Is my RAM creating a bottleneck?

QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
in Off-Topic
So, yesterday when I played World of Warcraft, I was getting 45 to 60fps in most places(Dalaran would drop it to 15 or 16, 25 at best).

Today I have Windows 7 64-bit, an upgrade from XP 32-bit. My FPS tends to be around 16, sometimes getting as high as 18.

My parts:

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7200 @ 2.53GHz 2.53GHz
2gB DDR2 667 RAM
GeForce 9800 GT 512mb
Sound Blaster Fatal1ty


I would guess RAM is my bottleneck here, but anyone think that even after the 4gb I'm getting next week that I might still have WoW performance below what I used to get?
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Comments

  • spellman23spellman23 NS1 Theorycraft Expert Join Date: 2007-05-17 Member: 60920Members
    Sounds like the RAM
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    That's pretty much the bare minimum for Win7, yeah. Your RAM's also pretty slow. Bigger & faster is the order of the day.
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  • douchebagatrondouchebagatron Custom member title Join Date: 2003-12-20 Member: 24581Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited May 2010
    your sound blaster card is definitely the problem.

    (for realsies) i had 2 gb of ram and an almost comparable system until about 2 months ago, and the ram wasn't the bottleneck. I'm not familiar with nvidia cards, but from my understanding, 2 gb of ram is not much worse than the core 2 duo. are you sure there is a bottleneck, and not that your system is just a tad behind?

    (dbl edit) I know laptops that come with a core 2 duo come with like 12 gb of ram, but my understanding is that is done because ram is cheap and it makes the sale much more appealing without boosting much.

    you could buy another stick and see if it helps. if it does I don't think it will be by a drastic amount.

    OR

    you could wait and go triple channel with a new motherboard. that's what i did.
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  • Corporal_FortierCorporal_Fortier Join Date: 2005-03-22 Member: 46079Members, Constellation
    Seems weird to me that you would lose so many fps just by switching to Win7. I have a similar setup (2.2Ghz C2D, 2GB ram, 8600M GT(laptop)) and I've played games from Source to Mass Effect 1/2, Dragon Age etc. on both 32bit XP, 32bit Vista and 64bit Win7 and I never noticed a big performance drop/gain between the OS I used. I don't play WoW though, maybe there are some known issues with Win7 64bit? Are you experimenting this fps loss in other games as well? Maybe it would be worth it to check your drivers.
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  • pSyk0mAnpSyk0mAn Nerdish by Nature Germany Join Date: 2003-08-07 Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
    If the additional 4gb don't help, it might be video card drivers or something like this?
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  • JaspJasp Join Date: 2003-02-04 Member: 13076Members
    edited May 2010
    A 64bit operating system will consume a larger footprint in the ram but its not going to constitute a drop of 20-30fps, sounds like your GFX drivers, make sure you have installed the 64bit version from Nvidia.

    You can check your ram usage via the performance monitor built in windows 7 to see if that's the problem.
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    Oh yeah, you didn't just reinstall the old drivers did you? 'cause that would be silly.
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  • QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited May 2010
    Nope, I've got the right drivers for sure. PhysMem usage is getting up to 88-92% with it going just sitting idle in the middle of nowhere.

    Edit: Not to mention, I can run more graphically intensive games at 60-100 fps, but they don't require much in the way of RAM- like TF2, or Starcraft 2.

    I just know WoW is a huge RAM hog in general, whereas not many games go as crazy as it does.
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  • QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    OMG DOUBLEPOST

    Update! I found out the problem. It was an addon. Yep. Apparently "Parrot", my favorite scrolling combat text addon, was not too pleased with Windows 7.

    Oh well. Decent loss for the whole new OS!
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