Will upgrading ram/ssd improve performance?

[Deleted82427968User]

I have a laptop with a 2060 graphics card with 8gb of ram (1 stick) and I'm about to get a new par of 32gb of ram for newer games. I'm also upgrading my ssd to 2 tb. I'm aware NV on steam caps it's memory at 2gb unless using the 4gb patcher, but will I notice any performance increases with my new ram? NV already stays at like 55-60 fps with some dips here and there. If I understand correctly ssd's with more space give better load times as well?

[JimboUK]

You should notice an improvement simply because at the moment your RAM is a single stick so it's running in single channel and that's not great for gaming.

[madmongo]

FNV has issues if the frame rate gets too high (it makes the physics engine go wonky). It should be capped at somewhere around 60 fps.

 

FNV on Steam has a 2 GB limit on how much memory it can access. FNV on GOG already has the 4 GB patch built-in. If you have the steam version you'll want to use the 4 GB patch. No matter what you do, 4 GB is as high as you can go as far as the game is concerned. It's a 32 bit game, and 32 bits of memory address is 4 GB.

 

For FNV, the performance bottleneck for any decent modern gaming PC is going to be the 60 fps frame rate cap, so even though running single stick is worse for modern games, it won't make a noticeable difference for FNV. You aren't being limited by memory bandwidth. The frame rate cap is limiting your performance long before you run out of memory bandwidth. Adding another stick of RAM might help a bit with some of those frame rate dips, but your overall performance isn't going to change much. Those dips might be caused by the bandwidth limit of accessing your SSD, so it's entirely possible that adding another stick of RAM might make no difference whatsoever. You'd have to try it and see.

 

Having more RAM probably won't make a noticeable difference for performance, but the game leaks memory, especially in the texture caching system. This is why the game tends to crash the longer you play it. Eventually it leaks enough memory that it can't allocate any more memory when it needs it and crashes. You will be able to run the game longer if you set your graphics options down a bit and you use the 4 GB patch. Also, avoid using high resolution texture mods. Those make the game look better, but they also make the game leak memory faster.

 

Unfortunately, that's a choice you have to make. You can have a pretty game that has great high resolution textures, or you can have a stable game that runs for longer before crashing. But you can't have both. It's one or the other. You choose.

 

How much free space is on the SSD won't make a noticeable difference in performance unless you really start to run out of memory blocks. An SSD with 75 percent free space won't be any faster than an SSD with 50 percent free space. But an SSD with only 5 percent free space might start really having performance issues. The general rule is to keep at least about 25 to 30 percent free space on the SSD if you want to avoid performance issues.

[JimboUK]

These two ini settings combined with using NVTF to lessen VRAM usage should solve any memory problems.

 

bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=0 to bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1

bSelectivePurgeUnusedOnFastTravel=0 to bSelectivePurgeUnusedOnFastTravel=1