8GB ram for gaming in 2019

[porina]

Last night I decided to put on more heating, which in my house means turning on another PC and setting it to do some distributed computing work. I dug out an older one. As I hadn't used it in a while, I let it catch up on various updates. Win10 1909, updated the GPU driver, and for fun decided to download the ROTTR demo to see how a 280X does nowadays. I wasn't expecting a lot. PC spec:

 

i5-5675C

Z97 mobo

2x4GB 1866 DDR3

280X 3GB

40GB SSD (OS)

1TB HD (everything else)

 

The 280X wasn't bad in its day, but that feels like a long time ago. Anyway, I fired up ROTTR and it defaulted to 1080p high. Is that optimistic? Erm... yes. Load times took what felt like forever. I thought I was playing FFXV on the PS4 again. Overall average FPS was 35, but during the rendering there were frequent stutters. I had the Radeon overlay on, and saw it reporting it was using some 7GB of system ram. That's... pretty much all of it? Ok, what if I back off a bit? Medium, low, very low... with each setting reduction framerates went up but I didn't cross 60fps average even on very low. However at the lower settings I also noticed slightly lower ram usage, and the stutters were gone.

 

I kinda knew 8GB was on the limit for a while, but I guess 16GB is the realistic minimum if you want a good experience with modern titles? Not that I'd use this system for it. It was also interesting in all settings tried, it was 100% GPU limited, apart from "very low" preset where it was only 99% GPU limited. Maybe a job for another day, but would a more modern card like RX580 start to push the limit back to the CPU?

 

Note the mobo bios has a quirk where unusually it actually enforces TDP as power limit, so the CPU wasn't even boosting to its full potential. Settings to remove that are ignored and I can only work around it with XTU. Given how GPU bound it was, I didn't think it worth bothering with in this case.

[1van]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

i5-5675C

Z97 mobo

2x4GB 1866 DDR3

280X 3GB

40GB SSD (OS)

1TB HD (everything else)

The good thing is that Broadwell has an L4 cache which makes it much less sensitive to memory speed (but not to the size).

I tested that 8GB of RAM is still enough for modern games if you don't leave the browser, etc. open, and if you have a graphics card with 6-8GB of VRAM, so swapping it to RX578 or RX588/590 may be a good idea)

[porina]

2 minutes ago, 1van said:

The good thing is that Broadwell has an L4 cache which makes it much less sensitive to memory speed (but not to the size).

That's in part why I got it. For compute use cases it was out-performing Skylakes even when I loaded it with a single stick (channel) of ram. Those tasks were not ram capacity hungry but loved bandwidth.

 

2 minutes ago, 1van said:

I tested that 8GB of RAM is still enough for modern games if you don't leave the browser, etc. open, and if you have a graphics card with 6-8GB of VRAM, so swapping it to RX578 or RX588/590 may be a good idea)

Nothing else was running during the test I did, but I guess the 3GB VRAM wasn't helping there if it meant game textures were taking up system ram also. I had saw other tests in the past which suggested 8GB system ram + large VRAM GPU can still perform well, but I don't know if that is still current thinking hence this test of my own.

 

In case it wasn't obvious, this system is more of a "left over bits" build. Maybe some day I'll rotate a higher GPU into it. I still have 3x RX580's somewhere (other systems) that I still haven't got around to doing crossfire testing with seriously. Don't think the PSU would take anything much more than one of those.

[Teddy07]

23 minutes ago, porina said:

i5-5675C

Z97 mobo

2x4GB 1866 DDR3

280X 3GB

40GB SSD (OS)

1TB HD (everything else)

Funny my sister and I have both a very similar PC and I just ordered 16GB ram for both of us. Good thing is that you can get it quite cheap used from ebay. ~70 € for 2x8GB.

[Oalei]

Wait there is a 5gen Intel CPU's or is it some mobile chip? 

[1van]

12 minutes ago, porina said:

That's in part why I got it.

A fun CPU indeed. Btw, this may be interesting for you, too.

2 minutes ago, Oalei said:

Wait there is a 5gen Intel CPU's or is it some mobile chip? 

No, it is top LGA1150 CPU, there were i7s, too. It has an L4 cache and Iris iGPU. They were quite rare.

[porina]

16 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

Funny my sister and I have both a very similar PC and I just ordered 16GB ram for both of us. Good thing is that you can get it quite cheap used from ebay. ~70 € for 2x8GB.

Are you re-using your existing ram or all new for both? e.g. you get 2x8 for one system, move 4x4 into the other?

 

10 minutes ago, Oalei said:

Wait there is a 5gen Intel CPU's or is it some mobile chip? 

Desktop Broadwell was a short lived CPU. You know the recent troubles with 10nm? Well, 14nm was also a troubled birth for Intel. It was delayed a LOT and only two desktop CPUs were released, the i5-5675C and i7-5775C. I think Intel only released them to say they had released them. It was only out for a short time before Skylake was launched. I actually got this CPU after I already bought a 6700k for my main system.

 

It does feel like they just put the mobile CPU onto a desktop package, as it includes the rare-for-desktop 128MB eDRAM L4 cache, used primarily to boost iGPU performance on mobile.

 

6 minutes ago, 1van said:

A fun CPU indeed. Btw, this may be interesting for you, too.

I saw that video. While it looks like it could be fun, it wasn't quite cheap enough for me to bother with. Have to look to the future not the past, outside of specific niche areas. I still could use a cheap 7700k or 7740X to attempt some quad core record benchmarks, not that I expect to find either...

[Teddy07]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

Are you re-using your existing ram or all new for both? e.g. you get 2x8 for one system, move 4x4 into the other?

I would reuse it but my z97 boards don´t support quad channel. I bought therefore 2x8GB for each board. Will be trying to sell the old ones

[steelo]

1 hour ago, porina said:

I kinda knew 8GB was on the limit for a while, but I guess 16GB is the realistic minimum if you want a good experience with modern titles? Not that I'd use this system for it. It was also interesting in all settings tried, it was 100% GPU limited, apart from "very low" preset where it was only 99% GPU limited. Maybe a job for another day, but would a more modern card like RX580 start to push the limit back to the CPU?

 

 

I only have 8 GB in a system I built last winter and it's never caused issues with the games I play. I haven't noticed much stuttering or any indication that it was low on memory. I do notice however that AAA games, in particular leave me very little memory remaining. I'll probably add another 8 GB next year after I upgrade the CPU to a 3600 and GPU to a RX5500XT or 5700. It will feel like a new PC

 

I'd say, go for 16 GB if you can afford it and IMO, a 580 should work fine with your CPU. I'd think though that would probably be near the limit without it bottlenecking the GPU.

 

[Midnitewolf]

I don't think you would run into any major issues gaming with just 8 GB of RAM but I have to ask why you would want to when RAM is so cheap.  I mean I just bought 32 GB of PC3200 DDR4 for $109 on sale on Newegg. Even if you had to replace your memory, you could probably put 16 GB into a machine for around $50-$70.

[steelo]

6 minutes ago, Midnitewolf said:

I don't think you would run into any major issues gaming with just 8 GB of RAM but I have to ask why you would want to when RAM is so cheap.  I mean I just bought 32 GB of PC3200 DDR4 for $109 on sale on Newegg. Even if you had to replace your memory, you could probably put 16 GB into a machine for around $50-$70.

Dang, I paid $60 for 8 GB a year ago...RAM prices have dropped off a cliff.

 

Now I'm seriously considering buying 16 GB...

[porina]

5 minutes ago, Midnitewolf said:

I don't think you would run into any major issues gaming with just 8 GB of RAM but I have to ask why you would want to when RAM is so cheap.  I mean I just bought 32 GB of PC3200 DDR4 for $109 on sale on Newegg. Even if you had to replace your memory, you could probably put 16 GB into a machine for around $50-$70.

This was more an exercise into understanding what current limits were, more than anything I'd seriously use. I have multiple systems far better than this, but last night I just happened to play with it again and wondered how well it does today. For its normal use of distributed computing, 8GB of ram is plenty so I don't see any need to spend more on the system. If it were my only system, of course that would be different. My main gaming system has 16GB of ram. I have enough DDR4 for newer systems I don't think I need to buy any more ram until DDR5 comes out.

[Midnitewolf]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

This was more an exercise into understanding what current limits were, more than anything I'd seriously use. I have multiple systems far better than this, but last night I just happened to play with it again and wondered how well it does today. For its normal use of distributed computing, 8GB of ram is plenty so I don't see any need to spend more on the system. If it were my only system, of course that would be different. My main gaming system has 16GB of ram. I have enough DDR4 for newer systems I don't think I need to buy any more ram until DDR5 comes out.

 

Yeah I get you.  Well I will say, nothing I have seen indicates to me that you lose too much by having just 8 GB of RAM, maybe a few frames here and there but I don't think there are any games that won't at least run on 8 GB.

[steelo]

12 minutes ago, Midnitewolf said:

 

Yeah I get you.  Well I will say, nothing I have seen indicates to me that you lose too much by having just 8 GB of RAM, maybe a few frames here and there but I don't think there are any games that won't at least run on 8 GB.

IMO, 8 GB (for the time being) is just enough for most titles today.