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[TechSpot] RAM Matters: How Much Do You Need for Gaming? 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB

14K views 242 replies 112 participants last post by  Lee Patekar 
#1 ·
Quote:
About this time each year we set out to see how much RAM is required to play the latest and greatest PC games. Last time we concluded that 8GB should be the minimum standard, while 16GB was desirable but not truly needed for general usage or gaming. Now a year later, we suspect this is still true, but we have seen a few games sneaking past 8GB of allocated memory so it's worth looking into again.
Quote:
On the last go around we looked at a number of applications and found memory usage varies massively, so what you're doing with your PC will ultimately decide just how much memory you need. For basic office type work, 8GB should be more than enough. For content creation, the more the merrier -- 16 GB for example is the bare minimum when working with 4K footage in Premiere Pro.
SOURCE

I'm going to start a trend form Reddit. For my news posts, I'm going to put a TL:DR at the bottom for the lazy folks here lol

TL:DR
In a nutshell, if you plan to play the latest PC games on good quality settings, 4GB of RAM is out, 8GB is the bare minimum, 16GB is the sweet spot and 32GB is overkill.
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by czin125 View Post

A bunch of chrome/firefox tabs opened should put it to 5-6GB before including games.
If your Firefox uses 6GB you really should clean it up and stop using Adblock (use uBlock instead).
 
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#4 ·
i went from 2x4GB to 2x8GB, on my 2x4GB i'd often hit 6GB~7GB usage by multi-tasking, it certainly was "barely" sufficient.
with 2x8GB i've pretty much got an enormous headroom to play with, so far the highest i've managed to take up is 11GB, so still plenty of room.
 
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#5 ·
Personally fully agree with the Techspot findings.

On top of that, keep in mind that the "free" memory is also effectively being used now by the OS (Windows10) by caching and precaching alot of common HD hits making all apps en operations even smoother so 11 used doesn't mean that the remaining 5 is just sitting there doing nothing.

16GB is indeed the sweet spot for that reason, and even more if you consider that the fastest kits with lowest latency typically come in that size and in the form of no more than 2 modules. Either 16 or 32
 
#6 ·
Would there be a scenario where one would need 32 gigs, if one's rig was not used for workstation jobs?
 
#7 ·
Yeah 16GB is perfect ! I went from 2x 4GB to 4x 4GB this year because of BF1 and DOOM. Much much better gaming !

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#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by keikei View Post

Would there be a scenario where one would need 32 gigs, if one's rig was not used for workstation jobs?
Yes, for ee-peen
rolleyes.gif


Realistically, for the next year or 2, 16GB really is the sweet spot for a office/web/gaming machine

If you require VMs, and are into media editing then i would start to say 32GB is where its at.
 
#11 ·
On my rig with 32gb system ram I often see 26gb cached at the end of the day. Thing is cached ram doesn't show up as being used since people didn't like seeing all their ram used up. Your system can and will use more ram if you have it available.
 
#12 ·
personally i didn't notice any difference in frames when after killing my 16GB kit and throwing back in my 8GB kit. The 8GB kit is also set much faster with very tight timings though.

even in games like pubg i dont think anyone could tell a difference without running a program to possible check .1% lows in background. but actual play and numbers i see on the fps counter are virtually the same.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chargeit View Post

On my rig with 32gb system ram I often see 26gb cached at the end of the day. Thing is cached ram doesn't show up as being used since people didn't like seeing all their ram used up. Your system can and will use more ram if you have it available.
personally i think caching is a good thing, even if it doesn't give any performance boost, at least it decreases frequent access to drives.
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by epic1337 View Post

personally i think caching is a good thing, even if it doesn't give any performance boost, at least it decreases frequent access to drives.
It's a good use of unused ram.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kriant View Post

32GB. Went with 32gb ever since x99 platform and never looked back.
When I moved to x299 I figured I might as well get enough ram that I won't have to worry about ram for the useful life of the system. Though I suspect that 32gb will still be overkill by the time I do move off x299. The rest of my rigs use 16gb.
 
#17 ·
You all be plebs... 256 GBs via 4 DIMMs is where the actual overkill sweetspot be... Soon, 512 GBs will be the best absolute overkill area.

Kingston 64 GB @ 2666 MHz.
Then, whoever does 128 GB @ 3200 MHz.

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Have fun spending ~$3,600, then ~$5,800 or so. (Don't forget the server that goes with it.)
 
#18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seronx View Post

You all be plebs... 256 GBs via 4 DIMMs is where the actual overkill sweetspot be... Soon, 512 GBs will be the best absolute overkill area.

Kingston 64 GB @ 2666 MHz.
Then, whoever does 128 GB @ 3200 MHz.

thumb.gif

Have fun spending ~$3,600, then ~$5,800 or so. (Don't forget the server that goes with it.)
at those capacities it might just make it practical to do a RAMDisk and cache an entire SSD's content, a backup software should be able to synchronize the two.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chargeit View Post

On my rig with 32gb system ram I often see 26gb cached at the end of the day. Thing is cached ram doesn't show up as being used since people didn't like seeing all their ram used up. Your system can and will use more ram if you have it available.
Definition of Cache :
Cached RAM is just RAM that the system think it "might" need again. in which case its in RAM already and does not need to be fetched. However should another application require more RAM than is Free, then cahced RAM will be cleared for the applications.
So even though your seeing it using 26GB, essentially you have 26GB thats free, unless you do the same things every day without reboots or shutdowns.
Ie you would be perfectly fine with 16GB RAM
 
#21 ·
I feel like RAM is the piece of tech that is the least advance out of everything in the computer.

Seriously, it's overpriced, The (More GBs) is holding everything back, they're freaking huge and need heat pipes and fans and most RAM isn't even top speed.

I feel like RAM should of been made to use less and require less,
Yet maintain higher speeds in a smaller package.

Look at the M.2 slots and how small HDs have gotten especially for the Speeds it can produce...

RAM feels ancient sometimes.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Particle View Post

In my mind the greatest benefit from increasing memory demands in games is that developers increasingly can't publish 32-bit executables anymore.
but it gives them the excuse to be lazy in optimizing their codes, even memory leaks could get by undetected due to this.

i recall games used to take up a fairly small amount of RAM, and any indication of it requiring a lot was due to memory leaks.
 
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#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankzro View Post

I feel like RAM is the piece of tech that is the least advance out of everything in the computer.

Seriously, it's overpriced, The (More GBs) is holding everything back, they're freaking huge and need heat pipes and fans and most RAM isn't even top speed.

I feel like RAM should of been made to use less and require less,
Yet maintain higher speeds in a smaller package.

Look at the M.2 slots and how small HDs have gotten especially for the Speeds it can produce...

RAM feels ancient sometimes.
We already have SODIMM and the regular height DIMM that do not extend past their retention clips. Yet for some reason people keep buying the big stuff despite they providing no advantages wahtsoever.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by keikei View Post

Would there be a scenario where one would need 32 gigs, if one's rig was not used for workstation jobs?
Ramdisks is about it. There's software you can get to see what files are loaded the most in a game and another software to install those files on the ramdisk and make the game load from that. I tested it once on GTA and shaved some time off loading but that didn't help it's awful loading at all.
 
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