Your opinion on 4GB vs 8GB of RAM

[iJarbus]

Hey guys just wanted to know your opinion of 4GB of RAM compared to 8GB of RAM, more specifically for gaming but also just overall PC performance. Currently I've got 4GB of RAM and whilst playing games like BF4 I'm using 3.9GB. Just wondering if anybody has gone from 4GB to 8GB and seen an increase in performance.

 

Update

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Just an update for anyone viewing this post for their own use I got an 8GB kit of Corsair Vengeance Pro Memory and it is fantastic, I no longer get massive frame drops just for looking down the scope or turning around in games, well worth the money and thanks to everyone who helped me out!

[TheNinjaNextDor]

8GB should be a definite starting point for amount of RAM. For most people, that gives them enough headroom to play a game and do whatever else they want up to extreme stuff with video/photo editing.

[Baltothewolf]

In SWTOR, back in another rig, I had 4GB ram and was running really choppy and getting occasional freezes, I looked in task manager and saw that 96-99% physical memory usage, installed another 4GB and my FPS smoothed out by a ton, and the freezing stopped. Mind you this was about a year and a half ago. 8GB Is the standard now, anything lower is unacceptable.

[WunderWuffle]

4GB of RAM is kinda not enough for me... I usually use more than 4GB while playing BF4 and using Chrome. I've heard stories about people getting major FPS boosts from getting more ram.

[miyabwah]

I'm in the middle, 6 GB, and I'm more leaned toward 8 GB because 4 GB simply does not seem like enough to me.

[bbqsauce]

4gb would pretty much mean you can only run your game without any background apps open. 8gb should be your starting point. 

 

you wont see an increase in performance per se. but you will see problems when you use up all your ram.

[Izaya Orihara]

4gb can be enough for some folks even while gaming for me it isn't tho. 8gb are a standard. Soon to be 16. 

[cae]

These days I'd definitely go with 8 minimum. 16 was overkill for me. I think you'd notice an improvement.

[Yoinkerman]

I have 16gb on this computer (my daily use computer) and 4gb on my gaming/streaming computer and haven't noticed any kind of shortfall with the 4gb one.

[helping]

8GB for casual, 16GB for power user, 4GB for office PC. 

 

8GB should give you a decent performance jump, but not often in tangible FPS but rather loads and possible hard FPS drops when the system is forced to seek from pagefile. 

[Moosie]

8 GB is the real baseline for gaming. Most games are still 32-bit and can only use 4GBs of RAM. But your operating system is using some, your teamspeak is using some, your foobar is using some, and your 32 chrome tabs are using a ton. That's where you're benefiting. And if you say you don't multitask when you're gaming, you're lying. You've at least alt-tabbed to google something.

 

4 GB is enough for general use. If you're word processing and going on facebook, you'll be fine with 4GB.

6GB is sort of an inbetween, and is only really viable in notebooks (where it is a slightly uncommon configuration, but is available) because in a desktop you'd just buy a 8GB kit for the same or less than you'd pay for 6 GB. When I helped my girlfriend pick out her new computer, I filtered by at least 6 GB. That way, she can multitask and have tons of tabs to her heart's content, and can do some light gaming (well, I'm working on it) as well.

[flibberdipper]

8GB is basically the lowest you would want to go playing modern titles.

[santiber]

I`ld recommend you going with 8gb, yes it`s a bit more expensive but you won`t need to upgrade for a longer term than if you go with 4gb. Personally i have 4gb, but i`m willing to build a new rig and i´m going with 4X4gb (16gb) to squeeze the quad channel performance. Good luck from Argentina.

[Commander_Z]

i found when i had 4Gb of ram in my system and tried to play BF4, i would get big FPS fluctuations all the time.

 

since upgrading to 8GB, i've had no issue with FPS drops since, for the most part

 

8GB would be the absolute minimum i would use

[TriBeard]

I had 6GB for a while when I still had my i7 920 system (triple-channel memory is very inconvenient), and it was pretty much fine for everything. The only time I ever had a problem was when I was running a terraria server as well as playing the game with chrome and some other stuff open. 

 

I would say with dual channel ram, 2x4GB (8 total) would be the least I would go. It's a good amount, and until my new desktop build I never had more, and never needed it. 

[GamerDude]

My two rigs in sig have 16GB each, my 3rd rig (an older X9650 + 4x 2GB KHX DDR2 1066mhz + HD7970) has 8 GB, I use it for lighter gaming and it handles all the games I'd thrown at it with ease. I had 4GB installed, keeping the other 4GB as standby/reserve, but $%#@ COD Ghosts had the 6GB requirement (before the patch) so I had no choice but to install the spare 4GB. I do have a 4th rig (AM2 5200+/4GB DDR2 800 + HD5770 1GB), it's used mostly for surfing the net. It is capable of light gaming with some other titles, I could get another 4GB for it, but figured the extra RAM would be a waste as I don't game on it.....reason being, it's on loan to my brother,

 

A good starting point for a gaming rig would be 2x 4GB of RAM, which should satisfy even the most hardcore gaming enthusiast. Though I have 16GB on both main rigs, I hardly see RAM usage exceeding 4GB-6GB to be honest....

[xyza]

8GB minimum, but isn't there some sort of relation between the amount of RAM and the speed of an SSD? or maybe it was the speed of the memory I forgot lol.

[Lays]

I use over 12 like everyday with 10 chrome pages whilst gaming (i also run an MC server and TS3 server though)

 

My next pc will prob have 16gb though, I rarely go over ~20gb

[lani100]

2 gb for basic work like word and stuff

4gb for basic stuff and some media

8gb sweetspot for gaming and most users

16gb+ for editing

[iJarbus]

Hey guys just wanted to thank everyone who posted and helped me out. You've convinced me so I'll be getting an 8GB kit of Corsair Vengance RAM to avoide having comparability issues with my current RAM and Vengace Pro RAM just looks so badass. Thanks again to everyone who helped.

[toms94z71]

My laptop sitting with nothing but back ground apps running and windows 7 is using 2.79 right now, and my main system which i have several tabs and windows on chrome open is using 5.0 right now, if I open up win tv to watch tv on it to it will go up to between 6 and 7, I would say even for a smooth running multimedia pc 8 wouldn't be a bad idea you might get by with 4 ok if you make sure all but the absolutely most necessary back ground processes are closed. My laptop has 16 gigs in it and my desktop 32 gigs, which is over kill except when rendering videos, the extra ram really helps out with that. I think 8 is the current sweet spot for the average user. I think you will be completely happy with 8, because aside from when I am doing serious multitasking or editing things, i never exceed the need for 8.

[SadTech]

With virtual machines and the amount of RAM programs take up these days 8GB should be absolute minimum... 16GB is preferred..

[Paralectic]

Your RAM bottlenecks your PC when doing BF4 ( Same for me, I also have 4GB ).

[Legion]

8Gb, even then I full use 8 with all my browser windows open while playing starcraft. 

If ram drops again I'm jumping in and getting me some more.

[Recon-UK]

My AMD rig only has 4GB, and is now hitting limits in some games (loaned to my bro) yet more money to be used