The Growth of System Ram in Games

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Nightfire

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In a prior thread I had shown that vRam requirements haven't changed much in the last few years:
https://hardforum.com/threads/the-slowing-growth-of-vram-in-games.1971558/

However, in Techspot's newest yearly article on on system ram, it looks like system ram requirement keep going up, mostly due to the horsepower of the 2080ti:
https://www.techspot.com/article/1770-how-much-ram-pc-gaming/

That said, even mid grade systems like rx580 seem to want more than 8gb nowadays.

Really, not much to comment on. I just thought it was a nice article.

For now, 16 GB seems great for even high end. Those that are using a ddr3 system with something like a 980ti may want to slap on an extra 4gb to get 12gb should they want to get the most of their system using the newest games. Buying another 8gb of ddr3 would probably be a waste of money.
 
My buddy frequently runs out of RAM on his 8GB system. He has a 1060 6GB + i7 7700k. It is funny seeing his FPS go into single digits and see 100% RAM usage. Needless to say he is getting more RAM. 16GB is the new minimum in my book.

It is also incredibly important to not cheap out on slow RAM when aiming for high performance. I really hope DDR5 will bring in a new baseline that DDR4 didn't do at first. DDR4 2400 is still really common to see in some gaming systems.

I bought a bunch of DDR3 right when DDR4 first was released for some older systems. DDR3 was so cheap back then...
 
Shadowed said:
My buddy frequently runs out of RAM on his 8GB system. He has a 1060 6GB + i7 7700k. It is funny seeing his FPS go into single digits and see 100% RAM usage. Needless to say he is getting more RAM. 16GB is the new minimum in my book.

It is also incredibly important to not cheap out on slow RAM when aiming for high performance. I really hope DDR5 will bring in a new baseline that DDR4 didn't do at first. DDR4 2400 is still really common to see in some gaming systems.

I bought a bunch of DDR3 right when DDR4 first was released for some older systems. DDR3 was so cheap back then...
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Techspot does this article every year. 2 years ago, 4 GB of system ram was almost always enough for a GTX 980. Now, 8 GB of ram is almost never enough for an RX570 with the same amount of vRam. Man, it would be interesting to see system ram requirements a few years from now!

Buying a new higher - end gaming ITX system with only 2 dimms slots, I would get 32 GB for sure.
 
I bought 16GB for the long term with my 4790k, and I hope to get about another 2-3 years out of that ram.

That should be about the time where I need a more powerful platform too.

Now that systems are finally past the 64-bit transition, games are having to play catch-up. I ex[ect things to slow down a bit at 16GB (will take 3 years this time).
 
Shadowed said:
My buddy frequently runs out of RAM on his 8GB system. He has a 1060 6GB + i7 7700k. It is funny seeing his FPS go into single digits and see 100% RAM usage. Needless to say he is getting more RAM. 16GB is the new minimum in my book.

It is also incredibly important to not cheap out on slow RAM when aiming for high performance. I really hope DDR5 will bring in a new baseline that DDR4 didn't do at first. DDR4 2400 is still really common to see in some gaming systems.

I bought a bunch of DDR3 right when DDR4 first was released for some older systems. DDR3 was so cheap back then...
Click to expand...

My son was in the same boat as your friend 6 months ago. No Man's Sky, Subnautica, ME:A, Mafia 3, RoTR all kicked the shit out of his 8GB system until I upgraded him to 16GB. No Man's Sky is using 14GB and he's still happy. :)
 
CAD4466HK said:
My son was in the same boat as your friend 6 months ago. No Man's Sky, Subnautica, ME:A, Mafia 3, RoTR all kicked the shit out of his 8GB system until I upgraded him to 16GB. No Man's Sky is using 14GB and he's still happy. :)
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No Man's Sky really likes RAM. I'm usually at 10-12gb out of 32gb available. 8gb really is not enough for this game.

A
 
When I built my 4970 rig a while back, I put 32G in it (was going to play with RAM drives, and decided after SSDs they were a PITA that weren't worth the bother). About a year later, I was having some issues with it and after some other troubleshooting on the rig, I dropped it down to 16G.

I ran it with 16G up until very recently. Didn't make a bit of difference. Just recently, because I happened to have purchased Kingston RAM, i did get around to getting the other 16G RMAed and reinstalled. I hadn't been running out of memory with 16G, but I got what I paid for running in it now.

Given how CPUs are going, I figure I'll run out of available cores before I run out of available RAM. Granted, I don't run terribly intensive games on it...
 
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misterbobby said:
My gosh I had 16 GB even back at the end of 2011 and I have had 32 GB since summer 2016. Luckily ram prices were very cheap both times I upgraded though.
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Same here, except I haven't felt the need to upgrade to 32GB...yet.
 
I got 32 DDR4 just to be safe I got it before the price hike happened. Crucial Sport Ram it's I had good luck with Crucial in the past.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Same here, except I haven't felt the need to upgrade to 32GB...yet.
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I never exceed 16GB in games, but I did get 32GB for VM's. Once I have that much running that uses 24GB+, my 4c8t really shows its age though.

I definitely need more cores to prevent that slowdown.
 
Shadowed said:
I never exceed 16GB in games, but I did get 32GB for VM's. Once I have that much running that uses 24GB+, my 4c8t really shows its age though.

I definitely need more cores to prevent that slowdown.
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On my main rig all I do is game/ movies and shows. But if I was running VM's on it, you can bet your ass I would have had 32GB a long time ago.
 
Been running 32GB since I built this system nearly 6.5 years ago, glad I did. Timeline for upgrade is this time next year. We'll see if I stick with 32 or bump it up to 64. So far it seems like 32 will be plenty, but time will tell.
 
I was regularly seeing 10-16GB usage on my PC in newer games at 4K with my Titan X. I'm now hitting 20GB or more in some cases with the 2080 Ti. I went to 32GB in 2013 and would not build a PC with anything less these days.
 
My build is almost 6 years old and I went with 32gb (sandy-e).

Build before that was bulldozer and I stuck 24gb in that machine.i brought it to work in 2014 and It’s still running strong for work stuff, and it gets abused by the other workers.

I’m definitely gonna go 64gb next time assuming the RAM prices begin to drop again.
 
RamonGTP said:
Been running 32GB since I built this system nearly 6.5 years ago, glad I did. Timeline for upgrade is this time next year. We'll see if I stick with 32 or bump it up to 64. So far it seems like 32 will be plenty, but time will tell.
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Well the thread is specifically for gaming. 8 GB was the gold standard for a LONG time. Pretty much from 2007ish to about 2 years ago when games like Battlefront were pushing for more. (ignoring obscure rpg with "mega textures")

I am thinking 16gb will be the standard for gaming for at least a few years.
 
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I've had 32G since at least my 1090T....don't know how many years that is.

Only box I have less on is my ddr4 based box as I bought in an emergency when I had a haswell motherboard died. "Only" 16G in that, but don't notice it yet.
 
Nightfire said:
Well the thread is specifically for gaming. 8 GB was the gold standard for a LONG time. Pretty much from 2007ish to about 2 years ago when games like Battlefront were pushing for more. (ignoring obscure rpg with "mega textures")

I am thinking 16gb will be the standard for gaming for at least a few years.
Click to expand...

For a minimalist perhaps. 8GB hasn't been enough for me for a gaming machine for quite some time. I'm not one to close out of all my applications and have minimal things running in the background. I stopped doing that since I had a Q6600 and an SSD.
 
RamonGTP said:
For a minimalist perhaps. 8GB hasn't been enough for me for a gaming machine for quite some time. I'm not one to close out of all my applications and have minimal things running in the background. I stopped doing that since I had a Q6600 and an SSD.
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What is quite some time? Like I said, 8 GB doesn't work now, but it was only a couple of years ago that 8gb was enough. It hasnt been that long since 16 GB had been added to Recommended ram for games.

Just last year, 8gb seemed to be enough for just about every gpu/game scenario except the 3gb gtx 1060.
 
Nightfire said:
What is quite some time? Like I said, 8 GB doesn't work now, but it was only a couple of years ago that 8gb was enough. It hasnt been that long since 16 GB had been added to Recommended ram for games.

Just last year, 8gb seemed to be enough for just about every gpu/game scenario except the 3gb gtx 1060.
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A lot longer than a couple years
 
Nightfire said:
Can you give an example? What game/settings/gpu?
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Not really, haven't kept records that detailed. What I can tell you is I just booted up this computer and with Outlook and my browser with 5 tabs open in the foreground, I'm at 6.6GB of RAM usage. Other apps open in the background are

Steam
Origin
Battle.net
Epic Games Launcher
Dropbox
OneDrive
GeForce Experiencef
MSI Afterburner
Riva Tuner
iCloud Control Panel
Logitech Profiler
OneTouch (Scanning software)
Google Hangouts

And i'm sure there's more i'm forgetting.
 
RamonGTP said:
Not really, haven't kept records that detailed. What I can tell you is I just booted up this computer and with Outlook and my browser with 5 tabs open in the foreground, I'm at 6.6GB of RAM usage. Other apps open in the background are

Steam
Origin
Battle.net
Epic Games Launcher
Dropbox
OneDrive
GeForce Experiencef
MSI Afterburner
Riva Tuner
iCloud Control Panel
Logitech Profiler
OneTouch (Scanning software)
Google Hangouts

And i'm sure there's more i'm forgetting.
Click to expand...

So is that like 2 GB for the o/s, 3 GB for Chrome and 0.6 GB for all of that other stuff? Your computer was cacheing a bunch of stuff and those programs would NOT be denying you that much memory if you were running a game.

I said 8 GB was enough just rescently, and you replied with it has been a lot longer than that, yet you did not give a real example other than when you have a bunch of stuff running in the background.
 
Nightfire said:
So is that like 2 GB for the o/s, 3 GB for Chrome and 0.6 GB for all of that other stuff? Your computer was cacheing a bunch of stuff and those programs would NOT be denying you that much memory if you were running a game.

I said 8 GB was enough just rescently, and you replied with it has been a lot longer than that, yet you did not give a real example other than when you have a bunch of stuff running in the background.
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This isn't cache, this is in-use ram. I know how to read the difference. Not that hard considering windows explicitly tells you what is in-use and what is cached and your committed memory which is your physical+virtual

I gave you a real life scenario where I'm using over 6GB of RAM without a game even running and I often have more running than what I listed in my previous post. Please don't try to pretend like you know what my RAM usage is. If you want to run 8-16GB of RAM, good on you.

I'm fully aware of how RAM works. I'm fully aware that even if I had a paltry 8GB, I'd be able to launch a game with >6GB already in use, but not without a performance hit, whether that performance hit is in-game, after I exit the game or both.
 
RamonGTP said:
A lot longer than a couple years
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Well I guess the point stands that 8 GB WAS enough for gamers and not just 'minamalists' as you put it. You are just arguing my point to show everyone here just how elite you are.

Still, even with your setup, you did not give me an example of a game from long ago that ran slower when your system ran 8gb of memory.
 
(Waits for Uber RamonGTX to say how anything less than 64GB is not enough because only 'minamilist' do not live stream and have 50 chrome tabs open with Adobe Premier while gaming.)
 
Nightfire said:
Well I guess the point stands that 8 GB WAS enough for gamers and not just 'minamalists' as you put it. You are just arguing my point to show everyone here just how elite you are.

Still, even with your setup, you did not give me an example of a game from long ago that ran slower when your system ran 8gb of memory.
Click to expand...

And I’m not going to give you the example you want. I’ve had 32gb in this system from the day I built it, I’m not going to pull out all but one stick and start benchmarking games for your benefit. I’ll just use common sense. If I’m using more than 8gb, having 8gb or less will lead to a performance hit. What you call elite is more commonly referred to as logic. How “elite” can I possibly be if my primary gaming system is nearly 7 years old?

You can be a minimalist and a gamer at the same time, sounds like you simply dont know what I mean by minimalist and decided to get hyper offended about it.
 
8GB RAM and 3GB VRAM was and pretty much is enough for most games, especially considering GPU's with 3GB are not powerful ennough to run highest detail settings - which require ram for things like very high shadow resolution which require more processing power than these cards have.
When system ram is filled there is very specific immediate frame time increase when memory is paged so is hard to miss.
Video memory is more tricky because data is stored in system ram which leads to frame rate decreases which need not ne so abrupt and noticeable. Some games show it as irritating texture popup eg. Idtech games like Doom and Wolfenstein do this. Mostly it just decreased framerates, mostly minimal as frame rate drops are more severe.

Today I would say 12GB system ram and 4GB video ram is still reasonable to not worry too much and best to have at least 16GB and 6GB card in which case there is little incentive to upgrade, at least from memory side of things.

8GB system memory sucks today because modern browsers tend to hog up memory like there is infinite amount of it... and also running any development/productivity tools with little memory is asking for head ache XD
 
Did no one ever notice that on the cards that have 4gb of vram the requirement for for using it would be 4gb ram?
I think there still doing the copy of Vram framebuffer in normal ram. The only exception might be Vega which can use a cache and or uses a part of the cache rather then the whole thing at once.

There some programming techniques which are in Doom which uses some shader Intrinsic which more or less allows to modify parts rather then the whole buffer makes Doom run on AMD cards with only 4gb quite fast as well.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
Did no one ever notice that on the cards that have 4gb of vram the requirement for for well....
Click to expand...

I didn't see this. The 4 gb/3gb mid range cards seem to demand more ram to "make up" for the lack of vRam.

The 8gb Rx580 did great with just 8 GB of RAM. It was even enough for BFV at 1440p on ultra!
 
I've been using 16GB in my main system since 2014. The newest PC I built has 32GB. Even my HTPC has 8GB haha.

Always rather have too much than too little.
 
Rizen said:
I've been using 16GB in my main system since 2014. The newest PC I built has 32GB. Even my HTPC has 8GB haha.

Always rather have too much than too little.
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Right, but I have a feeling that 32gb of ddr5 is going to cost a fortune, at least at first. ;)
 
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