the load speeds.. But really, you can't. Lol


Seriously, an SSD is the one thing you can buy for your computer that will make EVERYTHING you do on your PC feel faster, immediately.

If you need capacity, you can just raid a couple together. And then be blinded by speed.

Or just keep your current mechanical drives for use as storage for music files, word documents and the like. Hell, most games even as not all benefit from an SSD. But having an SSD even if it's just for your OS and a couple of programs is a night and day difference in general use.

I'll never be able to use a mechanical drive for an operating system ever again, and the same goes for certain games which can actually benefit from it.

[Blood487]

My old machine was the following:

Phenom x4 940 - BE (Clocked @ 3.6ghz)
8GB DDR2 at 877
GTX 480

When playing on that machine I got decent frame rates around 40FPS on ultra

My current machine on the right is what I'm using right now

I'm always above 70FPS but I'm pretty sure the step from 8gb to 16gb is pretty much virtually impossible to see the differences. Although the hardware is obviously 100x better than my old machine, in Task manager BF3 never uses more RAM than my old machine does.

Even on this new machine the game stutters like crazy (Even with dual Corsair ForceGT's in raid 0)

Stick with 8gb, waste of money to jump to 16gb for performance on BF3.

[Agent-A01]

Originally Posted by Blood487

Even on this new machine the game stutters like crazy (Even with dual Corsair ForceGT's in raid 0)

i get zero stuttering with my system. also have it on raid ssds.

[BigBlockTowncar]

I had 6gb originally (3x2gb) and one of them died. I returned it and in the meantime I noticed no difference using 4gb in BC2 or BF3. When I bought my new equivalent set, all I could get was 12gb, and it made no difference at all. A SSD would be a good choice.

[The Chubu]

I have 16Gb mostly because:

1. A guy got me these sticks really cheap.
2. I had just enough money.
3. I wanted to play around with ramdisks.

So it was a concatenation of things more than a single performance-driven necessity that got me 16Gb of ram.

In your case, i wouldn't recommend it. You could do better saving up for a SSD, or a few HDDs RAID0'd together.

But its a cheap upgrade and you can toy around with ramdisks. I enjoy that kind of stuff, after all, what does it matter buying new hardware if you wont have fun with it?

[Valken]

I heard BF3 (dont have it yet) uses up to 6 or 8 threads so perhaps its cpu/thread contention that causes the stutters? Maybe disable HT?

I mean you guys have Godly machines here 4+ GHZ quad core cpus, 6+8 GB ram, nearly top range video cards with plenty of vram and still stutter?

Its not like BF3 streams content dynamically like GTA4 or even ARMA2. Those games would benefit from RAM (precaching), RAMDISK or SSDs.

[Pill Monster]

I had 12GB installed at one stage, didn't make any difference so I removed 4GB for another build....

[Year]

i got 16gb on both my computers just for the hell of it

for now no difference in games, but huge difference in selected apps like Virtual Machines, photoshop, music apps, ram disk etc. which i use.

if ye got the money, with the price of ram being so low it's a crime not to upgrade ram to the max, ye never know tomorrow, harddrive prices were a lot cheaper before the disaster that hit asia, the same thing could happend to Ram in the future..

so buy lots of ram now or buuuuuurnnnn!!!

[darrensimmons]

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

i get zero stuttering with my system. also have it on raid ssds.

I get no stuttering at all with only 6 gig ram . I choose to turn off ht as a matter of preferance as I get slightly smoother feel from game but stuttering is something I have never had.Framerate is always above 60 although on a buzy gulf of oman map it can drop to 50 ish at times though this is only when there is a load of explosions going off at same time with 64 players.

[Firehawk_1066]

I get stutter with my machine also even at a solid 60FPS with Vsync on.
I have 25mbps cable and no SLI so I can only assume its the game/net code or origin that is causing the stutter for all of us.

[dr.noob]

no

[ricardonuno1980]

I got no any stutter and 60 fps + 60 Hz (=pure-smooth motion at long time) at 1280x720@FXAA+4xAA-16xAF with all max settings + DX11 except motion blur OFF running Win7 x64 SP1 and 4GB DDR2@800 RAM but at singleplayer only. lol

[BLEH!]

SSD is the way forward.

[Deathspank]

if you play arma 2 then its worth the upgrade as i ran out of ram the other day playing domination and the game shut down. but it sounds like you only play arcady shooters so i'd go for the ssd option.

[Undying]

To be honest 6Gb is enough this days...