RAM or Video Card upgrade to run huge scenes in engine?`

d1ver

Hey, what's up, guys. I've been sitting on my old rig for a while while now:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+(2,41ghz)
Geforce 8500 GT 256 mb
and 2gb of RAM
I'm running it on XP.

So far It's been pretty slow with huge textures in PS and fat models in Max and I kinda got over it, but yesterday I downloaded the latest UDK update and the new demo maps run sluggishly painful even in unlit mode.

I need to make a pretty big scene in UDK right now, so I was considering throwing a little money into a hardware upgrade. I don't have much money so the choice for me is between

8gb of RAM

or

a new Video Card.

I'm pretty low on money so I want to get the most performance increase for my buck. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and I was wondering if I should consider switching to x64 operating system like Windows 7 and if it would pump up my perormance significantly?

thanks in advance!

Mark Dygert

I would upgrade to a 64bit OS and max out the ram for your motherboard. Then start saving up to piece together a new system.

RAM is cheaper and it helps everything. A GPU upgrade would mostly be for gaming. Newer versions of max are just now starting to rely more heavily on the GPUs and even then I wonder how much of an impact it really is making.

I think 2gb is under the minimum requirement for win7, or really close to it. Also 32bit XP(x86) won't use anything above 4gb so if you don't upgrade to a 64bit OS you're just parking anything past 4gb.

Ruz

d1ver - I just got windows 7 professional 64-bit and I have 8 gigs(giggety) of ram
I opened 2 copies of 3dsmax both with shader heavy scenes,adobe cs5 with 20 x1024 textures, UDK with a heavy scene and firefox.
It used about 5.5 gigs of ram and around 50-60 percent of my cpu(its a quad core).

So yeah it kind of hard to max out, but weirdly max renders are still relatively slow.
I think maybe my graphic card is the main problem as UDK still runs like shit-I have a geforce 9400GT

claydough

I am in the same exact position...
Jes finished investing in watercooling and wanted to now concentrate on enough ram for UDK. ( and big scenes )

At first I was considering going all out and getting 24 gigs of really fast hexa-channel memory. But anything faster than what I already have is $729

If I could get by with 12 gigs instead, there is even faster hexa-channel( cas 6 ) for half the price.

Never tried gSkill over Corsair but lifetime warranty sounds good to me.

Wish I could benchmark the memory in UDK to see if it makes any difference in bake times? ( cas 9 vs cas 6 @ 1600 MHz )

I have 6 gigs now and can not bake out the larger UDK samples. So I have no idea what kind of headroom is needed for more ambitious projects? ( is even 12 gigs overkill? )

claydough

12 gigs of 1600MHz cas 8 for $169
Patriot memory
lifetime warranty

d1ver:
Do you have an nforce am2 board? Are you sure yer board can take 8 gigs?

BadgerBaiter

I have gSkill memory and it has been absolutely faultless for the last 4years of owning it.

About to build a new system and definately getting 12Gb... thoroughly tempted to go all in and get 24Gb though

Hayden Zammit

So yeah it kind of hard to max out, but weirdly max renders are still relatively slow.

I always thought it was the processor and not the ram that speeds up render times.

d1ver

Just wanted to drop by and thank you, guys! I've had to jump through a gazillion of hoops but in the end I got my self Windows 7 64bit and additional 4 gb ram, now sitting at 6gb which is still 3 times more then I'm used to.
Thanks so much for your advices, fellas. I appreciate.