8Gb vs 16Gb RAM for gaming

[IeuBry]

How much difference does having 8Gb vs 16Gb RAM make for gaming? Is it noticeable in AAA titles at the moment?

 

Thanks!

 

Edit: DDR3 by the way

[Enderman]

no you will not use 8GB with a game

if you are running multiple things in the background in addition to the game then you could possibly run out with 8GB

[nhatduy1611]

For gaming all you need is 8gb. 16gb is for video editing that sort of stuff.

[LiamApex]

i would say 8 doesn't really cut it anymore. go for 16 there is a slight difference in games

[lani100]

How much difference does having 8Gb vs 16Gb RAM make for gaming? Is it noticeable in AAA titles at the moment?

 

Thanks!

 

Edit: DDR3 by the way

I've always had 8Gb for years but on GTA V I managed to fill 8gb up so that's why I upgraded, I also started to run some VM's for school.

8Gb should work okay but if you have the budget get 16gb.

[Dzzope]

8 is fine unless your a tab monster and run lots of other stuff in the background.

[ADZ_123_!"£]

In GTA V there is (may have been fixed don't know) a bug where the longer you have it open the larger the amount of ram it uses gets at some point people have had there games using 10gb of ram so you might want 16gb just to combat this.

[GeekySole9354]

If you can afford it get 16gb, it'll be bettter, and new games seem to use a fair bit of ram. 8gb will be enough, but i still recommend 16.

[Guest]

If you can afford it get 16gb, it'll be bettter, and new games seem to use a fair bit of ram. 8gb will be enough, but i still recommend 16.

 

If 8GBs is enough, and OP will not use more than 8Gbs, why would you recommend it? That just seems, ludicrous. 

[GeekySole9354]

If 8GBs is enough, and OP will not use more than 8Gbs, why would you recommend it? That just seems, ludicrous. 

8gb is fine just for just gaming right now, but if you want to do multiple things at once or want it to be ''future proof'' 16gb is a huge advantage

[niofalpha]

8GB is fine for gaming now (Not sure about a few years from now), but if you're a heavy multitasker/ streamer then you need more than 8GB. Iv'e used more than 8GB of RAM not even streaming.

[vorticalbox]

most games are 32 bit clients thus can only access 4GB of ram in a 64 bit OS and about 3 GB in a 32bit OS

[Novistion]

Personally I use 8 gigs a lot, and I think it is a good middle ground. 4 gigs is not enough at all 8 is perfect and 16 is too much imho. But if you are going to doing stuff (streaming) or if you have dual monitors and want something to run in the background (ie twitter, afterburner etc.) and if you have the budget go for 16, you won't have to worry about upgrading.

[Bananasplit_00]

8GB is fine, but i tend to run out saing as i always have spotify and skype/teamspeak also spotify memoryleaks A LOT

[Facety]

If you're planning on playing GTA5 get the 16GB, I chewed threw 8 GB in about 2 hours and I only had HWMonitor running in the background, I originally got 16GB for running VM and GNS3 and its one less thing to worry about now.

[TMar]

most games are 32 bit clients thus can only access 4GB of ram in a 64 bit OS and about 3 GB in a 32bit OS

 

 

While true, it isn't an absolute.  One I can think of off the top of my head is SWTOR which while 32bit actually starts two processes which (of course) allows it to bypass that limited since each process can use 4GB.

[-TesseracT-]

16GB because then you won't have to worry about running out of ram.

[vorticalbox]

While true, it isn't an absolute.  One I can think of off the top of my head is SWTOR which while 32bit actually starts two processes which (of course) allows it to bypass that limited since each process can use 4GB.

thats true and i'm sure a few programs use this trick, i'm willing to bet most don't. I have seen a few games requiring 64bit OS, but for the time being 8gb is enough. 

 

might also point out that more ram != runs faster. ram speed actually does very little in terms of FPS

[Curufinwe_wins]

If you open tabs like ever. Get 16.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

If you play super duper modded skyrim then yea. I always hit 10GB, 12 in rare cases.

[TMar]

thats true and i'm sure a few programs use this trick, i'm willing to bet most don't. I have seen a few games requiring 64bit OS, but for the time being 8gb is enough. 

 

might also point out that more ram != runs faster. ram speed actually does very little in terms of FPS

 

Yeah, 8 is enough for gaming.  Even on games that split the process the likeliness of them using close to 8 is fairly small.  There's currently just a handful of games where you would have to make sure you don't have unneeded processing running so you don't writing out.  

[ExcitezR]

i tend to run chrome and Skype and other things when gaming so i have 16 but i have only just upgraded i was running 8GB for the past 2 years and it was fine ran out sometimes though  

[Hieb]

Some larger games like GTA V seem to run into some slight stuttering issues even if you're not fully maxed out on RAM... I never actually reach 8GB of RAM usage, but once I get around ~6.5GB GTA V starts freezing every so often for like 1/4 of a second, even though there's more RAM available.

 

I'd say that 8GB is enough to game... but if you can afford 16GB you should go for it.