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How much memory do most have?

J

john5527

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 31, 2008
Messages
64
Just curious as to how much memory most people have that occasionally game and watch Hd movies, etc. Is 2GB sufficient or outdated by today's requirements?
 
4GB should be the minimum...I currently have 6GB and I do a lot of gaming...with memory being so cheap nowadays it's easy to load up
 
polonyc2 said:
4GB should be the minimum...I currently have 6GB and I do a lot of gaming...with memory being so cheap nowadays it's easy to load up
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okay, I just purchased 2 more GB before I posted, which is why I was asking. I kind of figured I was being cheap still running with my 2GB.:D
 
my htpc has 4gb. Lots say you only need 2gb but 4gb so cheap right now might as well go 4gb so you might not be limited if you hit a limit.
 
Actually, 8gb is really cheap nowadays. 8gb kits (2x4gb) often goes for between $25 and $40 nowadays.
 
Tsumi said:
Actually, 8gb is really cheap nowadays. 8gb kits (2x4gb) often goes for between $25 and $40 nowadays.
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....yep. I'm running 8Gb of Mushkin in my home system, and just bought an 8Gb kit of GSkill for a new i5 build I'm doing. Got it on sale from the Egg for well under $50.00 shipped.

4Gb minimum, so cheap that 8Gb makes pretty good sense, IMHO.....
 
I got 16GB and love it! Considering how cheap memory is these days it totally makes sense to have as most as you can get.
 
Sir_Poop_Alot said:
I got 16GB and love it! Considering how cheap memory is these days it totally makes sense to have as most as you can get.
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It makes about as much sense getting 16Gb for the average person as it does picking a forum handle of sir poop alot.

4GB is enough for most.

I have 12GB because its cheap, but even as a enthusiast I don't see much use for more than 6GB unless you are doing a RAM disk. 5 years it'll all change --- but windows 7 runs fine with even 2GB for the average person. Vista liked 4GB better. WindowsXP was fine with 1GB for the casual user and 2GB for most people.
 
2 gigs is on the edge of enough for a 32bit os. 4 gigs is good for 64.

My system idles at around 1.2-1.4 gigs of ram usage (win7 64).
 
Archaea said:
It makes about as much sense getting 16Gb for the average person as it does picking a forum handle of sir poop alot.

4GB is enough for most.

I have 12GB because its cheap, but even as a enthusiast I don't see much use for more than 6GB unless you are doing a RAM disk. 5 years it'll all change --- but windows 7 runs fine with even 2GB for the average person. Vista liked 4GB better. WindowsXP was fine with 1GB for the casual user and 2GB for most people.
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When you work with 8128x8128 and 200 layers images you'll see your RAM begging for mercy.
 
We have 4GB in 2 desktops and my HTPC and 16GB in my main rig.
One desktop was built with 2GB and upgrading it to 4 made it more responsive in Windows and with light gaming. It's only a AMD 3 core with a GT240 Win7 HP 32bit.
 
I would not even consider putting less than 4gb in any system built today or 8gb in any system built for gaming or demanding applications. I have 12gb and have ram issues...
 
The average user is just fine with 2gb. For power users the minimum is 4gb. I run 8gb in my main machine, 4gb in my HTPC and my laptop, and 1gb in my XP machine.

I also have 48mb in my DOS Box. :D
 
Yeah I do use it for a RamDisk and what's wrong with my forum handle?

Archaea said:
It makes about as much sense getting 16Gb for the average person as it does picking a forum handle of sir poop alot.

4GB is enough for most.

I have 12GB because its cheap, but even as a enthusiast I don't see much use for more than 6GB unless you are doing a RAM disk. 5 years it'll all change --- but windows 7 runs fine with even 2GB for the average person. Vista liked 4GB better. WindowsXP was fine with 1GB for the casual user and 2GB for most people.
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8GB in my desktop at home. The HTPC has 2GB. Both are running W7.

Work desktop has 4GB running XP pro.
 
8GB in my main, although I would say most people only have between 2-4GB, but I'd say my rig is actually getting to be lower end since it's over 3 years old these days with only 1 graphics card upgrade...
 
I was running 6 in my main rig and then now i have 4 in my htpc... need to fix my sig lol
 
2GB RAM is enough for the occasional game or HD video. It's a rare game that recommends more than 2GB (I'm not aware of any game that requires more than 2GB). Games and HD video depend on throughput more than quantity of RAM, that's why consoles aren't designed with much RAM (the current generation of consoles are designed with only 0.5GB).

We're a long way off from needing more than 2GB. Win8 supposedly uses less memory than Win7.

4GB is the sweet spot for RAM. It gives you some headroom over 2GB, without a significant increase in price. 8GB is cheap, but it's also significantly more in cost than 4GB, without any added benefit. If you really want to spend an extra $20, pay your woman for some milk. It'll make her feel valued. If she argues that it makes her feel cheap, point out that it's not as cheap as the free milk she has been giving out.
 
I agree with the general sentiment that at least 4gb should be put in a system right now, and 8 if you think that user might ever run into some more demanding tasks or just for some headroom, given how cheap it is at the moment.

To be honest, I'm looking for a reason to put another 8 in for 16 total, but don't think I photoshop quite enough to justify it. Although having matched black and red corsair sets does sound tempting...but then I'd have to switch to the maximus board to match the ram....and I can't imagine the wife being happy with "decorating" as my rationale for upgrading my system.
 
I put 16GB in just because I got sick of wondering how much better my last system would perform with 8GB instead of 4GB. Looking back I really should have gone with 8GB on the 2008 system. I don't know how much benefit I'm getting from 16GB right now, but I know that 4GB wasn't really enough for most of the Photoshop/3D/video stuff I was doing on the previous system.

But aside from performance, it just feels cool having 16GB and having that much I can spare myself all the accumulated worry over the life of the system wondering if I have enough RAM.
 
I've never maxed my 8gb besides benching and stress testing. But I don't use any photo or video editing/encoding stuff. Just the normal gaming and browsing
 
ballpoint said:
I put 16GB in just because I got sick of wondering how much better my last system would perform with 8GB instead of 4GB. Looking back I really should have gone with 8GB on the 2008 system. I don't know how much benefit I'm getting from 16GB right now, but I know that 4GB wasn't really enough for most of the Photoshop/3D/video stuff I was doing on the previous system.

But aside from performance, it just feels cool having 16GB and having that much I can spare myself all the accumulated worry over the life of the system wondering if I have enough RAM.
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Yeah it seems my upgrade cycles has slowed down.

My current board - I7-920 @ 4.0ghz with 12GB of RAM is now about 3 years old and within about 10 or 15% as fast as anything currently being used by the most cutting edge fanatics...There is no real point in upgrading for gaming for a long time to come, and my machine is plenty fast for anything else I do. 12GB of RAM is vast overkill for probably the next 5 years at least. If I can just keep my upgraditis in check I'll save lots of money for a while. Those 1366 boards and $200 I7-920 processors from Microcenter were the cat's meow it seems! Mine has tripple PCI-E slots and so I've got a lot of life left in the video card arena too --- should I need to multicard at some point. I've never owned a computer that seems to have so much life expectation remaining on three year old hardware! Three year old hardware in the pentium 100 era, would have put you about 500% faster when you upgraded your machine to a p2 450mhz.
 
Archaea said:
Yeah it seems my upgrade cycles has slowed down.

My current board - I7-920 @ 4.0ghz with 12GB of RAM is now about 3 years old and within about 10 or 15% as fast as anything currently being used by the most cutting edge fanatics...There is no real point in upgrading for gaming for a long time to come, and my machine is plenty fast for anything else I do. 12GB of RAM is vast overkill for probably the next 5 years at least. If I can just keep my upgraditis in check I'll save lots of money for a while. Those 1366 boards and $200 I7-920 processors from Microcenter were the cat's meow it seems! Mine has tripple PCI-E slots and so I've got a lot of life left in the video card arena too --- should I need to multicard at some point. I've never owned a computer that seems to have so much life expectation remaining on three year old hardware! Three year old hardware in the pentium 100 era, would have put you about 500% faster when you upgraded your machine to a p2 450mhz.
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I feel the same way. Jumping to an i7 build probably was the smartest move I made. Completely blew away my AMD setup.

I'm going to upgrade to 24gb RAM for the hell of it, when I can pick up a matching set for $25 or less. I already have 16gb, so I just need another dual channel kit. Going to run a relatively large RAMDisk =D

Cheap 4gb memory goes for between $15 and $40. I've seen plenty of 8gb deals for between $20 and $50. For me, it makes much more sense to go with 8gb at $20 than saving $5 and going with 4gb, even though you don't need it.

With Windows 8 though, it may be a lot more memory intensive, since it allows you to suspend an application in the system memory. Of course, that won't matter if you're going to go with the traditional close and re-open applications.

Edit: Just to add, I was able to pick up 8gb (2x4gb) of Corsair 1333 mhz CAS 9 for less than $15 brand new. Now tell me what it makes more sense to go with :p
 
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4Gb is enough. Photoshop 8gb minimum. Ram is so cheap these days anyways. More is always better than less
 
I'm on 24gb on my SR-2 board. I use a lot of memory intensive apps like after effects for compositing, which eats up memory, and rendering in max/maya. Transferring textures to and from photoshop into a 3d package for live updating eats up memory also. The way I see it, ram these days are so damn cheap that you might as well get more so that you don't have to worry.
 
2 GB for my HTPC - Plenty to run a front end and media player, and the occasional browser on a news site.

8 GB for my Main PC- It's cheap enough now, so why not be prepared for the next 2-3 years?
 
Tiporaro said:
Have you found running a ramdisk helpful, or more of a novelty? What kind of uses have you put it to?
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I haven't actually set it up yet, I don't have my desktop with me. But there are others that have set it up in this forum, go search up their results.
 
Recently upgraded to 16GB from 8GB. Definitely helped my virtual machine usage but outside of that, I haven't really noticed anything drastic.

Have yet to actually mess around with a ramdisk though. Did a couple benchmarks on one and the performance is quite remarkable.

I'd say, get as much as you can afford. Ram is so cheap as of late that its extremely easy and cost effective to max out your board depending on the speed/latency you want.
 
I have 16GB in my main system mainly because RAM is so darn cheap right now.

I have a secondary system that I use that has 4GB (3GB useable) and I frequently run into low memory warnings. I wouldn't build a new system with less than 8GB, and I would probably recommend 16GB if someone could afford it.
 
There was an article on Tom's [I think] which tested various RAM amounts and there was a definite improvement in going 8GB or higher if you're a gamer and have a videocard with 1GB or more on it. I don't remember the specifics but it had something to do with the virtual graphics memory set aside by the system so 8GB is probably the minimum gamer amount. There was 1 game with an hi-res texture addon which showed the best was 12 GB but it was the only case which needed that much. Who knows? Maybe [hopefully] next gen games will need it too ;)
 
I have 16 that I use for a ram disk for gaming. Saw that newegg has 8 gig sticks now. Gonna have to wait until the price drops significantly on them to make the jump to 32 gigs.
 
Toconator said:
There was an article on Tom's [I think] which tested various RAM amounts and there was a definite improvement in going 8GB or higher if you're a gamer and have a videocard with 1GB or more on it. I don't remember the specifics but it had something to do with the virtual graphics memory set aside by the system so 8GB is probably the minimum gamer amount. There was 1 game with an hi-res texture addon which showed the best was 12 GB but it was the only case which needed that much. Who knows? Maybe [hopefully] next gen games will need it too ;)
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Tom's Hardware is full of BS crap nowadays, don't even bother reading it for legitimate reviews. Anandtech and [H] are where it's at.

Video cards do not use system RAM. The latency is way too high, and cuts deeply into performance. Doesn't make any sense as to how more RAM affects video card performance.
 
skizzled said:
I'd say, get as much as you can afford. Ram is so cheap as of late that its extremely easy and cost effective to max out your board
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Maxing out a sandy bridge system is anything but cheap. 8GB desktop modules are still rare and expensive.
 
I'd say 2gb is min, 4gb is prime for gaming, 4-12 for virtual machines and you'll probably want all you can get for RAM disk.

I run 8gb in my rig, I do alot of gaming and programming, but I bought that much for the occasional time I run a few VM's at once.
 
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