ram 8GB vs 16Gb ram

[sjokosaus]

so two of my friends believe 16Gb ram is overkill for gaming and that 8GB is more than enough, i very strongly disagree. what do you believe.

[Oshino Shinobu]

That entirely depends what you're doing. For just Microsoft word, both are overkill. For multiple VMs that are all multitasking, neither is enough. 

[genexis_x]

Some games require 16GB RAM to run smoothly. Personally I recommend 16GB RAM for workstation PCs and for streaming.

To conclude, it all depends on your needs.

[sjokosaus]

we talked about gaming. and i believe 8GB is not enough, especially for future proofing.

[djdelarosa25]

Depends on the game. 8 GB will suffice for most games, however I believe some want 16.

[sjokosaus]

but 16GB will definitely be good for future proofing and somewhat higher FPS.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, sjokosaus said:

so two of my friends believe 16Gb ram is overkill and that 8GB is more than enough, i very strongly disagree. what do you believe.

 

15 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

That entirely depends what you're doing. For just Microsoft word, both are overkill. 

I believe Oshino Shinobu is correct here, a little more context is needed. If you're building a personal computer for friend or family who just uses the internet and Microsoft Word lightly, 4GB of RAM is sufficient. However if the person in question has a work case scenario that involves heavy use of memory-heavy, or memory-dependent, applications (such as games, CAD, audio or visual software or simply someone who uses chrome heavily with 20+ tabs) more RAM would be required for satisfactory performance. 

For highly specialized applications, such as embedded computing (signage, IoT, industrial etc) you will often see extremely small amounts of RAM, in the range of 32MB-256MB+, compared to general purpose PC's. 

Too little RAM might affect performance in the sense that you might experience slowdowns or poor performance, but often data that cannot be written to RAM would be written to the paging file in windows (and as long as you don't exceed that too) the program will still run, albeit slowly. More RAM than is required will not yield extra performance however. 

But basically, for the average 1080p gamer however, 8GB is sufficient to run all modern games smoothly, though you may need to close Chrome in the background or shutdown other applications that might be hogging memory space. For someone with a little more heavy use case, or if you didn't want to pause background tasks, I'd suggest 16GB. 

 

[Nup]

8 is getting close these days, but still enough. 

 

Check this thread out 

 

 

[sjokosaus]

VanguardScar but if you would have built a pc solely for gaming right now in 2017 would you have done it with 8GB or 16GB? 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, sjokosaus said:

VanguardScar but if you would have built a pc solely for gaming right now in 2017 would you have done it with 8GB or 16GB? 

I would actually do it with 32GB. I would consider this "future proof". 8GB for me is too little. 16GB is comfortable for now.

My current PC is almost 6 years old at this point (Still runs like a champ) but back when I built it I threw in 16GB of fast RAM and it has served me well. I always have chrome among other applications running in the background so it's not unusual for me to see 12-14GB RAM usage. 

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

Nobody needs more RAM than (Your Number Here) GB. Seriously. Nobody does, unless you run out of said RAM and the system starts to dump to the pagefile, then things get slowish with an SSD and total banana 1990 style with an HDD. with that being said; Depends what you play, Witcher 3 for example uses more than 8GB for itself, ok that's a tripple A title on the upper end but yet, it still does. If you play CS:GO you are fine with 4 GB if you go all out on editing you are gonna need even more than 16 GB pretty fast.

 

In 2017 for gaming newer games 16 GB looks like standard to me, especially since RAM ain't that much of a cost factor.

 

my 2 cents

[cat1092]

And to think, I just upgraded to two 16GB kits (32GB total) of GSkill TridentX 2400MHz in both of my main PC's, running in XMP 1 Mode!

 

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/qulw0AD7PJNY8rCHonqm34B

 

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/tbdS4YKHBvWROeKETAMBRKk

 

Moved the two 16GB sets of the 1600MHz crap to my two secondary PC's, one of which is below.

 

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/v0hM7gCASDHBhbtovErE1J0

 

Note that I do run a lot of virtual machines, so am actually using much of the RAM (one of my W10 VM's has 12GB assigned). Although one thing I'll never understand, even with a small page file, it'll still be in use, when the RAM is far from tapping out.

 

Cat

[rn8686]

8 is enough for a budget machine, but 16 is useful if multitasking alot. 

[cat1092]

Back in 2009, around the time of Windows 7 release, 4GB of DDR3 was considered the 'sweet spot', later on that would grow to 8GB (still good for most), now many computers ships with 12-16GB, with high powered gaming/workstation computers having 24-32GB.

 

Today, when specs allows, I'd go with no less than 16GB, although my tendency is to 'stuff it', as a future proofing act. Because there's no such thing as 'wasted RAM', even many of our security choices uses the installed RAM as a speedy cache to scan the drives as fast as possible. THis is because RAM (even DDR2) is much faster than top of the line SATA-3 SSD's, depending on amount (16GB will do), the RAM is roughly 50x faster than the SSD & many more times over that for HDD's. 

 

So it's understandable as to why some security offering has the option to use the RAM for caching during scans, the other benefit being that any infections can be zapped faster, because unlike HDD/SSD's, memory is flushed at every reboot.

 

Therefore, it makes perfect sense, especially when on promo, to purchase a 16GB RAM kit, while it'll cost more than a single 8GB module, won't be double the price, maybe just $25-30 more. I can tell the difference, because I have two notebooks with 8GB DDR3 RAM, their max, and another with 12GB (it's max, shipped with 8GB), all are i7's, and the one with 12GB is faster in most every aspect that I can see. If only it had a full slot for a full 16GB, would be even faster, however the notebook is a Samsung Series 7 (Chronos), and the one 4GB module is soldered to the MB, or a proprietary chip on the MB, just like the 8GB Express Cache (what a joke), paired with a weak 5400 rpm HDD. At $1,200, Samsung could had at least installed WD Scorpio Black (SATA-3, 32MB cache, 7,200 rpm). 

 

While the extra RAM is indeed good to have, sometimes weaker components in the chain will not make the best use of it, especially those who use computers with low spec CPU's, in that case, 8GB (preferably a 4GB x2 kit for dual channel mode) will usually be more than enough. 

 

Bottom line, it all depends on the entire computer & what the owner intends to run on it, as far as software goes. Those who runs virtual machines, photo editing software, or wants extra for a RAMDisk are better off with 16GB or more. Casual users who doesn't play any games others than basic Windows ones, reads & sends emails, some light Office work, watching YouTube videos, 8GB is still the reigning 'sweet spot'. There are performance monitors (the Task Manager is one that requires no add-on) where one can see how much RAM is being used, if consistently going above 80%, time for an upgrade. If usually at 50% or less, maybe a bit higher with AV/AM scans, then one's good to go, spend that cash on an item that needs an upgrade, if running a HDD, that cash will pay for a nice SSD that will net a lot more performance increase than popping in twice the installed RAM no seen nor felt benefit.

 

When I built my first PC, the RAM was the last item upgraded, was running used matched sets donated to me for upgrading their prior sets to larger ones, or for other work performed. Sometimes I'll gain a set (& other hardware) when someone gives me a broken computer that can't be repaired, in this case, will save everything that's useful (sometimes even cases can be reused), and drop the rest in the recycle bin outdoors. No shortage of memory around here!

 

Cat

[AnalogCanavity]

On 4/18/2017 at 5:43 AM, sjokosaus said:

we talked about gaming. and i believe 8GB is not enough, especially for future proofing.

Yes future proofing is what your friends are not including in the equation, and for gaming as of now 8GB is sufficient but 16GB is future proof. When I was building my PC I had a thread very similar to this one and this it was I was told.

 

8GB of RAM good for now, but not future proof for gaming 

 

16GB of RAM and perfect for gaming and future proof

 

32GB and over, TONNS of multitasking or/and video editing 

[coldpizzas]

I think 8GB is just good enough, but there's compromises.  Forget about running chrome with a lot of tabs opened while gaming.  Even with firefox sometimes when I watch a lot of youtube, and only have couple of tabs opened.  Long video are in cache I think because I'm at 6 GB of usage even though I have like 3 tabs but watched long videos of CSGO pro majors stream.

[rogueone]

I've just built a rig with what most consider the sweet spot of 16 gig ram. I'm running ssd's and no hard drives...and I'm just wondering about using something like a Ram disc to help with the reading and writing on the ssd's. I've done this on my last rig and it seemed to work well. 

 

So with 16 gig ram and a 4 gb ram disc I'm thinking of upgrading to 32 and running like an 8 + ramdisc......asus suite has one that works pretty well....is this wrong?

 

[Mooshi]

If you care to game and use Chrome, 16GB is the bare minimum tbh

[MyName13]

Not every gamer has something open in the background.

Anyway people who buy 8GB have 2 choices (and they probably have motherboards with 2 ram slots), buy 1x 8GB or 2x4 GB, both of them will probably have to buy new ram because of compatibility issues (1st scenario) or lack of ram slots, so my question is will ram prices halve when ram requirements double (does anyone remember what happened somewhere around 2014/2015 when 8GB became the minimum)?

[Columbo]

My current system built in 2013 was built around 16GB of memory in two 8GB sticks. With that said I think 16GB is the minimum for a gaming rig today and 32GB is something that may be useful. You can get by with 8GB on a budget system. 

[Kenjo]

I skimmed thru the posts here and most of you are stating 8gb is enough for gaming and light multitasking, i personally have to disagree with people stating 8gb is enough.. my specs: 

 

i7-6700k@4.5ghz

8gb ddr4 crucial ballistix 2400mhz

256gb intel ssd 

Gigabyte z170 gaming 3

1080p 27" monitor 

gtx 1070 8gb with 228+core538+mem oc 

 

I cant have 8 tabs of chrome and a game running before my setup becomes sluggish and slow ive even increased the page file for windows to use as temp ram when the 8gb is used up... i would easily say that 16gb is becoming the minimum for having lots of browser tabs open while gaming aswell... ive ordered another 8gb of the same memory and will install it later today... 

Anyone building a new budget/midrange pc today should aim for 16gb dram to make sure they wont hit any sluggish behaviour from their system.. imagine having 8 tabs of chrome a window mode game running and your 8gb of ram will be chewed up within min´s ... 

Chrome is a memory beast unlike anything else ive seen but chrome is so much better than MS Edgecrap when it comes to browsing, you also have to remember that its dependent on what kind of webpages you have open if you like me have page´s open that is autorefreshing that will also eat alot of RaM...

 

Safest bet is to go with 16gb ram even if the game you intend to play says recommended 8gb of ram... remember its the GAME`s recommended ram not the PC`s

 

Have a nice day and i know i was late posting here but i have other things i do in my day

 

[cat1092]

On 4/24/2017 at 1:41 AM, coldpizzas said:

I think 8GB is just good enough, but there's compromises.  Forget about running chrome with a lot of tabs opened while gaming.  Even with firefox sometimes when I watch a lot of youtube, and only have couple of tabs opened.  Long video are in cache I think because I'm at 6 GB of usage even though I have like 3 tabs but watched long videos of CSGO pro majors stream.

Oddly, I've had Google Chrome open receltly with several pages open, even with 32GB of GSkill TridentX RAM running at over 2400MHz in XMP mode #1, have had 'low memory' warnings. Have a small page file (800MB min, 1024MB max), because the RAM was purchased, installed & tuned to do it's job, in addition to a i7-4790K clocked to 4.36GHz, so no lack of hardware resources. How in the World can Google consume this much RAM, with 20+ tabs open & a YouTube video playing, or is it a Windows 10 thing?  Installing more RAM isn't an option, as 32GB is the max, ran MemTest for 24 hours w/out any errors. 

 

I ask about W10, because AV/AM scans takes twice as long to run versus that of W7 or 8.1, so the OS itself must be a resource hog. System specs below. 

 

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/WSEntqNYtsn75afW8Pbd7nW

 

Cat

[Zodiark1593]

On 4/18/2017 at 4:00 AM, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

 

In 2017 for gaming newer games 16 GB looks like standard to me, especially since RAM ain't that much of a cost factor.

 

You been living in a cave??? Have you seen the monstrous prices of DDR4 RAM recently?

 

Get away with as little as possible would be my suggestion.

 

Edit: just saw this was an old thread. RAM prices have only climbed however.

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

9 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Edit: just saw this was an old thread. RAM prices have only climbed however.

so... about that cave ....

[Zodiark1593]

14 minutes ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

so... about that cave ....

Yeah...

 

Awkward moment is awkward...