32Gb RAM worth it for gaming?

Unless some of the mods are separate programs which work alongside the game or some other kind of funky business. :p
 
teppic said:
A 32bit app cannot use more than 4GB RAM. It's as simple as that.
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That's true and I know that, but I am sure it is Skyrim that I have monitored and it has exceeded 8GB of RAM usage before - maybe I'm confusing it with something else, or possibly the additions of mods changes the RAM usage limits.

I'm going to have to run some tests again at some point.
 
Heavily modded Skyrim may cause the system to use more than 8GB RAM in terms of disk caching because of the number of texture files. But that memory is still free for use by anything else immediately, it just doesn't list as free in Windows.
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
That's true and I know that, but I am sure it is Skyrim that I have monitored and it has exceeded 8GB of RAM usage before - maybe I'm confusing it with something else, or possibly the additions of mods changes the RAM usage limits.

I'm going to have to run some tests again at some point.
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That cannot make a 32-bit program use more than 4GB of RAM. The only way would be to custom compile this game so it was 64-bit, which you haven't done.
 
teppic said:
Heavily modded Skyrim may cause the system to use more than 8GB RAM in terms of disk caching because of the number of texture files. But that memory is still free for use by anything else immediately, it just doesn't list as free in Windows.
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Well that would explain then.
 
The vast majority of games and apps don't use more than 2GB RAM, which is why almost all games can run in 4GB RAM without the slightest problem.

Since textures normally get cached in VRAM, if VRAM is tight, the game will have to load them from disk instead. So having extra RAM can help there, because if the textures are already cached in RAM, they get transferred extremely quickly. If not, the game will stutter. BF3 suffers in this respect on 4GB systems with <2GB VRAM.

(If it's not clear, 32gb is basically ludicrous for gaming)
 
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Bluelion said:
*ahem* so you mean that 32Gb I just ordered for my aging 2600K was a waste of time? :P
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Not if you are using other applications such as Squeal, Oracle, VM's etc. If you are then the more RAM the better as SQL and Oracle see RAM and eat it and cache its self there.

But, yeah, if you are just gaming then 32GB is pretty pointless - and will be for quite some time I reckon.
 
AlecR said:
That cannot make a 32-bit program use more than 4GB of RAM. The only way would be to custom compile this game so it was 64-bit, which you haven't done.
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Reminds me of how SWToR does it.

It's 32 bit but it starts two programs when you run it to exceed 4gb.
 
I've had 16GB in my machine for almost 2 years, I can't say I've ever fully utilised it, luckily memory prices were stupidly cheap at the time.

MW
 
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