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How many GBs of memory is honestly needed?

spencerryan02
By spencerryan02
in Graphics Cards
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I just upgraded to 16 GB, but how many do you honestly need if you're gaming with some light editing?

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What programs do you use?

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1 minute ago, spencerryan02 said:

I just upgraded to 16 GB, but how many do you honestly need if your gaming and doing light editing?

I think you meant to put this in the motherboards section, but in my experience with some games (Ark Survival and Space engineers-both which use a lot) 16GB is perfect (even going from 12GB to 16GB stopped the "out of memory" errors) and its similar with light editing though it never hurts to have as much RAM as possible.

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depends of the games, the more the better but 6-8gb should have you comfortable for now. 4gb is not enough for some titles.

 

as for ram, 8gb is still okayish for normal use/gaming but i went to 16 cuz i got a good deal on a 2x8 3200mhz kit.

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*Screwed up the post*

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i generally keep this rule of thumb:

- 4GB for "office tasks"

- 8GB for the gaming stuff, or more heavy power user office tasks, like the office stuff that actually requires more than a core i3.

- 16GB is a nice to have, but not a necessity for before mentioned scenario, its a matter of fitting the budget. there is a defenate move towards 16GB on game spec sheets going on, so this is more of a future-proofing pick.

- 32GB.. if you have to ask, is not for you.

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6 minutes ago, spencerryan02 said:

I just upgraded to 6 GB, but how many do you honestly need if you're gaming?

Are you talking about VRAM or normal RAM? I can't tell, please add more info!

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I made a type while posting this lol. I'm talking about normal RAM.

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9 minutes ago, spencerryan02 said:

I just upgraded to 16 GB, but how many do you honestly need if you're gaming with some light editing?

For light editing? I'd say 16 should be fine.

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At least 8GB for just gaming, but I recommend 16GB mainly for future proofing and if you want to do other things simultaniously or want to do some graphical work

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what are you doing with your PC?

I purchased 32 for mine just for absolute overkill, but it actually ends up utilized with particle simulations in after effects, and RAM caching for playback.

But for just games, 8 is perfectly sufficient. However, 16 is much better, as you're able to keep so many background apps open while gaming, which is fantastic when you alt-tab out to look something up, and nothing slows down.

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Usually I'm also on Discord, and recording, then I sometimes edit everything for fun. 

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I noticed BF1 uses ~9Gb with no chrome open and a fresh install of windows10. Personally, 16GB is my preference now. But it depends on what you do

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3 hours ago, manikyath said:

i generally keep this rule of thumb:

- 4GB for "office tasks"

- 8GB for the gaming stuff, or more heavy power user office tasks, like the office stuff that actually requires more than a core i3.

- 16GB is a nice to have, but not a necessity for before mentioned scenario, its a matter of fitting the budget. there is a defenate move towards 16GB on game spec sheets going on, so this is more of a future-proofing pick.

- 32GB.. if you have to ask, is not for you.

16 GB is not futur proof it's the standard for nowadays. 8 GB will cut it for 90% of games but you still have many recent titles that use more than 8 GB including windows and background apps like discord etc.. I have seen my RAM usage over 8 gb with many titles.

32 would be the futur proofing, but I believe we will go to DDR5 before we need 32 so..... yeah :P 

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4 hours ago, gbergeron said:

16 GB is not futur proof it's the standard for nowadays. 8 GB will cut it for 90% of games but you still have many recent titles that use more than 8 GB including windows and background apps like discord etc.. I have seen my RAM usage over 8 gb with many titles.

actual ram usage showing when using 16GB gives a false picture about other ram amounts, because windows and some other applications "scale with what's available" so to say.

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9 hours ago, manikyath said:

actual ram usage showing when using 16GB gives a false picture about other ram amounts, because windows and some other applications "scale with what's available" so to say.

Yeah but you still go over 8 GB easily nowadays whatever the recent game you play. Rise of the tomb raider was using over 6 GB by itself and this is monitored with Afterburner. most of games use around 4 gb but there's some recent titles easily using 6-8 gb.

Saying 8gb is bulletproof for gaming today is a mistake. 8 GB is decent, but might make you run out of ram in certain scenario. 16 GB is the ideal 32 is overkill

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1 hour ago, gbergeron said:


Saying 8gb is bulletproof for gaming today is a mistake. 8 GB is decent, but might make you run out of ram in certain scenario. 16 GB is the ideal 32 is overkill

mind you i said "enough" ;)

 

also, windows 10 can scale back memory usage quite good, as well as many of these "some games" you mention are either terrible programming heaven, or good at scaling themselves as well.

 

the future is in 16GB, but as of yet, the future isnt now.

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1 minute ago, manikyath said:

mind you i said "enough" ;)

 

also, windows 10 can scale back memory usage quite good, as well as many of these "some games" you mention are either terrible programming heaven, or good at scaling themselves as well.

 

the future is in 16GB, but as of yet, the future isnt now.

16 GB is now. 8GB is yesterday. 32 GB is the futur

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1 minute ago, gbergeron said:

16 GB is now. 8GB is yesterday. 32 GB is the futur

Nah 8gb is plenty for gaming nowadays just fine.

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8GB is generally enough for gaming but I regularly have more and more games using 10-12GB of RAM (e.g. BF1, PUBG, etc) even at medium/high settings so personally I'd say 16GB is a good spot is you want to guarantee you always have enough and don't have to rely on virtual memory.

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2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Nah 8gb is plenty for gaming nowadays just fine.

For paint and minecraft.

go play BF1 in 1440p at ultra and tell me you have enough with 8 gb ram. Could say the same for many other games.

 

but if you talk about cs go yeah 8 gb fine

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Just now, gbergeron said:

For paint and minecraft.

go play BF1 in 1440p at ultra and tell me you have enough with 8 gb ram.

Yeah it was, resolution taxes VRAM not RAM smartass.

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CPU: Intel Core i7 10700K @5ghz |~| Cooling: bq! Dark Rock Pro 4 |~| MOBO: Gigabyte Z490UD ATX|~| RAM: 16gb DDR4 3333mhzCL16 G.Skill Trident Z |~| GPU: RX 6900XT Sapphire Nitro+ |~| PSU: Corsair TX650M 80Plus Gold |~| Boot:  SSD WD Green M.2 2280 240GB |~| Storage: 1x3TB HDD 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda + SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB |~| Case: Fractal Design Meshify C Mini |~| Display: Toshiba UL7A 4K/60hz |~| OS: Windows 10 Pro.

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CPU: AMD R9 7950XT  |~| Cooling: bq! Dark Rock 4 Pro |~| MOBO: Gigabyte Aorus Master |~| RAM: 32G Kingston HyperX |~| GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX (Reference) |~| PSU: Corsair HX1000 80+ Platinum |~| Windows Boot Drive: 2x 512GB (1TB total) Plextor SATA SSD (RAID0 volume) |~| Linux Boot Drive: 500GB Kingston A2000 |~| Storage: 4TB WD Black HDD |~| Case: Cooler Master Silencio S600 |~| Display 1 (leftmost): Eizo (unknown model) 1920x1080 IPS @ 60Hz|~| Display 2 (center): BenQ ZOWIE XL2540 1920x1080 TN @ 240Hz |~| Display 3 (rightmost): Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 3840x2160 IPS @ 60Hz 10-bit |~| OS: Windows 10 Pro (games / art) + Linux (distro: NixOS; programming and daily driver)
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Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Yeah it was

lol

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Worth a thousand words:

 

Personal Desktop":

CPU: Intel Core i7 10700K @5ghz |~| Cooling: bq! Dark Rock Pro 4 |~| MOBO: Gigabyte Z490UD ATX|~| RAM: 16gb DDR4 3333mhzCL16 G.Skill Trident Z |~| GPU: RX 6900XT Sapphire Nitro+ |~| PSU: Corsair TX650M 80Plus Gold |~| Boot:  SSD WD Green M.2 2280 240GB |~| Storage: 1x3TB HDD 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda + SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB |~| Case: Fractal Design Meshify C Mini |~| Display: Toshiba UL7A 4K/60hz |~| OS: Windows 10 Pro.

Luna, the temporary Desktop:

CPU: AMD R9 7950XT  |~| Cooling: bq! Dark Rock 4 Pro |~| MOBO: Gigabyte Aorus Master |~| RAM: 32G Kingston HyperX |~| GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX (Reference) |~| PSU: Corsair HX1000 80+ Platinum |~| Windows Boot Drive: 2x 512GB (1TB total) Plextor SATA SSD (RAID0 volume) |~| Linux Boot Drive: 500GB Kingston A2000 |~| Storage: 4TB WD Black HDD |~| Case: Cooler Master Silencio S600 |~| Display 1 (leftmost): Eizo (unknown model) 1920x1080 IPS @ 60Hz|~| Display 2 (center): BenQ ZOWIE XL2540 1920x1080 TN @ 240Hz |~| Display 3 (rightmost): Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 3840x2160 IPS @ 60Hz 10-bit |~| OS: Windows 10 Pro (games / art) + Linux (distro: NixOS; programming and daily driver)
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