Does RAM size affect performance?

[MRDotted]

Does the amount of RAM affect the performance in games? So, would 32GB make a significant difference compared to 16GB? 

[SgtKenzo]

For gaming in 2021? No difference at all. Unless you're planning on using OBS to record or stream and editing a lot of 4K videos at the same time. Otherwise the answer is no

[Guest]

Completely depends on what the purpose of the computer is. I need 32GB because I host a Minecraft server and play at the same time. The server alone demands 15-18GB. To run Minecraft while the server is running, that brings usage up to 25GB or so. Then I have Discord, a few Firefox tabs, a YouTube video, maybe File Explorer, memory usage quickly climbs.

 

Answer's no for most people, but yeah, there are reasons to have 32GB, or even 64GB of RAM.

[Moonzy]

Unless you need the extra capacity, no

 

People who say 32gb isn't needed for gaming doesn't play modded games, obviously

[YoungBlade]

As long as you don't run out, it won't. But it's getting easier to run out. For example, Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition comes close to using 16GB on my machine. If I were one of those horrible people who watched YouTube videos at the same time as I played a story-driven game, then I'd probably notice a slow-down as something would need to get moved to the page file after I ran out of RAM.

 

Another example is when I play heavily modded Minecraft. One big mod-pack I tried used 24GB. Lots of mods are quite RAM hungry, so if you play a lot of heavily modded games, you'll run into an issue.

 

And, lastly, if you heavily multi-task while gaming, like having Discord, a browser with a bunch of tabs open, including several 4k videos because you hate your graphics card and CPU and want to watch them suffer, all while doing some high-res photo editing, you'll probably run out of RAM in newer titles.

 

So if you don't play really heavy titles, modded games, or do 12 things at once (one of which is a game, or two) then you probably won't notice any difference between 16GB of RAM and 16TB of RAM.

[rice guru]

it depends honestly very rare a game needs more than 16 gigs but if you are multi tasking like watching videos on chrome while playing games some games could really benefit from the extra ram. I believe I'm not that unique fo a case but playing a triple A game like COD cold war I often find myself exceeding 16 gigs of RAM , again I'm a heavy multi tasker. 

 

[Chris Pratt]

Having extra unused capacity does absolutely zero for you. So, no, 32GB isn't necessarily better than 16GB, if you're using less than 16GB.

 

That said, there's some value in having more ranks, and it's possible to get to four ranks with 32GB, whereas only 2 ranks are possible with 16GB (unless you managed to find some kits of 4GB, but those are become more rare, and it would just be kind of dumb to fill four slots with 4GB DIMMs). It's not a huge difference in performance, but technically, yeah in that scenario, the 32GB would give you better performance.

[parkhyunjeong036]

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is no. It doesn't affect the performance of how your phone when you play. Still, I think it is more of a qualification of an app for your phone. It's too see if it will work or not.