How much RAM do you have and how much RAM do you need?

[Matias_Chambers]

Title says it all. I have 16 GB's of RAM and at one point I was using 97% of it. And that wasn't when I was video editing. Premiere Pro in my case uses up to around 12 GB's so I think I should ugprade to 32 GB's soon. 

[SeraphicWings]

16GB

 

Then I realise I didn't even used half of it for once, but I'll still need 16GB of ram anyway

[Castdeath97]

4GB, mostly enough for my basic needs.

[straight_stewie]

I have 16,000,000,000 bytes of RAM in my main machine. 12,000,000,000 bytes in my laptop. Both have proved to be enough for me, that includes light CAD and simulation and intense gaming.

[Ilovecake111]

my old pc had 1gb

 

[racer243l]

16GB, highest usage I saw when gaming was around 11GB

[Castdeath97]

Just now, straight_stewie said:

I have 16,000,000,000 bytes of RAM in my main machine. 12,000,000,000 bytes in my laptop. Both have proved to be enough for me, that includes light CAD and simulation and intense gaming.

No, you have 16*1024*1024*1024 = 17179869184 bytes and 12*1024*1024*1024= 12884901888 bytes.

[Waqas409]

Have 6GB but will add 2GB more, thats the max my motherboard can support.

*Cough-DDR2* / * drops the mic *

[luccardi]

16GB kingston HyperX fury 1866, i just use my pc for gaming and i haven't seen over 8gb usage yet. The difference between 8gb and 16gb was not a lot so i just got 16gb to have some headroom in the gaming games

[Arc_Jester]

I have 8GB but I'm planning on getting 16GB since I get told I'm running out of memory almost everyday.

[porina]

Have 16GB, need... who knows... well, for high performance, I think 16GB is now by default the minimum as you can only get dual rank modules in 8GB capacity, and I need that more than I need the quantity. 4x4 would be the same so doesn't help...

[VioletGiraffe]

I have 8 GB and need 8, but could use 16 on rare occasions.

At work I've got 16 and use it all because I like multitasking and sometimes have lots of stuff on the main system plus two virtual machines 4GB each.

 

3 minutes ago, Arc_Jester said:

I have 8GB but I'm planning on getting 16 since I get told I'm running of of memory almost everyday.

The last time I had this problem, it went away after I increased my page file size from 2 to 8 GB.

[Arc_Jester]

1 minute ago, VioletGiraffe said:

The last I had this problem, it went away after I increased my page file size from 2 to 8 GB.

I suspected that was the problem since I turned mine off + I usually have like 12 tabs open in Chrome.

[Bananasplit_00]

i have 16GB, at just the desktop after i open my usuall stuff i am using 9GB, i have a lot of chrome tabs open at once lol, and i would say i need atleast 12GB but 16GB is better. not sure how i managed to survive with only 8GB for so long... probably because the ´FX 6300 i had would probably have just died from the amout of shit going on when im not even playing games lol

[VioletGiraffe]

I still don't quite understand how paging works in Windows because I was getting "low memory" warnings when there was still like 2 GB free RAM left, and programs started crashing when there was 1 left. Increased the page file size, and now the system is stable with no noticeable excessive paging up until there's less than 500 MB left.

[minibois]

8GB and I can easily max it out. 16GB would be really nice for me, 32GB would be overkill, 24GB probably too.

What uses so much is Gimp (image manipulation program), that I have limited so it doesn't use all my RAM. With the resolution and amount of layers I work I could use 16GB nicely.

[knightslugger]

i have 32, generally use about 10. i snag 16 of that for RAM Disk Scratch use and the rest is overhead protection.

[TheRandomness]

I have 8 and can come close doing everyday things but I need 16GB if I want to run on planets with Space Engineers.

[Bhav]

I have 32 Gb but I need 10 Tb. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

36 minutes ago, VioletGiraffe said:

I still don't quite understand how paging works in Windows because I was getting "low memory" warnings when there was still like 2 GB free RAM left, and programs started crashing when there was 1 left. Increased the page file size, and now the system is stable with no noticeable excessive paging up until there's less than 500 MB left.

You need someone better informed than me, but what I can tell you is that when you run a program, it requests memory for a number of variables that it won't necessary need simultaneously (and this depends a lot on how it was programmed). Windows will assign a certain amount of memory, but not necessarily all of it in RAM, add it's more efficient to ise RAM for anything currently in use by all programs, and leave the "dormant" parts in the page file. Hence, a program reporting that it will,  or may, take a lot of memory, will have a lot assigned to it,  but not necessarily allocated to the RAM if it's not using it right now. If the page file is not big enough to host everything the program is supposed to eventually need, you get an insufficient memory error,  even if right now said program is only using a tiny fraction of the total it requested. 

 

Please, please someone more knowledgeable correct this! 

 

38 minutes ago, Wikiforce said:

you mean demanding games, right?

Man, when I game, I game the game out of those gaming games! 

 

[Snadzies]

I have 16gigs.

With about 8 chrome tabs open and a game running I typically use around 8-10 gigs.

I've been playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and I typically see 11-12 gigs used (with several chrome tabs open).

The most I've seen MSI Afterburner record was 14-15gigs used.

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

I have 16GB, but I rarely trip above 6GB unless I'm playing a game. So I probably only need at most 10GB. Space Engineers so far has topped out a 6GB of usage, but then again it could probably do this on 8GB since Windows will scale system memory usage accordingly.

 

3 hours ago, VioletGiraffe said:

I still don't quite understand how paging works in Windows because I was getting "low memory" warnings when there was still like 2 GB free RAM left, and programs started crashing when there was 1 left. Increased the page file size, and now the system is stable with no noticeable excessive paging up until there's less than 500 MB left.

I think this answer from SuperUser best sums this up:

 

Quote

No matter how much RAM you have, you want the system to be able to use it efficiently. Not having a page file at all forces the operating system to use RAM inefficiently for two reasons:

• First, it cannot make pages discardable, even if they have not been accessed or modified in a very long time, which forces the disk cache to be smaller.
• Second, it has to reserve physical RAM to back allocations that are very unlikely to ever require it (for example, a private, modifiable file mapping), leading to a case where you can have plenty of free physical RAM and yet allocations are refused to avoid over-committing.

Consider, for example, if a program makes a writable, private memory mapping of a 4 GB file. The operating system has to reserve 4 GB of RAM for this mapping because the program could conceivably modify every byte and there is no place but RAM to store it. So from the start, 4 GB of RAM is basically wasted (it can be used to cache clean disk pages, but that is about it).

 

You need to have a page file if you want to get the most out of your RAM, even if it is never used. It acts as an insurance policy that allows the operating system to actually use the RAM it has, rather than having to reserve it for possibilities that are extraordinarily unlikely.

 

The people who designed your operating system’s behavior are not fools. Having a page file gives the operating system more choices, and it will not make bad ones.

 

There is no point in trying to put a page file in RAM. And if you have lots of RAM, the page file is very unlikely to be used (it just needs to be there), so it does not particularly matter how fast the device it is on is.

tl;dr, programs will reserve more memory than necessary. If you don't have enough page file space, Windows will reserve this space in RAM, even if it's not really in use, because Windows made a promise to the program that it will have that space available for it.

 

It's like if you reserve several rooms at a hotel because you and some friends planned to stay there. The hotel reserves those rooms and nobody else can take them. Even if half your friends drop out at the last minute (like say the day of), the hotel still has to keep those rooms available for you whether you were going to use them or not.

 

[i_build_nanosuits]

i have 16GB and i do high-end gaming...8GB is what i would need...i bought another 8GB kit because it was cheap and i wanted it before DDR3 became scarce and expensive...if you build a high end gaming PC...get 8GB...leave an upgrade to 16gb DDR4 is possible...if you do more than gaming and watching youtube/listen MP3 while gaming, get 16gb (video rendering, streaming etc.)

[Curious Pineapple]

I have 16 gig, I plan on upgrading to 32 just for the hell of it. I do testing in VM's, and they can need 4 gig minimum. Better to have too much than not enough, and given the price of it, it would be rude not to

[AlphaPolack]

Have: 64GB

Need: It didn't matter, I wanted 64 so I bought 64... ?