Will a current PC gamer benefit from 16 GB instead of 8 GB RAM?


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You do realize that disabling page file means less RAM is available for your game, since Windows has to keep everything inside physical RAM? How is this supposed to help for people who only have 8GB? If a game requires close to 8GB, it will likely crash without page file, and run beautifully with. If it requires significantly less, it will sit entirely in physical RAM in both cases.

Get 16 GB RAM then.

Or, like me, max it out.

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New console cant tap more than 6gig combined memory anyway (videocard and system). The worst Ive seen my memory go is in bf4 MP, total with Windows booted up was 6gig usage.. So

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Actually Battlefield 4 has a 64bit version or at least there is an icon that BF4 created on my desktop that says its 64bit.

But even it barely goes beyond 2GB use. At least on my machine it doesn't.

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So spend more money on unnecessary RAM because you've disabled something that shouldn't be disabled?  Good advice.

 

No such thing as too much RAM, yes you should not mess with the pagefile but claiming all you need is 8gb is as absurd as the 640k ram commnet Bill gates made way back in the day, more is always better and RAM prices are not a concern 

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No such thing as too much RAM

 

Indeed, no such thing as too much.

 

claiming all you need is 8gb is as absurd as the 640k ram commnet Bill gates made way back in the day

 

Never made a claim that "all you need is 8gb" though.  However, for straight PC gaming as others have mentioned you will not see a difference in 8GB to 16GB.  If you want to start adding other things on top of that (virtual machines, encoding, etc) of course that will change.

 

RAM prices are not a concern

 

Perhaps not for you, but that's pretty presumptuous to apply to everybody.

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If you never do anything with VMs on that machine, then don't bother getting more than 8GBs. Even running WoW, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, and Diablo 3 all at the same time is possible without any issues (on a system with 8GBs of RAM).

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This thread is full of crap advice. It depends on what you are doing on your computer. 

 

Chrome/FF with lots of tabs or multimedia can take a couple of GB of RAM on it's own. Want to edit a document with Word after that? Add another 1GB. Windows 7 will be taking 2GB for the most part (just under). That right there is 5GB. Play a game with that in the background, or encode/recode a move to DVD you may hit your 8GB.

 

When you're using your computer open task manager, and look at the graph for your RAM. If you stay at 6 or under consistently there's not much of a reason you would need more than 8GB. If you're going above 7 you may want to upgrade. The longer your computer is on the more RAM that will be in use from background tasks and the like. Just monitor the usage through taskman and, like I said, if you're at about 7 consistently upgrade. If you can get the extra 8 and it's no big deal, then 16GB will help and keep you a little more future proof.

 

I just moved and was having issues with my computer after unpacking. I took it down to 8GB from 16GB to troubleshoot. When I installed the full 16GB again the difference was absolutely noticeable.

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Want to edit a document with Word after that? Add another 1GB.

 

Woa, are you sure that your system is functioning properly? Editing a 65-page document here, and Word 2013 absolutely does not use that much memory. 100-150 MBs at best.

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Most apps (including most games) are 32 bit and so each app is only able to use 2GB of RAM.  It's 2 and not 4 because Windows reserves the top half of the address space for the kernel by default so only the bottom half is available to an app.  If you are running a 64bit OS (which hopefully is most gamers by now) then the app developer can set a flag at compile time called "Large Address Aware" which will allow the 64bit Kernel to run in the top half of the 64bit address space thus leaving the entire 4GB 32bit address space to 32bit app.  This flag must be set by the developer at compile time though and many don't bother though there have been unofficial hacks in many cases to enable this feature after the fact.  Skyrim for example had an unofficial patch to allow it to use the full 4GB though Bethesda later included the flag in one of their official updates.

 

So again, most apps right now will probably use 2GB.  Some will use 4GB if they are "Large Address Aware" and very few will use more than that.  But that's on a per app basis and if you run a lot at the same time that can add up.  It really depends on what you're doing but 8GB is probably more than enough for 32bit gaming while still leaving room for multitasking.  That said gaming is now shifting to 64bit with the new console generation.  So in a year or two most AAA games will probably have 64bit binaries and will be able to use more than 4GB.  Even then though the new consoles only have 8GB of Memory and some of that is reserved for the OS so most games will still likely run just fine on an 8GB RAM PC, again depending on what else you are running.

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This thread is full of crap advice. It depends on what you are doing on your computer. 

 

Chrome/FF with lots of tabs or multimedia can take a couple of GB of RAM on it's own. Want to edit a document with Word after that? Add another 1GB. Windows 7 will be taking 2GB for the most part (just under). That right there is 5GB. Play a game with that in the background, or encode/recode a move to DVD you may hit your 8GB.

 

When you're using your computer open task manager, and look at the graph for your RAM. If you stay at 6 or under consistently there's not much of a reason you would need more than 8GB. If you're going above 7 you may want to upgrade. The longer your computer is on the more RAM that will be in use from background tasks and the like. Just monitor the usage through taskman and, like I said, if you're at about 7 consistently upgrade. If you can get the extra 8 and it's no big deal, then 16GB will help and keep you a little more future proof.

 

I just moved and was having issues with my computer after unpacking. I took it down to 8GB from 16GB to troubleshoot. When I installed the full 16GB again the difference was absolutely noticeable.

Your advise is not much better. Even with your scenario using 5gb of RAM and then starting a game needing 4GB of ram. Will not (always) result in 9GB of ram usage.

If you only have 8GB this will still not be a problem. Windows should still do fine even if you had 6GB of RAM (for the game its unnoticeable, the rest will slow down though)

 

And even if you reach 7GB usage scenario's. Doesn't require an upgrade.  Quite a large portion of that used up spaced is only reserved space. Which is immediately available if another program requires the memory space.

Chrome claiming it's using 2gb of memory, doesn't mean it actively uses those 2gb of memory space. Tick more boxes on your select collumns in the task manager in detailed view :)

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  • 2 months later...

the 4GB RAM is not enough for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Everquest 2, and other online video games. The 64-bit is best thing for gaming on the computer. I played Star Wars or Everquest on this laptop has 4GB, and it keep crash due to 99 percent of Physical Memory on the Windows Task Manager, that's why I am getting a new computer with 12GB RAM soon. I will  be very happy to play games on the new computer soon.

 

the 4GB RAM is not enough for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Everquest 2, and other online video games. The 64-bit is best thing for gaming on the computer. I played Star Wars or Everquest on this laptop has 4GB, and it keep crash due to 99 percent of Physical Memory on the Windows Task Manager, that's why I am getting a new computer with 12GB RAM soon. I will  be very happy to play games on the new computer soon.

 

Wrong on the 4 GB not being enough - for any of the MMORPGs you listed; none of them even have x64 executables.  (In fact, I don't know of any MMORPG that has an x64 executable.)  SWTOR and EQ II are both F2P, and in my PC game rotation; DC Universe Online and Planetside 2 are from the same publisher as EQ II (Sony Online Entertainment).  So far, the ONLY MMORPG that is x64 partially is Landmark (they have not decided whether EQNext itself will be x64-only or not).

 

The only game that requires more than 4 GB of RAM is the forthcoming Watch Dogs (which is x64-only) - Wolfenstein: The New Order (x64-option) does not - Titanfall (x64-only) doesn't, either.

 

While DDR3 pricing has gone up, it's still cheaper than DDR2 is on a per-GB basis.

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Not at the moment, but with 64 bit gaming engines becoming more popular it would futureproof you nicely. But for games currently on the market it's unlikely to make a massive difference.

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Not the best example, but WoW actually has a 64 bit executable.

I also think the funcom games do as well as some other newer mmo's

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Bill Gates never said that btw.

 

 

Yes he did, used to have the magazine it was in, was into computers that far back

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Yes he did, used to have the magazine it was in, was into computers that far back

Actually he didn't. It's a very out if context and it's also a misquote. They cut of half the quote, and thus make it mean something different than what he actually said.

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Wrong on the 4 GB not being enough - for any of the MMORPGs you listed; none of them even have x64 executables.  (In fact, I don't know of any MMORPG that has an x64 executable.)  SWTOR and EQ II are both F2P, and in my PC game rotation; DC Universe Online and Planetside 2 are from the same publisher as EQ II (Sony Online Entertainment).  So far, the ONLY MMORPG that is x64 partially is Landmark (they have not decided whether EQNext itself will be x64-only or not).

 

The only game that requires more than 4 GB of RAM is the forthcoming Watch Dogs (which is x64-only) - Wolfenstein: The New Order (x64-option) does not - Titanfall (x64-only) doesn't, either.

 

While DDR3 pricing has gone up, it's still cheaper than DDR2 is on a per-GB basis.

 

I ran SWTOR fine with 8 gig then upgraded to 16. No difference as the ram were for Vms in VMWare Workstation.

 

However ... a SSD made loading maps like Correlia somewhat tolerable again! Yikes it was like 5 minutes on a mechanical drive. If you play these games an SSD will help

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Star Citizen will probably be the first game to benefit from more than 8GB of RAM. It's a 64bit-exclusive and the minimum spec is 8GB of RAM - the alpha starts later this month but the game itself won't be released until next year. Generally speaking you don't need more than 8GB for gaming, as normal system usage is 3.5GB and 32bit executables can only access 3GB leaving plenty to spare.

 

At the end of the day RAM is pretty cheap and it doesn't hurt to have more than you'll need.

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If you can get 16GB of RAM then do it.  If not, just try not to have a million things open at the same time.  If you can get the memory at a reasonable price, it would wise to do so.

 

There really is no such thing as TOO MUCH MEMORY.... Unless you plan on kicking it ol'school wit a 32bit copy of Xp :woot:

 

Why settle for the warning track?

 

I have 16GB in my aging i7 (OG i7 920) that I built forever ago.  And I'm happy I went that route.  I tend to have a million things going all the time.

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This thread is full of crap advice. It depends on what you are doing on your computer. 

 

Chrome/FF with lots of tabs or multimedia can take a couple of GB of RAM on it's own. Want to edit a document with Word after that? Add another 1GB. Windows 7 will be taking 2GB for the most part (just under). That right there is 5GB. Play a game with that in the background, or encode/recode a move to DVD you may hit your 8GB.

 

When you're using your computer open task manager, and look at the graph for your RAM. If you stay at 6 or under consistently there's not much of a reason you would need more than 8GB. If you're going above 7 you may want to upgrade. The longer your computer is on the more RAM that will be in use from background tasks and the like. Just monitor the usage through taskman and, like I said, if you're at about 7 consistently upgrade. If you can get the extra 8 and it's no big deal, then 16GB will help and keep you a little more future proof.

 

I just moved and was having issues with my computer after unpacking. I took it down to 8GB from 16GB to troubleshoot. When I installed the full 16GB again the difference was absolutely noticeable.

lol I don't know anyone who is going to be running a game and encoding at the same time :wacko: or any other activity besides gaming AT the moment, granted it is possible.

 

I agree with showan, if you can get more memory, then why not?

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Precisely, always get what you can afford. The price for 16GB is very reasonable now. Special benefit? Not that much, not night and day. But well worth it unless you really don't have the funds, then 8GB will do perfectly well.

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