How does ram work in video games

[KyiloRen]

Hello, I wanna know how ram works in video games because I don't understand how some games uses over 8gb of ram for example anthem, a game that will suffer without 16gb but then we have Assassin's creed odyssey which is so huge it makes me sweat irl from walking around in-game yet don't even use more than 6.5gb of ram. Is it that some games are more dense or it just comes down to optimisation? 

[BurstHearts]

Optimization. The Ram holds the information of what is happening and is going to happen, so if a lot of things are happening (like a big map and lots os models) the ram is going to get consumed. It also depends of the engine, like Sonic's engine, a sonic game could use 2 or 3gb of ram but use 4 or 8 depending of the game, as the engine order all the land to have colision instead of just when sonic is going to touch it, and the same thing happens in competitive games, they need to have all the ground and wall and scenario already in the ram as people will move fast and in all places. But Anthem is really bad, PUBG and fortnite (i got around 60 with 8gb and a 1050 with a Pentium G4560 in fortinite) isn't that older and need just 8gb

[EpiCheeseTime]

Essentially there are many forms of memory that are used in a computer. But the main two that are heavy hitters for games are VRAM and RAM. VRAM is the dedicated memory on your graphics card or APU that are used by the graphics to produce a better, faster, and more correct image. Where as RAM is the portion that is used more frequently on things like everyday use, because the RAM is what all programs and services use in order to maintain data in order to execute the program.

 

What you are probably thinking or worrying about is VRAM. Most games now are coming out with a "how much VRAM is used" bar in the bottom when you change settings. First one that comes to mind is Wildlands. When you adjust settings it will tell you how much VRAM will be needed in order to run (for me its about 6 or 7GB).

 

Computers are fun aren't they?

[KyiloRen]

Very fun, very informative as well, thank you. Also I was talking about system ram cause vram I understand a bit.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 hours ago, KyiloRen said:

Hello, I wanna know how ram works in video games because I don't understand how some games uses over 8gb of ram for example anthem, a game that will suffer without 16gb but then we have Assassin's creed odyssey which is so huge it makes me sweat irl from walking around in-game yet don't even use more than 6.5gb of ram. Is it that some games are more dense or it just comes down to optimisation? 

For multiplayer games, the entire state of the current zone has to be known, including the players. So this requires more memory than a single player open-world game. In a single-player game, you can get away with "freezing" parts of the game world because they don't have any short-term consequence to the player.

[KyiloRen]

On 3/14/2019 at 12:00 PM, Mira Yurizaki said:

For multiplayer games, the entire state of the current zone has to be known, including the players. So this requires more memory than a single player open-world game. In a single-player game, you can get away with "freezing" parts of the game world because they don't have any short-term consequence to the player.

That actually makes allot of sense, thank you