16Gb now enough

Born_2_Kill_83 · 6 May 2020 at 21:02

I hate these thread's where every-one is asking how much ram is currently enough all the time and here I am it at, but for the first time though playing Warzone I've noticed my 16Gb 8 Pack ram hitting 13gb usage. I know when you get close to the limit things start ramping down.

Time for 32Gb?

beany_bot · 7 May 2020 at 08:16

I'm going 32GB. defo. I was playing RUST with Discord and some chrome tabs up and was at 15GB! Crikey. Feels like yesterday 8GB was "plenty for gaming".

Troezar · 7 May 2020 at 08:36

Born_2_Kill_83 said:
I hate these thread's where every-one is asking how much ram is currently enough all the time and here I am it at, but for the first time though playing Warzone I've noticed my 16Gb 8 Pack ram hitting 13gb usage. I know when you get close to the limit things start ramping down.

Time for 32Gb?

I think it all depends on your usage but given the new games coming, mods, video software, multitasking I don't think 32GB will be wasted. I'm using 32GB as I expect that to be sufficient for the life of this system 5-7 years. I suspect we'll soon be asking the same question about 8GB vram.

Born_2_Kill_83 · 7 May 2020 at 09:58

If I upgrade to 32Gb will I see my RAM usage climb as my system makes use of the extra resource?

Troezar · 7 May 2020 at 13:00

Born_2_Kill_83 said:
If I upgrade to 32Gb will I see my RAM usage climb as my system makes use of the extra resource?

We'll Windows definitely seems to use more RAM if you make it available, up to a certain point. Other than maybe not clocking as high there are no downsides to more RAM but definitely some negatives if you run out.

facboy · 7 May 2020 at 19:37

yes...mine is currently sat at 13G available, 19 in use...with 12.5 of that cache lol.

Gray2233 · 7 May 2020 at 19:46

I think we're on the verge of 32GB being the new 16GB.

I've heard arguments against this but most are quite poor, claims that we wont come close to 32GB anytime soon. We don't need to come close to 32GB, we just need to break 16GB due to the way memory is sold and functions.

...We're already breaking 16GB in gaming, Cities: Skylines with mods will use well over that value as an example, The Division 2 for me uses 13GB or so as a AAA release without mods.

I think we're on the cusp where it's a good idea to buy 32GB if you can budget it.

BUDFORCE · 7 May 2020 at 19:55

Yeah 32GB now.

Mostly no, you wont need it, but some games yes, so that needs to be the new standard really.

Born_2_Kill_83 · 7 May 2020 at 20:45

Yeah we're right on the switch over period, 16gb not enough very soon, 32gb over kill, how are ram prices atm?

Dave Burton · 7 May 2020 at 21:31

My RAM usage, according to task manager, is 15Gb out of 32. I'm happy having that extra, gives me some breathing room and means I don't have to rely on virtual RAM if usage creeps up

MaXxBoulton · 9 May 2020 at 09:31

if you system is working right it will utilize the ram you have installed.

When playing squads with 8gb my system used 7.5gb, then with 16gb it used 15gb, now with 32gb its using 18.7gb
however my system as not been any faster giving the same FPS over all 3 tests.

COD-WM with 8gb had stutter, with 16gb was fine and with 32gb again had no performance gain over 16gb.
8gb to 16gb is an upgrade for gaming but i dont see 32gb been needed just yet, and with ddr5 and pcie4 stepping up i see that been needed before 32gb is needed just for gaming.

Born_2_Kill_83 said:
Time for 32Gb?

some more info like CPU and GPU, gaming res and FPS would be good.

Alex h · 9 May 2020 at 19:41

MaXxBoulton said:
if you system is working right it will utilize the ram you have installed.

When playing squads with 8gb my system used 7.5gb, then with 16gb it used 15gb, now with 32gb its using 18.7gb
however my system as not been any faster giving the same FPS over all 3 tests.

COD-WM with 8gb had stutter, with 16gb was fine and with 32gb again had no performance gain over 16gb.
8gb to 16gb is an upgrade for gaming but i dont see 32gb been needed just yet, and with ddr5 and pcie4 stepping up i see that been needed before 32gb is needed just for gaming.

some more info like CPU and GPU, gaming res and FPS would be good.

That's interesting max thanks for the info

Gray2233 · 9 May 2020 at 20:43

alex h said:
That's interesting max thanks for the info

I'd argue that while the allocation argument is of note, it's a little naive in some respects.

Yes your system will allocate the memory it has to a degree, but that doesn't mean that is a singular thing. There are multiple examples in modern gaming where we are reaching close to 'hard' memory use of 13GB in modern AAA titles. We will and do exceed that by large margins when playing games with mod support.

Is 16GB fine as of right now in most situations? Absolutely it is, yes. But will it be in 2-3 years time? I don't think it will, and that's what you really need to think about.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn't an argument of whether or not we can use 32GB of RAM as gamers, it's an argument of whether we can use more than 16GB.

Born_2_Kill_83 · 10 May 2020 at 08:31

MaXxBoulton said:
some more info like CPU and GPU, gaming res and FPS would be good.

8700k @ 5.1, 2080Ti and 3840x1600p - WZ see's just under 120fps

FireTwo · 10 May 2020 at 09:01

Personally I think 16gb is fine maybe ddr5 will be time to upgrade

Joxeon · 10 May 2020 at 09:27

FireTwo said:
Personally I think 16gb is fine maybe ddr5 will be time to upgrade

Yeah, 16gb is fine unless your into VR. 32gb of ddr 5 is going to sting the wallet.

Donnie Fisher · 10 May 2020 at 10:22

The vast majority of the time, I've not burst the 16Gb level when using the computer. When having the likes of Premiere, Photoshop and others things open, It generally seemed to run at the 9 to 13Gb range.

I think the only time I did recently was when rendering a 10000x6000 pixel image in blender, and it hit 24Gb for a while. I do feel that the 32Gb is noce to have in terms of the overhead, but for the majority of the time, I dont think I'm using it.

EsaT · 10 May 2020 at 10:27

Born_2_Kill_83 said:
Yeah we're right on the switch over period, 16gb not enough very soon, 32gb over kill, how are ram prices atm?

Cartel prices of some years ago are definitely only reason why above 16GB hasn't become more common.
That made memory amount advance stagnate just like Intel did for CPUs.

Followed by ancient 8GB of old museum tech consoles limiting amount games have been designed to work with.

Troezar · 10 May 2020 at 10:27

Donnie Fisher said:
The vast majority of the time, I've not burst the 16Gb level when using the computer. When having the likes of Premiere, Photoshop and others things open, It generally seemed to run at the 9 to 13Gb range.

I think the only time I did recently was when rendering a 10000x6000 pixel image in blender, and it hit 24Gb for a while. I do feel that the 32Gb is noce to have in terms of the overhead, but for the majority of the time, I dont think I'm using it.

Agreed, although I've gone for 32GB as I expect to keep this system for at least the next 5 years. In which time I think the RAM requirements will rise.

silvagti · 10 May 2020 at 10:28

When the next generation consoles release, both of which have 16gb Ram and high speed SSD storage, I think you'll want 32Gb on a gaming PC to allow for the overheads of running Windows/background apps and to make up for potentially slower storage on PC depending on your SSD.

16GB will be more than enough for this year though.