Are there any games that use more than 16 GB RAM?

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Quartz-1

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Subject asks it all, really. I've heard that Star Citizen benefits from large amounts of RAM, but not seen that quantified. I've got 32 GB in this box; are there any games at which I should be looking?
 
In terms of tangible benefits in a stand alone game? No.

There are some games that can use a lot of memory but I haven't seen any actual proof they benefit in some sort of noticeable way from it.

You may be able to benefit in terms of gaming if you want to explore more niche usage cases such as ram drives, heavy multitasking while gaming, multiboxing, etc.
 
I have 16GB of RAM in my PC right now and have never seen all of it used playing any game. I've seen it get to about 75% allocated for a few brief moments, usually during map loading, then it goes back down and sits between 1/3 and 1/2 in use.

Are there games coming out in the next 6-24mo that will benefit from more RAM? Maybe, but until I see how those games actually behave on my system I'm not going to worry about it.
 
flyman0xp said:
I have 16GB of RAM in my PC right now and have never seen all of it used playing any game. I've seen it get to about 75% allocated for a few brief moments, usually during map loading, then it goes back down and sits between 1/3 and 1/2 in use.

Are there games coming out in the next 6-24mo that will benefit from more RAM? Maybe, but until I see how those games actually behave on my system I'm not going to worry about it.
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Same here. I have 16GB with room for more, but I cannot come close to using even most of it.
 
When I had 8GB, I didnt once wish I had more.
About 6 months ago I decided to add my old 4GB kit (and slow down to 1600MHz) so I am now on 12GB.
I didnt notice any difference at all, not even slightly (outside of benchmarks).

Since then, the 970 memory problems appear to be partially mitigated by the use of system ram.
970 users have found that 8GB isnt so easy to get on with (preferring 16GB) and your swap file must be enabled to play many games.

I would imagine that GTA V wouldnt run quite so well on my PC with 8GB, with 12GB its excellent.
(2500K @ 4.3, 290x, 12GB, 840 Pro)
 
Try X-Plane 10. Flight simulators are about the closest thing to a "game" that actually would need to use that much RAM.
 
I have 16gb of ram atm and don't use anywhere near that much. Had 32gb, but need my sticks to test it and RMA it if needed since some seem to be dead. On the plus side, sometimes it does seem to make games and apps go smoother with all that ram. :)
 
Beta versions of Galciv3 have been using healthy amounts of RAM. People with 8GB often find it's not enough on big maps. Further optimization should happen, yes, but more content is being added, too. If TBS games are your thing, try this one out. The last GalCiv game was great, and the AI is always stellar from Stardock.
 
dmonkey said:
Try X-Plane 10. Flight simulators are about the closest thing to a "game" that actually would need to use that much RAM.
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I can't think of any flight sim that would benefit from over 8GB of RAM. Or any game for that matter. Large amount of RAM is mainly for development programs. Get 16GB if you plan on running a lot of high end programs at once. Once you get into really intensive programs, then you might need 32GB.

But for games 8GB is fine.
 
If you have a decent amount of background tasks going on, I can see 8GB being a limitation. GTAV puts me at around 9 gigs with a web browser going in the background. Plus, "unused" ram will still cache what it can, so even if a game isn't actively using much it will still have a good deal of extra data cached on standby.
 
I've never once seen a game use more than 4GB ram before. 8GB is still plenty fine even for years to come. I don't think even games can even use more than 4GB or so just from windows/console limitations. Games aren't really increasing in RAM usage each year unlike video VRAM which seems to increase another 1GB every year or so. If you add more RAM I think games will use more of it just because it's there but won't affect performance or anything.
 
Kerbal Space Program.. Heavily modded.. 64Bit client Linux. Will eat whatever you throw at it.
 
open a shit load of chrome tabs and leave a few games tabed out and i have still yet to run out of ram at 16gb
 
If you don't have gtx 970 than 8GB system ram is fine. I generally find that when most of my vram is being used that my system ram can be anywhere from 10-14GB across different games.
 
kamxam said:
I have 16gb of ram atm and don't use anywhere near that much. Had 32gb, but need my sticks to test it and RMA it if needed since some seem to be dead. On the plus side, sometimes it does seem to make games and apps go smoother with all that ram. :)
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Because the OS is caching everything it thinks it needs into RAM, so it will run faster to a point. 16gb+ allows most applications and large parts of the running OS to reside in ram. Above 16gb the benefit falls off pretty quickly and it is the realm of specialize memory hungry applications.
 
Seyumi said:
I don't think even games can even use more than 4GB or so just from windows/console limitations.
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Absolutely 100% FALSE. Has nothing to do with either Windows or any Console limitations. Even the Xbox One and PS4 have 8GB of shared system RAM.

I've seen native 64bit games for several years now. There aren't a lot of games that use a ton of memory, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Several of them were pointed out in this very thread already.
 
I have a somewhat large city in Cities Skylines that demands ~7.5gb itself. I have no idea if this scales with city population or not.
 
blade52x said:
I have a somewhat large city in Cities Skylines that demands ~7.5gb itself. I have no idea if this scales with city population or not.
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It will gobble up all the free resources you give it like MSSQL.
 
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