Is Buying More RAM a WASTE for Gamers? (2022) - (SPONSORED)

[Unedited_Mind]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So much for back to the original topic I guess. Your statement is at odds with your initial comment. 

Well you do look down on others having 32GB of RAM.

 

Now get some balls, you should have some, you are male right?

 

Feel the Fire of life, get your ass into gear.

 

[Amaranth]

7 hours ago, MultiGamerClub said:

I have my doubts for 32gb needed for anyone.

There are a few game titles that can make use of more than 16GB, and once you get into productivity it's very easy to need as much RAM as you get get into a system.

 

I'd have more than 128GB in my main, personal workstation if the platform supported it and have 512GB at the office and 32GB is the minimum I'd ever want to run (ideally it would be 64GB+). So while 16GB is probably fine for your average gamer, there are definitely situations where you want more. 

[LAwLz]

21 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I suspect this is a situation where crucial wants to sell more DDR5, which no one wants because it’s currently slow and expensive, and some bright spark in marketing got the idea of trying to convince people that they needed less of it, so even though it was twice as expensive they only needed half as much.  And they used Linus as a patsy to try to make it happen. 

This is why it bothers me so much that their videos are so heavily sponsored. 

It undercuts their credibility in cases like these where they might actually be testing something important. 

 

When a RAM manufacturer sponsors a video about RAM, you just can't take anything said in the video as true. You have to think of it as an ad you'd see on TV. 

 

 

Anyway, this thread and the YouTube comments are fun to read. Seems like a lot of people bought more RAM than they need, tried to justify it by saying "no I actually need it", and are now mad at this video suggesting they didn't actually need all that RAM. 

I've seen some people argue that "okay its enough for now, but what about the future!?" which is that same old dumb "future proofing" argument everyone uses when justifying buying expensive hardware they don't need. 

The good thing about RAM is that it is often very easy to upgrade and since you can keep the old sticks (most of the time) you don't really lose anything by buying what you need, when you need it. 

[tkitch]

22 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Love the Tribes 2 reference.  Classic game, skiing was so fun.

I'm SO glad I wasn't the only one who caught that!

8GB?  Man, I didn't have 1GB when I played that!

[tkitch]

22 hours ago, Unedited_Mind said:

Also you are just lying if you think having empty RAM slots is better. 

 

  Hide contents

 

Considering 2 sticks is more stable than 4 and better for overclocking?

Yes, empty slots are better.

[tkitch]

22 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I suspect this is a situation where crucial wants to sell more DDR5, which no one wants because it’s currently slow and expensive, and some bright spark in marketing got the idea of trying to convince people that they needed less of it, so even though it was twice as expensive they only needed half as much.  And they used Linus as a patsy to try to make it happen. 

Except linus pointed out in several of the tests that DDR5 had no benefit over 4.  So if he was trying to shill DDR5?  That's a pretty bad way to do it.

[ToboRobot]

17 minutes ago, tkitch said:

I'm SO glad I wasn't the only one who caught that!

8GB?  Man, I didn't have 1GB when I played that!

omg, we are so old. lolz

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Except linus pointed out in several of the tests that DDR5 had no benefit over 4.  So if he was trying to shill DDR5?  That's a pretty bad way to do it.

I don’t think he was trying to shill ddr5.  I think crucial was.

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t think he was trying to shill ddr5.  I think crucial was.

Except in the given day today, NOT testing DDR5 against 4 in a test like this would be really dishonest.

 

I don't think anyone was shilling anything.  If they were, there would have been tests that favored either more RAM or DDR5 specifically.  

 

Crucial pays linus to say there name a bunch of times during a video to sell more product.  (And I don't mind when it's actually a good product.)

[Tristerin]

Only time I run into needing more than 16gb of RAM (for gaming) is heavily modded games (7 days to die for example), other than that Ive not seen a need.

 

Abode suites are another story lol

[Bombastinator]

51 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This is why it bothers me so much that their videos are so heavily sponsored. 

It undercuts their credibility in cases like these where they might actually be testing something important. 

 

When a RAM manufacturer sponsors a video about RAM, you just can't take anything said in the video as true. You have to think of it as an ad you'd see on TV. 

 

 

Anyway, this thread and the YouTube comments are fun to read. Seems like a lot of people bought more RAM than they need, tried to justify it by saying "no I actually need it", and are now mad at this video suggesting they didn't actually need all that RAM. 

I've seen some people argue that "okay its enough for now, but what about the future!?" which is that same old dumb "future proofing" argument everyone uses when justifying buying expensive hardware they don't need. 

The good thing about RAM is that it is often very easy to upgrade and since you can keep the old sticks (most of the time) you don't really lose anything by buying what you need, when you need it. 

Depends.  Sometimes filling kits doesn’t work because the machine is too touchy about its ram.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Except in the given day today, NOT testing DDR5 against 4 in a test like this would be really dishonest.

 

I don't think anyone was shilling anything.  If they were, there would have been tests that favored either more RAM or DDR5 specifically.  

 

Crucial pays linus to say there name a bunch of times during a video to sell more product.  (And I don't mind when it's actually a good product.)

This could be true.  

[ToboRobot]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t think he was trying to shill ddr5.  I think crucial was.

I'm sure Crucial is happy to sell RAM, DDR 4 or 5.  And this allowed them to advertise to both segments of the market.

[wanderingfool2]

On 6/16/2022 at 10:43 AM, ToboRobot said:

Love the Tribes 2 reference.  Classic game, skiing was so fun.

13 hours ago, tkitch said:

I'm SO glad I wasn't the only one who caught that!

8GB?  Man, I didn't have 1GB when I played that!

Man Starsiege Tribes is where it's at.  Talk about the insane optimizations they did to it, and it introduced everything that was in Tribes 2 (skiing and such).  The physics was also unique compared to what we have today.  A game truly ahead of it's time (plus the insane modding aspects of it).

 

Some of the mods really pushed it past the 1GB point even...although it's a 32 bit game so realistically it's limited to 4GB of system ram.

 

Honestly for the video though, any older game (from the 32 bit era will have no proper gains from over 8GB ram).

[tkitch]

3 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Man Starsiege Tribes is where it's at.  Talk about the insane optimizations they did to it, and it introduced everything that was in Tribes 2 (skiing and such).  The physics was also unique compared to what we have today.  A game truly ahead of it's time (plus the insane modding aspects of it).

 

Some of the mods really pushed it past the 1GB point even...although it's a 32 bit game so realistically it's limited to 4GB of system ram.

 

Honestly for the video though, any older game (from the 32 bit era will have no proper gains from over 8GB ram).

@ToboRobot

 

I was waiting FOREVER for Tribes 2.  

 

I also remember the frustration of release day when the game wouldn't run!  I had to uninstall and re-install 5 or 6 times to get it to launch.

 

Apparently something in the installer had a bad habit of not copying files correctly, so you had to get lucky.  (They quickly release a repair patch to fix that!)

 

Also for Tribes1?  I spent a bunch of time in the Alt.Games.Starisiege.Tribes newsgroup.  (Remember usenet?  I do!)

 

And spent most of my time in the Renegades or Shifter mods for it.

[Galvano]

I have a HP OMEN with 8 GB ram in single channel 

it has i5 10th gen and 1650

will upgrading it to 2X8 GB give performance improvements or CPU or GPU will be the bottleneck

[Quackers101]

5 hours ago, tkitch said:

I was waiting FOREVER for Tribes 2. 

RIP, tribes ascend. PlanetSide 2. Hi-Rez studio.

[Neroon]

Honestly I found the whole video very useless. Even if you ignore the sponsored stuff or no background stuff.

 

Between loads of games not being tested that take up a lot of memory, looking towards the future of gaming and limiting to 8GB single channel (I have 16GB single channel in my laptop), I just couldn't find any info that told me anything relevant. 

 

I also found the video to be extremely aimed at gamers with 5+ year old systems. You could argue that DDR5 isn't old obviously, but 2x 8GB is very old. I mean my desktop from 2013 had 16GB, and not it wasn't that expensive at all. Now sure that wasn't the quickest memory, but would that be better vs not having enough memory.

 

Well this video could have told us something relevant, if they had used current games that take up a ton of memory. Because no one cares if 8GB is enough on old games. People build new systems today, and they want to know what they should get today. So show us 2x4, 1x8, 2x8, 1x16, 2x16 and both cheaper memory and expensive stuff, show us some prices to get us a solid idea for the best bang for buck.

 

All I can say now, is that I don't care about DDR5, and less than 16GB is trash, because well.. I don't know, but it has to be right, because the testing was crap, so better get more to make sure I've got enough. 

[Quackers101]

also you will see another change by going up to 32 GB. was a bit more dual channel focused video? and no good speed info that they used to have in older videos?

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

Between loads of games not being tested that take up a lot of memory, looking towards the future of gaming and limiting to 8GB single channel (I have 16GB single channel in my laptop), I just couldn't find any info that told me anything relevant. 

...you can find information that is relevant.  I mean even now the results show clearly single channel is worse overall compared to dual channel (so quad channel is likely better).  Speed of ram is also going to be a factor based on the results.

 

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

Because no one cares if 8GB is enough on old games

Well in fairness they did have a '22 game, a '20 game in the mix...so not just exclusively old games.

 

The general point I think is that as long as you have enough ram to run the game, you won't be taking a massive hit.  There is the notion, required vs recommended where the recommended is a lot higher than what is actually needed.

 

If your budget allows it, sure 16+ GB is good, but if you buy a single 16GB non DDR5 stick it's telling you buy 2 8GB sticks instead (if it's the same price).  The whole concept being that even now 8GB to 16GB doesn't make a huge difference (so 16GB to 32GB won't either).  The cost difference, you would be better spending the money on lets say a better graphics card.

 

9 hours ago, tkitch said:

And spent most of my time in the Renegades or Shifter mods for it.

It was RPG mod for me for Tribes 1.  Wish I had tried football mod back when it was popular

[Neroon]

8 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

...you can find information that is relevant.  I mean even now the results show clearly single channel is worse overall compared to dual channel (so quad channel is likely better).  Speed of ram is also going to be a factor based on the results.

 

Well in fairness they did have a '22 game, a '20 game in the mix...so not just exclusively old games.

 

The general point I think is that as long as you have enough ram to run the game, you won't be taking a massive hit.  There is the notion, required vs recommended where the recommended is a lot higher than what is actually needed.

 

If your budget allows it, sure 16+ GB is good, but if you buy a single 16GB non DDR5 stick it's telling you buy 2 8GB sticks instead (if it's the same price).  The whole concept being that even now 8GB to 16GB doesn't make a huge difference (so 16GB to 32GB won't either).  The cost difference, you would be better spending the money on lets say a better graphics card.

 

It was RPG mod for me for Tribes 1.  Wish I had tried football mod back when it was popular

Yeah of course I can find that info, hell I don't need that info to begin with. That's not relevant though. LTT is a tech channel, if I need to search the internet for info after watching an LTT video on it, then the LTT video sucks. Now sure if I wanted to go super duper deep, than that would be fine for them to not get us that info, even though they do keep talking about the Lab about getting us reliable data, so I would expect them to kick it up like 20 notches.

 

But neither of those games are demanding, at least not memory wise. He might as well have used like a 2022 Freecell edition to test it. You want to do a review on memory and gaming, you better test the toughest games out there, because even if those were like niche games that many don't play, it would set you up for the next gen games. Oh and since both the Series X as the PS5 has 16GB, you know games will be using it, and those systems take up less resources from background stuff.

 

Look I get the arguments, I was 10 when I started messing with PC hardware, and that was in 95. I know more than most people ever will (to be clear, I have no doubt a lot of people here know a lot more than I do, but I know my stuff)

The point is, is that this video tells you that dual channel is better, DDR5 can be better in some rare cases, old games run fine on 8GB and if you are building a new PC, do NOT uses LTT as a point of information for your memory, and just visit a site where they put out proper content that isn't bought and paid for.

 

I have no issues with sponsored content, but this video was fucking useless. It was like a Tell Sell commercial.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Neroon said:

Yeah of course I can find that info, hell I don't need that info to begin with. That's not relevant though. LTT is a tech channel, if I need to search the internet for info after watching an LTT video on it, then the LTT video sucks. Now sure if I wanted to go super duper deep, than that would be fine for them to not get us that info, even though they do keep talking about the Lab about getting us reliable data, so I would expect them to kick it up like 20 notches.

 

But neither of those games are demanding, at least not memory wise. He might as well have used like a 2022 Freecell edition to test it. You want to do a review on memory and gaming, you better test the toughest games out there, because even if those were like niche games that many don't play, it would set you up for the next gen games. Oh and since both the Series X as the PS5 has 16GB, you know games will be using it, and those systems take up less resources from background stuff.

 

Look I get the arguments, I was 10 when I started messing with PC hardware, and that was in 95. I know more than most people ever will (to be clear, I have no doubt a lot of people here know a lot more than I do, but I know my stuff)

The point is, is that this video tells you that dual channel is better, DDR5 can be better in some rare cases, old games run fine on 8GB and if you are building a new PC, do NOT uses LTT as a point of information for your memory, and just visit a site where they put out proper content that isn't bought and paid for.

 

I have no issues with sponsored content, but this video was fucking useless. It was like a Tell Sell commercial.

If this post doesn't make sense to anyone..... well they should read it again then.

 

So many good opinions here. I'll quote one 

"I have 32gb cause, turn off page file" 

 

Page file is designed for those that may encounter low system memory situations. In the past page file was horrible. Because the low cache 5400 and 7200 spinners (even the 10K raptors) just where god awful for using page file! 

 

Today, solid states, NVME M.2, even Sata SSDs are fast enough to run 8gb and use page file.  So the effects of low system memory shouldn't be noticed. Modern games that require more than 8gb memory won't open and run. Saving you the trouble. Get 16gb of memory. But if it meets the minimum system requirements, maybe then some page file is a good thing. 

 

Horizon Zero Down for example. System requirement = 16gb. (very graphically intense) Minimum is 8gb.

Most all games 16gb recommended and 8gb minimum.

 

Star Citizen however recommends ""16 (+)gb" system memory.

If you play this game, maybe getting more than 16gb would be useful.

 

At some point in the future, for games in the future, not yet created; 32gb of system memory in a gaming system should be the norm. Kinda like 32gb of ddr5 system memory, cause that's how it's sold at a standard. In other words, on Current gen (ddr4 is no longer current gen), You can't even buy 8gb sticks. because they don't exist. 

 

[ADarkBard]

I would have liked to see the comparisons in the video extended to 32MB. I'm still of the mind that yeah if all you are doing is playing a game with nothing else open then 16MG will suffice. I don't that rarely is the case for me, however.

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, ADarkBard said:

I would have liked to see the comparisons in the video extended to 32MB. I'm still of the mind that yeah if all you are doing is playing a game with nothing else open then 16MG will suffice. I don't that rarely is the case for me, however.

I think the point was that if you have nothing else open 8gb will suffice in many cases.  Which is sort of an argument for 16gb since there is basically always something else open whether you opened it or not.  I plan to put 32gb in my next machine if possible.  It’s usually under $100 difference.  DDR5 almost triples that, but I don’t think ddr5 will stay that way. 

[Beerzerker]

On 6/18/2022 at 11:42 PM, Bombastinator said:

I think the point was that if you have nothing else open 8gb will suffice in many cases.  Which is sort of an argument for 16gb since there is basically always something else open whether you opened it or not.  I plan to put 32gb in my next machine if possible.  It’s usually under $100 difference.  DDR5 almost triples that, but I don’t think ddr5 will stay that way. 

I already have and it wasn't a waste since I do have plans to run this one for a few years yet, plus at the time it was cheaper to get - Not many instances where RAM got cheaper later on vs the expected price hikes per GB as time goes by and that's why I got it when I did this build.

Pay some now or more later to get the same GB's worth.
And the fact when prices finally do drop the good stuff will be long gone leaving only the left-overs, sticks no one really wanted for reasons which can vary.

I'll repeat myself, what's enough today may not be up to task tomorrow if you want to use your machine for a few years.
Also, with each and every game/program release eventually there will be "The One" that up's the ante in terms of requirements, RAM required most likely being affected that way when it happens.