The Growth of System Ram in Games

XoR_ said:
....

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
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Steve shows why 12 GB just isn't worth it for DDR4 systems:


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Perhaps, nest year he will try 24 GB, which won't get the memory penalty of Flex mode. Also, using the 3GB GTX1060and 4GB RX570 may have been more favorable for the 12GB flex.
 
Armenius said:
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.
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Resolution usually has basically zero impact on system ram usage. Some idiots the other day in the Hitman 2 forums were telling a guy that he needed more than 16gb of system ram to play at 4k. For the hell of it I checked that specific game and at 1080p or 4k the system ram usage was identical.
 
misterbobby said:
Resolution usually has basically zero impact on system ram usage. Some idiots the other day in the Hitman 2 forums were telling a guy that he needed more than 16gb of system ram to play at 4k. For the hell of it I checked that specific game and at 1080p or 4k the system ram usage was identical.
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Unless they were really indirectly referring to the fact that you need/want higher res texture packs when running at higher screen resolutions? Longshot, I know. :)
 
We have done testing BFV on Saturday in regards to VRAM usage and System RAM usage. We have concluded System RAM is not a problem, our test system is maxing out at about 10GB of System RAM at the highest settings in the game with DXR Enabled at Ultra at 1440p. However, it is clear that VRAM could be a limitation with DXR. It seems to demand a lot of VRAM, in fact, DX12 itself demands a lot of VRAM, about twice that of DX11 just turning on DX12. With a 2080 Ti here are our 1440p results.

DX11 - 1440p - Highest Game Settings
4503 MB VRAM
8723 MB System RAM

DX12 - 1440p - Highest Game Settings - No DXR
7976 MB VRAM
10862 MB System RAM

DX12 - 1440p - Highest Game Settings - Ultra DXR
8824 MB VRAM
10714 MB System RAM

From this very testing at 1440p it seems the 8GB on the 2070 and 2080 might be bottlenecking DXR performance in the game at 1440p as it can definitely exceed 8GB of VRAM with Ultra DXR at 1440p.

We need to test 1080p in DX12 and Ultra DXR and see what the results are next.

We will include a table with all of this information in our 2080 Ti BFV Ray Tracing article to bring it all together and talk about it.
 
Nightfire said:
Can you give an example? What game/settings/gpu?
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GTA V is one of the first PC games which comes to mind, which needs more than 8 gigs of ram in your system. Otherwise you will get some hitching. Particularly during high speed situations.
 
Trmntr said:
16gb is the new minumun indeed, we'll being to see 32gb as the standart shorltly
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A recent Steam Survey compilation of system stats puts things into perspective. Here is a graph that illustrates how things have changed over the years:
20190410_212058.jpg


I realize the Steam average is considerably lower than the [H] average, but it gives a good idea of what will be needed 3 years down the road as developers will still try to accommodate the majority of gamers, even at higher settings.

Right now the average ram is just under 10 GB (mostly 8 GB and 16 GB users) and vram is just under 4 GB (1050ti, 1060 3GB/6GB). Best guess is around 15 GB ram (mostly 16 GB users) and 7.6 GB vram in 2022 (GTX 1660, 1660ti, 1650ti, 1070, etc).

As a point of reference Crysis was released when 1270 MB of ram and 280 MB of vram were the average.
 
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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I still fire up Cities Skylines which is over 4 years old now. It hovers at around 2GB on the menu screen but as soon as the game save finishs loading the process would be sitting at over 8GB but during some sessions I've seen it climb over 9GB. Other players who are much heavier mod users than I report much higher RAM needs.
 
777 said:
I still fire up Cities Skylines which is over 4 years old now. It hovers at around 2GB on the menu screen but as soon as the game save finishs loading the process would be sitting at over 8GB but during some sessions I've seen it climb over 9GB. Other players who are much heavier mod users than I report much higher RAM needs.
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This region pushes 12.5GB RAM:

city_large_1.png
 
GTX 2080 8, 12, and 16GB in the latest games. Values measured towards the end with 1% on top and Ram usage below.



Division 2: 9 75 78
6.8G 10.1G 10.8G

Forza: 86 112 112
7.2G 8.1G 8.1G

Metro: 41 60 62
5.4G 6.8G 6.8G

BF:V 2 62 57
7.7G 10.7G 11.0G

Rage 2 109 117 115
5.5G 6.9G 6.7G

RE: 2 27 34 120
4.9G 6.3G 6.0G

AC:O 43 61 60
6.4G 8.0G 7.6G

Hitman 2 77 86 93
6.3G 7.4G 6.8G

SotTR 44 50 49
6.6G 7.3G 7.2G

Most games suffer with 8GB. Division 2 and BF:V were on the edge with 12 GB as the background tasks were most likely using up to 2 GB. The game didn't max vRam so having extra vRam wouldn't give more wiggle room when games start stressing 16GB of Ram

RE:2 looks bad, but this was from one hiccup, possibly caused from the hybrid 8GB+4GB config. The game only maxed out around 7GB.

16GB looks solid for a good while.
 
In the middle of planning my next upgrade. Have 16GB right now and so far the plan to just re-use that is sounding pretty good.
 
Yeah, I'm holding off installing the extra 8gb DDR3 ram I have sitting around (24GB total). With 4 sticks, it would no-doubt kick my memory controller up to 2t latency on my 4790k - not something I want to do until it's necessary.

I will eventually do it, but not for a couple more years (assuming I can get two more years out of this beast).
 
Trmntr said:
16gb is the new minumun indeed, we'll being to see 32gb as the standart shorltly
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It's already the standard if you want to stay out of trouble, but for the future you have to think 64GB. It's cheap now. There shouldn't be any new gaming system sold without 64GB by today.
Same for the video card. You're okay to day for most of the games with 8GB of video RAM, in Full HD, but some games will ask for more. So the 2080 Ti (11GB GDDR6) or the Radeon VII (16GB HBM2) are the only cards somehow future proof.
 
16GB is totally not enough nowadays. Without pagefile you can't play R6: Siege with Ultra textures at 1440p resolution.

Dunno if it's the VRAM eating into the RAM without a pagefile though. (for example 7GB VRAM usage would bring down available RAM to just 9GB.)

Jandor said:
It's already the standard if you want to stay out of trouble, but for the future you have to think 64GB. It's cheap now. There shouldn't be any new gaming system sold without 64GB by today.
Same for the video card. You're okay to day for most of the games with 8GB of video RAM, in Full HD, but some games will ask for more. So the 2080 Ti (11GB GDDR6) or the Radeon VII (16GB HBM2) are the only cards somehow future proof.
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I think 64GB is taking it a bit too far... for a gaming PC you need good RAM, especially the new Ryzens. 64GB will cost you 600€.
 
Lepardi said:
16GB is totally not enough nowadays. Without pagefile you can't play R6: Siege with Ultra textures at 1440p resolution.

Dunno if it's the VRAM eating into the RAM without a pagefile though. (for example 7GB VRAM usage would bring down available RAM to just 9GB.)
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There's something else going on here. This is just one game, so it's prudent to see why it's an exception, as opposed to treating in like a rule.

Generally speaking 16GB is more than enough for modern gaming.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
There's something else going on here. This is just one game, so it's prudent to see why it's an exception, as opposed to treating in like a rule.

Generally speaking 16GB is more than enough for modern gaming.
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Depends if you want to play without the pagefile to ensure least microlags possible. As the VRAM usage will eat away from the 16GB.
 
Even with 32 gigs of system ram, I ran out of memory several times a week if I had the page file off.
 
defaultluser said:
Yeah, I'm holding off installing the extra 8gb DDR3 ram I have sitting around (24GB total). With 4 sticks, it would no-doubt kick my memory controller up to 2t latency on my 4790k - not something I want to do until it's necessary.

I will eventually do it, but not for a couple more years (assuming I can get two more years out of this beast).
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You might be surprised. I'm currently running a 4790K with 4x Kingston memory (single ranked), 2666mhz overclocked to 3066mhz currently, 1T! :cool:

Asus Hero VI goes along way to making that possible though I'm sure.
 
Nightfire said:
First time seeing 32 GB make in impact, and not surprisingly, it wa with Cyberpunk:
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Isn't common too for 4 rank (the 4x8 kit or the 2x16 of dual rank stick) to have an impact versus 2 rank ?

Note that the 4GB and 8GB sticks are single rank, while the 16GB sticks are dual rank, so there's a slight advantage for the latter. This is the RAM we had on hand, however, and most 16GB DIMMs are dual rank while 8GB DIMMs are single rank, so short of procuring dual rank 8GB DIMMs or single rank 16GB DIMMs, we can't fully separate capacity from rank. Whether it's capacity or rank, though, we'll see how 16GB compares to 32GB.

That test is not purely testing the impact of ram quantity protocol wise it seem. The memory kit use being so different all across the board.
 
LukeTbk said:
Isn't common too for 4 rank (the 4x8 kit or the 2x16 of dual rank stick) to have an impact versus 2 rank ?

Note that the 4GB and 8GB sticks are single rank, while the 16GB sticks are dual rank, so there's a slight advantage for the latter. This is the RAM we had on hand, however, and most 16GB DIMMs are dual rank while 8GB DIMMs are single rank, so short of procuring dual rank 8GB DIMMs or single rank 16GB DIMMs, we can't fully separate capacity from rank. Whether it's capacity or rank, though, we'll see how 16GB compares to 32GB.

That test is not purely testing the impact of ram quantity protocol wise it seem. The memory kit use being so different all across the board.
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True, and I wish they would have ran the same cas settings on the faster sets as well.

I kind of missed that since 2x16 wasn't faster than 4x8, but I guess both sets end up having a total of 4 ranks.

Pretty bad test methodology, to be honest. Should have known since 2x8 wasn't much faster than 2x4 (single rank both)
 
Nightfire said:
Pretty bad test methodology, to be honest. Should have known since 2x8 wasn't much faster than 2x4 (single rank both)
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And when they say:
This is the RAM we had on hand, however, and most 16GB DIMMs are dual rank while 8GB DIMMs are single rank, so short of procuring dual rank 8GB DIMMs or single rank 16GB DIMMs, we can't fully separate capacity from rank.

I feel it would be worth the try to do a simple 4x4 vs 2x16 to have both 4 rank and 16 gig vs 32 gig, not perfect maybe but probably closer (or just make a simple C++ app that consume ram on your system and ramp it up until you see FPS go lower or is there something wrong with that ?)
 
LukeTbk said:
And when they say:
This is the RAM we had on hand, however, and most 16GB DIMMs are dual rank while 8GB DIMMs are single rank, so short of procuring dual rank 8GB DIMMs or single rank 16GB DIMMs, we can't fully separate capacity from rank.

I feel it would be worth the try to do a simple 4x4 vs 2x16 to have both 4 rank and 16 gig vs 32 gig, not perfect maybe but probably closer (or just make a simple C++ app that consume ram on your system and ramp it up until you see FPS go lower or is there something wrong with that ?)
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Yeah, I was just going to say that. 4x4 vs 2x16 at the same speed would isolate more variables and verify if 16 GB was enough. Again, 'Jared's just ignored the miniscule difference between 2x4 and 2x8 GB.

The comments section there is rather brutal.
 
misterbobby said:
Even with 32 gigs of system ram, I ran out of memory several times a week if I had the page file off.
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That happened to me back in 2014 while working on some programming stuff. I've been running 64GB ever since. That seems like a good number until it's time for 128. That'll happen when "gaming" computers at Best Buy typically come with 32GB unless I run out of ram again.
 
zandor said:
That happened to me back in 2014 while working on some programming stuff. I've been running 64GB ever since. That seems like a good number until it's time for 128. That'll happen when "gaming" computers at Best Buy typically come with 32GB unless I run out of ram again.
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The focus of the thread is gaming and I really don't want people to think they need to buy more than they need to.

After all, it was Tom's that pushed the "Just buy it" article in regards to Nvidia's 20 series cards. Now, they are sort of convincing people that they need 32 GB or more of ram to play the latest games.

If you want to get your epeen on, more power to you. I just think it is more constructive to get people to jump in PC gaming as easy and cheaply as possible.
 
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Nightfire said:
GTX 2080 8, 12, and 16GB in the latest games. Values measured towards the end with 1% on top and Ram usage below.



Division 2: 9 75 78
6.8G 10.1G 10.8G

Forza: 86 112 112
7.2G 8.1G 8.1G

Metro: 41 60 62
5.4G 6.8G 6.8G

BF:V 2 62 57
7.7G 10.7G 11.0G

Rage 2 109 117 115
5.5G 6.9G 6.7G

RE: 2 27 34 120
4.9G 6.3G 6.0G

AC:O 43 61 60
6.4G 8.0G 7.6G

Hitman 2 77 86 93
6.3G 7.4G 6.8G

SotTR 44 50 49
6.6G 7.3G 7.2G

Most games suffer with 8GB. Division 2 and BF:V were on the edge with 12 GB as the background tasks were most likely using up to 2 GB. The game didn't max vRam so having extra vRam wouldn't give more wiggle room when games start stressing 16GB of Ram

RE:2 looks bad, but this was from one hiccup, possibly caused from the hybrid 8GB+4GB config. The game only maxed out around 7GB.

16GB looks solid for a good while.
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Well, 4 year necro, but it looks like 16gb is no longer sufficient at least for Hogwarts Legacy on a RTX 3080.

For most games 16 GB still manages to do the trick while some games are fine with as low as 8 GB (though I doubt any 3080 owners have 8 GB ram :p)

Most recent Steam survey shows most have 16 GB at 52% of the survey. Surprisingly, more survey had 8 GB than 32 GB.
 
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Nightfire said:
Right, but I have a feeling that 32gb of ddr5 is going to cost a fortune, at least at first. ;)
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I don't know if it would be considered a fortune, but, I picked up a 64GB kit of DDR5 6000 from Amazon for my newst build. It was right over 300 with tax, but I probably won't build again for 4-6 years so wanted to make sure I didn't have any issues until then. Also, I've been using 32GB on my last build, and even upgraded my laptop to that after I bought it. Yes, I know it's overkill, but, I never want to find myself in a situation where I dom't have enough.
 
jerry8169 said:
I don't know if it would be considered a fortune, but, I picked up a 64GB kit of DDR5 6000 from Amazon for my newst build. It was right over 300 with tax, but I probably won't build again for 4-6 years so wanted to make sure I didn't have any issues until then. Also, I've been using 32GB on my last build, and even upgraded my laptop to that after I bought it. Yes, I know it's overkill, but, I never want to find myself in a situation where I dom't have enough.
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You responded to a 4 and a half year old post in regards to price.
 
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Would capping the framerate and Freesync take pressure off of the meager 8GB of RAM? It's AMD Chill and maybe Nvidia global framerate cap? (Skipping buying 32GB for not much money now with a 3080 or something out of balance with 8GB RAM)
 
singe_101 said:
Would capping the framerate and Freesync take pressure off of the meager 8GB of RAM? It's AMD Chill and maybe Nvidia global framerate cap? (Skipping buying 32GB for not much money now with a 3080 or something out of balance with 8GB RAM)
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Yeah, the amount of people with 8 GB ram and an RTX 3080 level of card had to be miniscule.

However, there are likely plenty with a 16 GB ddr4 system who are holding off upgrading their Ram until their new ddr5 system.

Curious to know what setting alleviate ram demands on games like Hogwarts where 16 GB is not enough. Does SAM help if they have vram to spare?
 
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.
 
OKC Yeakey Trentadue said:
Well, 4 year necro, but it looks like 16gb is no longer sufficient at least for Hogwarts Legacy on a RTX 3080.

For most games 16 GB still manages to do the trick while some games are fine with as low as 8 GB (though I doubt any 3080 owners have 8 GB ram :p)

Most recent Steam survey shows most have 16 GB at 52% of the survey. Surprisingly, more survey had 8 GB than 32 GB.
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That's because Hogwarts and other recent titles have poorly optimised memory usage, or outright memory leaks, this is known news now.

Games like Cyberpunk are massive openworld titles running all the raytraced tech available today, and now path tracing with visuals and a city that's mostly "alive" as far as the eye can see, yet it barely uses 6GB of system ram at 3440x1440 Ultra path traced settings.... That is proof that when an engine is finally optimised well, system RAM use by the game alone is merely trivial as it's so low.

Here is Cyberpunk running on my 4090/12700KF/64GB build:

NJzn23V.jpg


1684436017366.png



4.6GB of RAM use.... lol.

We and tech outlets should NOT be normalising this sort of lazy behaviour shown by many developers these days.
 
I went 32G this upgrade cycle just because the ddr5 prices dropped and it seemed to be the sweet spot for price and capacity.. I’ve had 16G rigs forever and this is my first 32G rig ever.
 
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