Railworks America

I know upgrading certain hardware on a PC can cause windows and some software and games to see it as a
new PC and stop working due to DRM.I want to upgrade my Nvidia GTX 480 to a 980 TI and increase my
system RAM from 12 Gig to 24 gig.Everything else will remain the same and the new components will work
with what I have now.OS is win 7 ultimate sp1.Will I have any problems with DRM?
Would like responses from people who have actually done upgrades rather than theoretical speculation
unless cited with a reference.Especially games like ET 2,FSX(DVD) and steam itself.

I have done both of those things to my computer (went from 8 to 16 gigs) and change video card (went from 650ti to 760) and had no issues either time. I'm on win7 64 bit also.

I changed my video card (I started with two GTX295 in SLI, now I've got a single GTX 780) and have had no problems. I'm also on Win7 64-bit.

Thanks very much for the info each of you,it puts my mind at rest!

There should be no problems with DRM when upgrading the CPU, system RAM or a video card. Players do this most often

DRM is usually tied to the system BIOS and/or the system/boot HD "identity" or serial number. So swapping the motherboard or system/boot HD might trigger it.

When in doubt, ask the developer of the game how to "de-activate" the game before upgrading your hardware. Also browse their support message boards/fora might for useful information.

Be careful when upgrading your system HD, i.e. the one that your computer boots from and usually holds Windows. Some DRM hide a secret key in unused parts of the boot sector or EFI partition of the system HD. Those secret keys are not copied over to the new HD by Windows Explorer. You need a sector-by-sector/byte-by-byte HD cloning program, and even then the DRM might fail on the new HD because it finds the secret key compromised still.

FSX (DVD) asks you to insert the DVD to authenticate your copy?
ET 2? Do you means Euro Truck Simulator 2, commonly referred to as ETS 2?

Most Steam games rely on the Steam service running to authenticate the games, access your scores, progress etc, by going online. Some still use additional DRM, like UPlay, GOG or Rockstar. When in doubt, consult the developer's forum.

Thanks ,and yes I meant Eurotruck simulator 2

I think this DRM thing went out with Windows XP. I remember putting in a new HD or graphics card on XP and had to ring MS to get a code or something to get it going. Towards the end of having XP you didn't have to do that. All you had to do was register XP over the internet or something like that. No problems now with Windows 7 or 10.

A word of advice...

If you are not going to be editing a ton of large HD/4K video files or running your computer as a dedicated server..... 12GB is plenty of RAM. Test after test done by tech sites and publications show about 90%-95% of applications (that includes AAA games) show no improvement or an almost imperceptible improvement over 8GB and certainly not over 12GB. Such overkill in the amount of RAM is pointless and a waste of money.

Except RAM is so cheap nowadays it's really not a issue.

buzz456 wrote:Except RAM is so cheap nowadays it's really not a issue.

Cost was never the issue. The cheapest 8GB DDR3 on newegg is $34.99. That's money that would be better spent on something he'll actually get some USE from....like some TS2016 DLC .....or in my case I just bought 6 of the Assassin's Creed games in the franchise ALL together for $35 total in a Steam sale. If the apps/games you use don't benefit or barely benefit from the extra RAM, then why waste the money? It's basic cost/benefit analysis 101.

I edit up to 100Mbs (VBR) 4K UHD videos from my new camcorder that eat up between 700MB-750MBs (VBR) per minute of storage and have the file sizes to prove it. Having the extra RAM would really help me.....IF ...... I wanted to edit using the full 4K UHD original video resolution in real-time smoothly.

But since video editors like Sony Vega Pro 13 (and the consumer-level Movie Maker Platinum 13) now allow you to work on proxy files (lower resolution versions of the originals that need less RAM and CPU/GPU resources to edit smoothly, but all timeline edits used on the proxy files are applied to the original full resolution video files for the final full res output render), then having more RAM is much less of advantage in editing than it once was in the past. Meaning just one less reason of a need for buying lots of extra RAM.

So my advice to him was to basically put that money into something more fruitful than adding pointless extra RAM.

Yip.

A lot of the DRM is focused on the CPU Chips serial number. If you change that the software thinks you have a new computor, which basically you do eh?

In the past I have changed Mobo, CPU and memory, leaving the same hard disk with all software and activation has remained untouched.

OK so let's establish about six posts ago that this is no longer a problem.