Is 8gb enough for gaming

beefybarn · 12 Sep 2016 at 19:58

Hi all

putting a rig together for a friend on a limited budget, is 8gb ram good enough for gaming ?

Relentless81 · 12 Sep 2016 at 19:59

Only ever had 8GB to date and never a problem for me

Gze · 12 Sep 2016 at 20:16

8GB in general should be enough, but does depend on the game. More and more games are listing 8GB as minimum requirements, so in the future it could be a problem.

Neutral · 13 Sep 2016 at 07:43

On a budget build, you're not shooting for 1080p60 at all ultra settings...and you can always disable services/effects in Windows to lower ram usage...also page file etc, you will be fine.

beefybarn · 13 Sep 2016 at 08:51

Cheers, puts my mind at rest.

Bantu · 13 Sep 2016 at 11:21

agreed. you'll get more utility from putting the £30-£40 you save on the RAM towards a better GPU.

morguk · 29 Sep 2016 at 19:42

Started noticing my RAM usage is getting rather high in games recently, 6.5gb etc.

Although that's within 8gb I remember back in the day playing with 4gb and games going to 3gb. However when I upgraded to 8gb the games straight away went to 4gb (both times x64). Basically Windows knows what to do with your RAM and in some situations would probably hit 8gb now if you upgraded to 16gb.

For this reason I'm going to upgrade to 16gb in the near future as it feels like within the next year 8gb is going to be pushed hard in some games.

I do agree though, I'd rather spend the money on CPU/GPU. Extra RAM is always a good future upgrade option, definitely not needed on day 1!

hornetstinger · 29 Sep 2016 at 19:49

I upgraded from 6GB to 24GB. Only cost £100. Upgrading to 16GB was more or less the same so thought why not.

TheVoice · 30 Sep 2016 at 00:10

Neutral said:
On a budget build, you're not shooting for 1080p60 at all ultra settings...and you can always disable services/effects in Windows to lower ram usage...also page file etc, you will be fine.

Please don't go suggesting people disable the page file.

Disco_P · 30 Sep 2016 at 17:13

I upgraded from 8GB to 16GB about a year ago for GTA V cause I was getting hitching where I thought it was the game moving data between the pagefile and ram. The hitching went away whilst I was waiting for it to be delivered but I didn't return it cause I didn't want to waste £3 for postage back!