Skyrim: how much ram do you really need?

[Disillumination]

alright so here's the story, my friend purchased a 680 2gb with incentives to use it to cram as many mods as he can into Skyrim. After doing so, he ended up with massive frame fluctuation. After being somewhat disappointed, he looked at evga precision and saw that he was using ALL of his ram to play skyrim and came to a conclusion that the limitations in ram caused the frame drops.

 

He has an i5 3570k at like 4.4GHz stable so I don't think there's a CPU bottleneck

He rocks a 1080p monitor

 

Alright so here's the question....He wants to get a video card with 6gb of ram (7970 toxic Edtition/GTX Titan) while I say he should get a video card with 4gb of ram (R9 290/290x)...(when the non-reference is out)

I say grab an R9 290 or 290x (when asus makes a non-reference version)

And he says he want's a 7970 6gb or a GTX Titan

What do you guys think? how much ram do you guys use when playing Skyrim with tons of mods? Do you think 4gb is enough? can 1080p gaming even use more than 4gb?

 

Give me good non-biased answers guys, I will be linking this thread to him.

[Tmh85]

He does no need NO WAY IN HELL needs to get a card with 6 gigs of memory

[Unhelpful]

4gb is more than enough. 2 can sometimes hit the ceiling depending on mods. 3 you never quite hit it, even with an immense amount of mods.

[Bluejay0]

4GB is enough. Even 3 is perfect for modded Skyrim

[Shd0w2]

I'd say about 3gb, for if you want to be super safe

[LogicDeifying]

I'd say about 3gb, for if you want to be super safe

VRAM

[Disillumination]

My bad guys, I meant VRAM

[Lays]

My bad guys, I meant VRAM

 

If he modded skyrim that much to the point it used 4gb+ of vram, 7970/titan would struggle, A LOT. we're talking 15fps..

[Single Infinity]

I have a 7950 with 3 gigs of ram and I only ever get to 1GB of the frame buffer filled. I end up using more system ram than video ram with 113 mods.

[Disillumination]

I have a 7950 with 3 gigs of ram and I only ever get to 1GB of the frame buffer filled. I end up using more system ram than video ram with 113 mods.

Interesting, how much system ram you use? more than 8gb?

[Single Infinity]

Interesting, how much system ram you use? more than 8gb?

I was using 8 GB total with Samsung RAPID eating 2 GB of system ram. Leaving 1 GB to Windows and ~1 GB(probably more than actually used) for everything else running, I probably ate 4 GB of system ram with Skyrim.

[Gunjob]

3GB-4GB, 6 would be pointless you'd never even get close.