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Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) LGA775
- x2 2048MB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Module(s)
- x2 1024MB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Module(s)
- x2 512MB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Module(s)
- Seagate 250GB 7200RPM (Serial ATAII)
- ASUS GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB)
- ASUS P5K Deluxe (Intel P35)
- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)
Software
- WinXP 32bit - Microsoft Windows XP Pro (SP2)
- Intel System Drivers (7.2.2)
- Nvidia Forceware (158.22)
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Company of Heroes is a great game to press the need for more memory as it is very memory intensive, which is not all that surprising given it is a complex RTS game. The 1GB kit was almost unplayable at times despite the very playable frame rates recorded. Starting up the game itself took what seemed forever with just 1GB of memory and it was the same when loading levels and then exiting them again.
The 2GB kit was far more satisfactory and as you can see, at 1280x1204 this larger memory kit was 64% faster than the 1GB kit. At the same resolution 4GB of memory appears to be just 1.5% faster than 2GB of memory. There was a slightly bigger performance margin witnessed at 1920x1200 and 1024x768, though at the most the 4GB kit was just a few frames per second faster that the 2GB kit.
However, although we only saw a small difference in frame rate performance, the game was noticeably smoother upon initial loading of the level and during intense battles. The game itself also loaded faster and exiting back to the windows desktop was much snappier. Overall the 4GB configuration was much better to play with despite the results only showing a slight improvement in performance. We also found this to be the case in WinXP when comparing DDR2 1GB configurations to 2GB configurations. Although games such as World of War Craft and Battlefield 2 only showed small frame rate gains, the games themselves seemed to play significantly better with more memory.
