Do I need a RAM upgrade?

[SirGeneral]

i have ~$100 to buy either a RAM kit (2x 8GB, an upgrade from my 2x 4GB) or some games, since I have almost nothing in my library.

Do I really need an upgrade to 16 gigs or am I still fine with my 8 gigs?

[star_pilot475]

Are you seeing ram being maxed out while in games? If so, it may be a good upgrade. If not, you could stick with your 8GBs. 

[ManyCoresGuy]

Depends on what games you play. Also if you tend to multitask, i would strongly recommend going to 16GB. Chrome on its own uses a lot of memory (Assuming you use chrome browser).

[George.]

Do you have an SSD? What other components does your system consist of?

 If so, even when running low on memory, your background tasks will be moved to the page file much faster than it would on a mechanical hdd so you'll have more ram available for what's important without any noticeable delay. Of course if your game happens to somehow need more than 8 you're doomed in terms of fps. 

8 gigs is enough for now imo, however, if you're not planning on spending money on ram in the next year you could consider upgrading it now. So far it will be sufficient for any game (if you don't multitask while running it, that is).

Software scales up with memory at a various rate so even with 16 gigs of ram, if you multitask (especially chrome) will eat almost the same % of memory as it would with 8 gigs. With 16gb your system will be capable of opening more chrome tabs and if you run new heavy games at max graphics while doing something else in the background, but for pure not too graphically maxed out gaming in an optimized environment you should be good for now. 

[SirGeneral]

i have an ssd as my C:\ drive

also, im planning to get an RTX series gpu (one of the ones that actually do raytracing), would i need 16gb for games that actually take advantage of that?

[George.]

2 hours ago, SirGeneral said:

i have an ssd as my C:\ drive

also, im planning to get an RTX series gpu (one of the ones that actually do raytracing), would i need 16gb for games that actually take advantage of that?

well I'm not very deep into Raytracing, but I believe you would need 16 then, yeah.

P.S. if I were you, I'd wait and save a bit more money until Christmas. Lots of great deals both for games and pc hardware. Also Black Friday is coming up soon.