8GB for gaming?

[orcinhell]

Hi guys,

 

Is 8GB still the "butter" zone for gaming? I am finally going to buy GTA 5 for pc and noticed it recommended 8GB. My goal the next time I upgrade CPU/MB I will also make the move to DDR4. I plan to have at least 16GB for that. Hopefully as soon as Skylake if it offers good enough performance gains with new features Ill make the move if not ill wait it out one more generation.

 

Will 8gb see me out for ddr3 or is it worth adding another 8GB for gaming? I plan to flog the living daylights out of GTA so if getting the extra ram means less shuttering and a smoother experience I do not mind.

 

what do you guys think?

[ImBleu]

8GB DDR3 is the sweet spot now, and possibly the next few years. There is basically no need for normal use + gaming for more than 8GB. I only have 16GB because I do a lot of CAD work.

[Samfisher]

8GB is enough if you don't open browsers when you game.

[Aniallation]

As long as you're not rendering videos or doing high bitrate streaming while gaming, 8GB is more then enough.

[Reno2792]

8GB is definitely enough for that. It should be fine

[CalebTheEternal]

I've never gone above 8gb and I have 16, and another 16 in the mail so I will have 32 soon because why not, the only time I came close was on BF4 and I was at 6.

[shirokado]

As long as you're not rendering videos or doing high bitrate streaming while gaming, 8GB is more then enough.

8gb isn't "more than enough" its just enough.

[TheKDub]

8GB is enough.

 

Though I myself could use 16GB as I'm a bit of a tab hog in chrome, and sometimes host a private modded minecraft server and play on it with a friend or two, so that eats through my ram.

[TheKDub]

Hi guys,

 

Is 8GB still the "butter" zone for gaming? I am finally going to buy GTA 5 for pc and noticed it recommended 8GB. My goal the next time I upgrade CPU/MB I will also make the move to DDR4. I plan to have at least 16GB for that. Hopefully as soon as Skylake if it offers good enough performance gains with new features Ill make the move if not ill wait it out one more generation.

 

Will 8gb see me out for ddr3 or is it worth adding another 8GB for gaming? I plan to flog the living daylights out of GTA so if getting the extra ram means less shuttering and a smoother experience I do not mind.

 

what do you guys think?

 

Adding more ram will not make a difference unless you have too little.

[orcinhell]

Yea thanks guys wanted to make sure, I am adding 16gb to my next build is I am a tab fiend and have got a extra screen now that I would like to have open while I game and 16gb would give me plenty of headroom for then and the future.

 

Good to know its not needed.

[Misanthrope]

8GB is enough if you don't open browsers when you game.

 

Even with chrome using multiple tabs (Facebook, youtube and LTT) and playing video (I do have those videos playing off the igpu though) I was not able to top 8gb with most games, only modded Skyrim went over that threshold but it was only once probably due to memory leaks on one of the many mods I run not the resources themselves.

 

That being said however, if money is no object I would definitely get 16gb just so I can set up 1 of my cores and 3 or 4gb of ram for a virtual machine running Linux. Having lot's of ram allows you to do some sick stuff check @Barnacules video on his Pugit system by the end: A virtual machine running Quake III, GTA V and a video render all of the same PC, insane:

 

Scroll down to 17:30 for that part:

 

[typographie]

8 GB is getting to the point where it's mostly getting used, but you'd still have to go pretty far out of your way to find it meaningfully limiting. 16 GB isn't outrageous anymore, but 8 is still fine.

[That Norwegian Guy]

Dying Light starts eating more than 8GB of RAM when in areas with a lot of AI (which is almost all the time) if your draw distance is at more than 50%, and the world detail cranked up. Capable of using 12GB. (Highest I've seen)

 

Expect similar situations from other AAA sandbox games in the future. (Though Dying Light is of course rather heavy on AI what with all the zombies and all)

[basestamp]

8gb is not enough if you are like me and keep chrome open while playing a game

[SteveGrabowski]

Dying Light starts eating more than 8GB of RAM when in areas with a lot of AI (which is almost all the time) if your draw distance is at more than 50%, and the world detail cranked up. Capable of using 12GB. (Highest I've seen)

 

Expect similar situations from other AAA sandbox games in the future. (Though Dying Light is of course rather heavy on AI what with all the zombies and all)

 

I have only heard of that on versions before the 1.4 patch. It still does that?

[typographie]

8gb is not enough if you are like me and keep chrome open while playing a game

 

And yet, I do so daily. Often with a music player, Netflix or Youtube video rolling as well. I usually top out at about 6.5 GB or so.

 

I mean, sure, if I wanted to keep 30–60 Chrome tabs open while I gamed I could probably crack 8 GB, but I struggle to even think of a situation where I'd end up with more than maybe 10 at once. It would be an entirely artificial situation for me.

[kjvnasa]

Yeah 8gb will be fine

[basestamp]

And yet, I do so daily. Often with a music player, Netflix or Youtube video rolling as well. I usually top out at about 6.5 GB or so.

 

I mean, sure, if I wanted to keep 30–60 Chrome tabs open while I gamed I could probably crack 8 GB, but I struggle to even think of a situation where I'd end up with more than maybe 10 at once. It would be an entirely artificial situation for me.

My system idles at 1.5gb used ram but when I open chrome and Wildstar/GTA it would reach ~7.8gb ram. So I bought more ram.

[kjvnasa]

My system idles at 1.5gb used ram but when I open chrome and Wildstar/GTA it would reach ~7.8gb ram. So I bought more ram.

You could have just went to downloadmoreram.com