How much is really enough?

Motomattic

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Oct 11, 2016
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Building a moderate gaming rig, I'm seeing a lot of back and forth over this but is 16gb enough to game on? I'm sure this is a dumb question to some of you guys but I just want to make sure I'm allocating funds the best way I can.
 
As much as you can afford and/or how much will fit.
Don't be Soft.
 
Ya 16 gigs its so cheap ddr3 and ddr4 always future proof your gaming rig :D Have fun
 
16 gigs is where I was starting to land I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything by not going 32 right away.
 
unless you are rendering video or 3d/cad work, 16Gb is more than enough

 
To tell you the truth, for gaming, 8GB system RAM is probably still fine, though that may not last long. 16GB will be good for a while.

This is all under the assumption that gaming and ONLY gaming will be partaken. If you are planning on doing game streaming or have tons of applications open while gaming, 16 is the safe bet. If you are going to dabble in game design, then as much as you can afford.
 
I was using 16 as a base line, it's such a cheap upgrade from 8 to 16 there's really no reason to not do at least 16
 
To tell you the truth, for gaming, 8GB system RAM is probably still fine, though that may not last long. 16GB will be good for a while.

This is all under the assumption that gaming and ONLY gaming will be partaken. If you are planning on doing game streaming or have tons of applications open while gaming, 16 is the safe bet. If you are going to dabble in game design, then as much as you can afford.

8GB might work if literally the only thing you ever do is open a game and absolutely nothing else. An open web browser can easily eat ~3-4GB alone, add in some other programs and you are pretty much up to 5-6GB before any game is run. Games these days can eat 4+ GB really easy. Minimum RAM anyone should get is 16GB, anything less is just asking for swapping.
 
Check your mobo and see what it supports first, rather than just ram dumping its always best to make sure you can use what you buy. If it was me, which I won't buy a board without at least 4 RAM slots, buy 4x4gb and you should be good for a while, RAM only gets cheaper, so by the time you need an upgrade to 32GB you will probably get 4x8GB for the same price you got your 4x4GB.
 
Wouldn't I be better off spending the money on a better cpu or gpu over ram though?

Ram is cheap. Max out what you can.

That said, 8GB was plenty for gaming on my hexcore rig. I ended up going to 16GB because of video editing. If you have a tendency to leave windows open while you game, you'll want more ram in your system. If you close everything out and let your games be the only thing running, 8GB is a safe minimum.
 
Basically, if you can build a RAMdisk bigger than any of your individual SSD/HDD storage options, that's "enough".

:cool:
 
8GB might work if literally the only thing you ever do is open a game and absolutely nothing else. An open web browser can easily eat ~3-4GB alone, add in some other programs and you are pretty much up to 5-6GB before any game is run. Games these days can eat 4+ GB really easy. Minimum RAM anyone should get is 16GB, anything less is just asking for swapping.

Thats not how it works...
 
That's pretty much how it works, if your typical WSS is larger than RAM, you will swap. With 8GB and modern games on a PC that's actually used, you'll be swapping a lot.

yes but that doesnt mean you need that ram.
Windows prepages a lot of stuff so when you start that game application the 3-4GB you for some reason have a browser running with, is already page out most of it so yes it have to swap out for a bit but that make off room in the physical RAM for the game. so you don't just subtract it .
Besides the that not all data in your memory has the same amount of importance. a 6GB usage on software A might only really need 4 GB 99% of the time but the reaming 2Gb only 1% of the time. so again doesn't get the same penalty for not being in physical ram

Then add in the effect that some programs might reserved( commit size) at lot of memory but not necessarily put anything up in that area. so you don;t NEED 6gb free physical ram to have a program that has a 6GB commit size running in physical ram.
when window page out a page that is commit but not used it doesnt even write anything to the pagefile data wise it just maps it out as beeing in the pagefile but not having any data associated with it.


You simple used/unused model for how memory works does not apply to anything since the DOS days. today you physical ram works mostly like a cache on the virtuel memory.
You way of thinking is why lesser knowledgeable people still believe its optimal to disable pagefile if "you have enough RAM"

So yes it is defiantly not how memory works. Your model is way to simple.


However i would still advise to grab 16GB with todays prices
 
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yes but that doesnt mean you need that ram.
Windows prepages a lot of stuff so when you start that game application the 3-4GB you for some reason have a browser running with, is already page out most of it so yes it have to swap out for a bit but that make off room in the physical RAM for the game. so you don't just subtract it .
Besides the that not all data in your memory has the same amount of importance. a 6GB usage on software A might only really need 4 GB 99% of the time but the reaming 2Gb only 1% of the time. so again doesn't get the same penalty for not being in physical ram

Then add in the effect that some programs might reserved( commit size) at lot of memory but not necessarily put anything up in that area. so you don;t NEED 6gb free physical ram to have a program that has a 6GB commit size running in physical ram.
when window page out a page that is commit but not used it doesnt even write anything to the pagefile data wise it just maps it out as beeing in the pagefile but not having any data associated with it.


You simple used/unused model for how memory works does not apply to anything since the DOS days. today you physical ram works mostly like a cache on the virtuel memory.
You way of thinking is why lesser knowledgeable people still believe its optimal to disable pagefile if "you have enough RAM"

So yes it is defiantly not how memory works. Your model is way to simple.


However i would still advise to grab 16GB with todays prices

Anyone using ram as a cache of virtual memory is quite literally living in the 70s...

If you are having to swap to load in interactive workloads on a PC, you need more memory. I understand perfectly how virtual memory systems work and have for basically as long as they've been around. Suffice to say, if you are actually using the computer for stuff besides just games, you'll need more than 8GB of memory to have a decent user experience, esp when there are already multiple games out there that can take 4+GB on their own. There is absolutely no reason for any PC to swap to pagefile in any noticeable way these days. The speed differential between modern dram and storage is simply too great for it to ever be a good idea to treat DRAM as a cache for virtual memory and with the costs of memory, it is basically downright stupid to do so.
 
Anyone using ram as a cache of virtual memory is quite literally living in the 70s...

If you are having to swap to load in interactive workloads on a PC, you need more memory. I understand perfectly how virtual memory systems work and have for basically as long as they've been around. Suffice to say, if you are actually using the computer for stuff besides just games, you'll need more than 8GB of memory to have a decent user experience, esp when there are already multiple games out there that can take 4+GB on their own. There is absolutely no reason for any PC to swap to pagefile in any noticeable way these days. The speed differential between modern dram and storage is simply too great for it to ever be a good idea to treat DRAM as a cache for virtual memory and with the costs of memory, it is basically downright stupid to do so.

You still show a complete lack of understanding of how memory works. let me try to address it point by point

Anyone using ram as a cache of virtual memory is quite literally living in the 70s..
Completely wrong. A process ask for a giving amount of Virtual memory and Window decide which part of this virtual address space to put into physical ram and what to put into pagefile. It does so based on what windows believe is optimal. So just like you l1 cache contains the most important part of l2 cache content, and l2 of l3, and l3 of physical ram, your physical ram contains the most important part of what is in your virtual memory.
However certain function within window can be called to handle this . An example from the top of my head would be EmptyWorkingSet from psapi.dll which pretty much tries to shave as much as possible from a process out of physical ram into pagefile. It is very often used by so called "memory cleaners" to make it appear that you just free up a lot of memory.
But in fact just like with a cache you just flushed data from your fast cache and into a slower media (in this case the pagefile).
When you access something in the slower media ( in this case pagefile) it is copied into the faster media (physical ram) just like with a cache. So yes physical memory kinda works like a cahce on virtuel memory.

But i think you believe virtual memory = pagefile and that is where your misunderstanding steams from. virtual memory is the amount of memory address your system has which is the combined sum of physiclram + pagefile. Its a concept not a physical think. the process works with this conceptual memory, and windows decides which to keep cache into the fast physical ram and which part to put into the slower media aka the pagefile


if you are actually using the computer for stuff besides just games, you'll need more than 8GB of memory to have a decent user experience
Pretty irrelevant as i never disputed that. in the contrary i agreed that 16GB would be a proper amount to get today. its not your conclusion, but you understand of how memory works that is wrong


4+GB on their own.
Just because a program can take 4+GB on its own does not mean it need its a physical ram. Now if you instead of just looking at the simple one column in you task manage and enabled to see all the different kinds of memory occupation. you would notice there are several different kinds of concepts of occupied memory. Commit size which is basically the amount of the process ask for if windows can commit to deliver IF needed.
so a program that commits to say 8GB of ram might actually only contains 4GB of data in your memory.
Windows is smart enough to say. HEY weirdo process you don't need 8GB of physical ram I amm just going to map the last 4GB into the pagefile and since you don't have any data there i don't need to write anything out to the pagefile it simple just map the addresses address
Beside this facts you have private and shared memory usage. so a process might use 4GB of memory but some of that is s hared with other process due to DLL sharing etc etc..
so it is very possible to have 8 process eating 2GB each but 1gb of each is shared so in reality you have 8 process with 1gb of private data and and addition a 1gb of shared data. only 9 GB and not 16 as you would believe.
We are still not counting in the facts that not all data in memory is equal you might start up some office program that take up 1gb of memory but you hardly use that Finnish dictionary or this and that library or function. Window is smart enough to say. hey those pages of memory are not used. let my just COPY it out to the page file so i can overwrite the physical Ram later.
Yes window can have a page in BOTH physical ram and pagefile at the same time to avoid having to swap out data when needed.
Windows does not wait to the last minute to swap out stuff like you thin it does


There is absolutely no reason for any PC to swap to pagefile in any noticeable way these days
noticeable is such a subjective word i don't know what you consider noticeable. put if you think there is no reason to swap out data to pagefile you are again totally misunderstanding why we have a pagefile to being with on today systems.
It is NOT just a spare area for when you run out of RAM, like you think. The pagefile is there to optimize your physical memory. To understand how the pagefile work you, like I mentioned plenty of times, need to understand that not all data in memory is equally important.
As I said above window precopies data out to pagefile to make the physical ram page fast to reuse for something else. Lets say you again open up a huge program that take up 8G of memory but you only rally are utilization 4gb of that data. So windows figures out that half so that is a complete waste of physical ram. Since it is already copied out to the pagefile Windows can now release that physical ram and start using it as a disk cache instead. So by having the pagefile around Windows can use that to store away unimportant data apart of process and use your physical memory for more important data.
You would also notice that Window tries to fill up All unused This is also called standby memory. as it i in use for something but still freely available to be used by a process.
used but yest not used


So again this horrible simple belief that memory is just used or unused and that the pagefile is a spare area it absolutly wrong and show a clear lack of understanding of the basics of how memory is handled in windows.

When in facts memmory can be:
Resererved. but not take up space ( committed with no data)
Used and reserved and important ( pages that take up physical ram)
Used and reserved and unimportant (pages that takes up pagefile)
Used but not reserved ( cache etc)
Used but reserved does not take up space (pages from on process that are just mapped to the same page with another process aka shared memory)


How you portrayed memory is NOT how it works at all.
 
Well my system uses about 12 GB when playing BF1, so 8 GB is not enough but 16 GB is. However, I have 32 GB so it is not a concern!
 
I put 32 in my new build and 16 in my work pc. I got cheaper PC2400 DDR4 in my new rig so I could buy 32gb, and about the same $ into the work pc and faster pc3000 DDR4 and aside from some benchmark numbers that might favor ever so tiny bit the faster stuff, day to day and gaming all seems as good or better on the 32gb system.
 
To tell you the truth, for gaming, 8GB system RAM is probably still fine, though that may not last long.
No it's not. BF4 was already known to hit around 5-6GB used, and that's a 3 year old game. BF1 is supposedly worse with an unyet patched memory leak, and it's a brand new game. That leaves little for system overhead, GPU memory swaps, etc.

If OP isn't playing any newly released AAA multiplayer games, he should be fine with 8GB. I still wouldn't chance it. When RAM is cheap, always get more. Having extra never hurts. More than 16GB in DDR4 might be too much money ATM which could be better put to use on other hardware. If money weren't a factor than max it out.
 
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No it's not. BF4 was already known to hit around 5-6GB used, and that's a 3 year old game. BF1 is supposedly worse with an unyet patched memory leak, and it's a brand new game. That leaves little for system overhead, GPU memory swaps, etc.

If OP isn't playing any newly released AAA multiplayer games, he should be fine with 8GB. I still wouldn't chance it. When RAM is cheap, always get more. Having extra never hurts. More than 16GB in DDR4 might be too much money ATM which could be better put to use on other hardware. If money weren't a factor than max it out.

Maxing ram should literally be a first priority for just about everyone. It is always hilarious when people spend the extra money for something like an 850 pro or 950/960 but only have 8/16 GB of ram.
 
In my opinion, 16 GB should be the very minimum for a gaming PC - it doesn't cost much to make the jump, yet the benefits are enormous for programs/games that can make use of this additional capacity. Office computers can manage comfortably with just 8 though.
 
In my opinion, 16 GB should be the very minimum for a gaming PC - it doesn't cost much to make the jump, yet the benefits are enormous for programs/games that can make use of this additional capacity. Office computers can manage comfortably with just 8 though.

I agree.
 
Maxing ram should literally be a first priority for just about everyone. It is always hilarious when people spend the extra money for something like an 850 pro or 950/960 but only have 8/16 GB of ram.
No it shouldn't. The first priority (for a gaming system) should be to get the fasted GPU you can afford, then CPU, memory and finally the hard drive. When I upgraded my X58 system a year ago, I only went with 16GB over 8GB because I plan on keeping it for quite some time (5+ years). I don't think I have ever gone over half usage on my system.

Extra ram doesn't give you extra performance unless you were already at or near 100% usage.
 
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