# does ram help gaming?



## kenney (Jan 1, 2011)

I have a dell vostro 1000 and trying to play left 4 dead but it keeps freezing. my pc meats the minimum requirements butits my ram that has the issue. my hard drive said i have 1GB but when i checked i only have 766MB so im wondering what can i do to free up ram? can defraging work?

ATI radeon x1150
video memory:512MB
AMD althonX2 processor
1GB ram(currently using 766MB dont know why)


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## kraze1994 (Feb 12, 2008)

1Gb of ram is not enough to run left 4 dead at least not for Vista and up. Windows is most likely using the rest of that since your OS needs ram to run. If possible I would suggest getting another stick.


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## pharoah (Aug 28, 2006)

you barely meet requirements,and your video is very low end.


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## wizard. (Jan 23, 2010)

Your video card is, as pharoah said, low end. Your RAM may meet the commonly stated minimum requirements of 512MB but in most cases thats NEVER enough to run the game decently. I recommend an upgrade to at least 2-3GB. To answer the title question, yes RAM helps gaming immensely . I would also recommend a video card upgrade. If you would give us a price range/more specific info on your processor/motherboard manufacturer it would greatly help us. Also, is your computer a pre-built or one you custom built?


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## RockmasteR (Aug 10, 2007)

Ram sure helps, but not like the CPU or Video Card, RAM could help in reducing stuttering in games, like when your character turns around, stutettering will occur if you have less RAM, also RAM will help in loading times, but that would not impact a lot in matter of fps (frames per second) so that means that more RAM won't increase your frames, but what it can do is to stabilize it or increase the average fps by 1, how?
well, if you have 1 gig RAM and you play a game that require a minimum of 1 gig RAM, you will feel that the game could play at 35 fps (30+ fps is playable) and then you will notice that the RAM could fall from 35 to 15 fps for about 1-2 seconds and then back up (when the character turns around, when entering a new area, etc..) so then the average won't stay 35 fps but it'll be 29 or 30 (because of the continuous drops)
but if you have 3 gig RAM, the game won't stutter, and the frames won't drops and will stay steady, and that will keep the average frames at 35

now, about your video card, it's as said before very low end, and will play the game at the lowest settings, so make sure to set the resolution and the graphics settings at the lowest settings


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

kenney said:


> my hard drive said i have 1GB but when i checked i only have 766MB so im wondering what can i do to free up ram?


Your onboard graphics is using some of your 1gb (1024mb) RAM. Look in BIOS for the option to reduce it to 128mb.

How much free hard drive space is left? Do you defrag regularly?

What's your swap file size (virtual memory)?

System specs for the Dell Vostro 1000 laptop - http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/vos1000/en/OM/html/specs.htm#wp1054574


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## kenney (Jan 1, 2011)

my virtual memory is:custom size=1152
:maximum siz =2304


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

This thread is 3 months old. Are you still having the same problem?

Change both the Initial Size and Maximum Size for virtual memory to 4096, click the Set button, click OK and reboot the computer.

How much free hard drive space is left? Do you defrag regularly?

Have you reduced the onboard graphics memory in BIOS?


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## kenney (Jan 1, 2011)

Actually i dont no how to enter bios settings. can u tell me how?


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## kenney (Jan 1, 2011)

I have 85.5gb free hard drive space


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## kenney (Jan 1, 2011)

I found the bios settings and set i to normal now i have 898 mb of free ram


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## Floop (Jan 3, 2009)

At the end of the day your system simply isn't meeting the recommended requirements so you won't get good performance in games.

If you want help with building a new PC just let us know, but at the moment there's not really much you can do to help performance other than maybe upgrading RAM or GPU.


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