Time to replace 10 yr old ram?

ajtupman

ajtupman

ajtupman

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As a gamer is there ever any reason to want/need more than 16gb of ram? Would 32gb be better or would I see no benefit at all?

The only reason I ask is during some games, Ark and GTA5 in particular my game will crash, citing lack of memory, or Windows is running low on memory. close program yes/no.

The memory I have now is 16gb Corsair Vengeance LP. It is ten years old though so could this be the problem?

Any recommendations on brands and amounts/speed etc are greatly appreciated...
 
16gb is plenty. More than plenty. Have you messed with the windows page file? Or have you run some type of ssd os optimisation tool in an attempt to free up as much ssd space as possible?

I'd say you have probably manually set the page file to a certain limit rather than allowing windows to manage it.
 
Jamesyboyjim said:
16gb is plenty. More than plenty. Have you messed with the windows page file? Or have you run some type of ssd os optimisation tool in an attempt to free up as much ssd space as possible?

I'd say you have probably manually set the page file to a certain limit rather than allowing windows to manage it.
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Ok, the page file thing sounds faintly familiar, what size should it be in windows 10 with 16gb ram?
 
ajtupman said:
Ok, the page file thing sounds faintly familiar, what size should it be in windows 10 with 16gb ram?
Click to expand...

Assuming you are using an SSD - Min size 1024MB (so Windows can do its thing properly and to minimise SSD writes, etc.) Max size will depend on your usage - I've had mine set at 8192MB with 16GB of RAM and never had a single issue. You could leave it on OS managed but on some setups that will just eat a load of SSD space that will never actually be utilised by the pagefile.

If you are using a mechanical HDD just leave it on Windows/OS managed.

I couldn't recommend upgrading the RAM for gaming unless you leave a LOT of programs running in the background, etc.
 
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Rroff said:
Assuming you are using an SSD - Min size 1024MB (so Windows can do its thing properly and to minimise SSD writes, etc.)
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As you are gaming, you'll need to come up much higher than 1gb! Please just let windows manage it and save yourself the aggro. It wont devour tonnes of space on the ssd I promise! :D
 
^^ Initial (Min) size 1024MB Max size 8192MB (Will depend on your usage) - not hard setting it to 1024MB static. (I know what I'm talking about and those settings are chosen for a reason not just parroting something I read on a web site once :P).

EDIT: Oh and SSD optimisers are nasty - I have no idea where they come up with their pagefile settings but they cause more instability than anything else :S

EDIT2: Left GTAV running for awhile doing its own thing and paged use never went above 500MB peak :S
 
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Completed agree with the others about setting Window's Page File settings to allow Windows to manage them, but just have to ask - your Corsair Vengeance LP is ten years old?! DDR3 only arrived on the scene eight and a half years ago, and Corsair launched that line five years ago (http://www.techpowerup.com/146633/c...rofile-high-performance-ddr3-memory-kits.html).

I'm wondering if you're adding the ages of your RAM sticks together to get a total age (2 x 5 years), just like the hilarious eBay sellers who quote a Q6600 as an "8.4GHz Processor" as it's 4 cores x 2.4GHz. :D:D
 
I'd also check that network drivers are up-to-date. As some have caused network data memory leaks of sorts (I forget the correct terminology but I experienced this) with online games. Caused my memory usage to hit 15-16GB when playing GTA when normally it hits 8-9GB.

And definitely check that Page File settings are as they should be.
 
^^ If Windows 10 its largely those based on Atheros controllers though there are 1-2 other issues with networking in Windows 10 that can cause colossal memory leaks :S there have also been isolated problems with some sound card drivers, etc. causing massive memory use on 10.
 
You have enough ram. There is another issue with your system as people have pointed out.

If you have one of those terrible killer network cards, or the oem equivalent, then update your drivers and google the ndu.sys issue.
 
Set your pagefile to 'System Managed' unless you know how to calculate and measure the ram usage.

On System Managed, you'll never get low memory messages.
 
ajtupman said:
As a gamer is there ever any reason to want/need more than 16gb of ram? Would 32gb be better or would I see no benefit at all?

The only reason I ask is during some games, Ark and GTA5 in particular my game will crash, citing lack of memory, or Windows is running low on memory. close program yes/no.

The memory I have now is 16gb Corsair Vengeance LP. It is ten years old though so could this be the problem?

Any recommendations on brands and amounts/speed etc are greatly appreciated...
Click to expand...

Your RAM is not 10 years old. 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 kits were not available 10 years ago.

Yes I'm being pedantic, but I like correcting errors ;D
 
I have set my pagefile to 4gb min and max with my 16gb

bledd. said:
Set your pagefile to 'System Managed' unless you know how to calculate and measure the ram usage.

On System Managed, you'll never get low memory messages.
Click to expand...

The problem with doing that it matches your memory, so he will loose 16gb of hdd/sdd space
 
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