is 8GB RAM overkill

[slypie]

Building myself a new PC soon and Scan have some cheap branded 4GB DDR3 RAM but is 4GB enough these days for gaming. Would 8GB be better when using Windows 7 x64 or will 4GB be fine?

[nibbler]

8GB is fine for gaming but 8GB is perhaps worth getting just for a bit of peace of mind in 2 year's time. Depends on price I guess.

[Sputnik]

I've got 8 and I turned the page file off. I rarely use more than 4 but, If it is cheap why not? I guess if you was using something like photoshop it would give the best advantage.

[chuckskull]

4GB would be fine, but 8 would be better. I use 4GB and not many games push it tbh, but newer ones are starting to and it is irritating when they do. Civ 5 has been tempting me to upgrade to 8GB recently.

Like other's I'd have to say; if it's cheap and you have the money why not? Probably about one of the cheapest ways to add a bit of future-proofing if nothing else.

[Georgy291]

i currently have 4gig. I find it to be just ample now but i will soon be buying more. Currently windows uses just under 2gig. Then when running a game it pushes it to just under 4. This is fully sufficient. How ever if you then decide to tap out and open a webpage up or something else. Then i tend to start hitting problems. Given the current price of DDR3 and the CPUs. For me (i has a i5) since the ram is in dual channel, i need to buy ram in pairs. So getting 4 gig would be 2x2gig sticks. Where as getting 8gig would be 2x4gig sticks. I see much more sense to get 8gig sticks to avoid having the fun of trying to sell the 2x2gig in the future when i sudenly decide i dont have enough.

TL : DR

2x2gig = £38

4gig = £45 (get 2 = 90ish)

why bother with the 2x2 when 8gig is not much more and saves haste later.

PS: 4gig is enough to max out anything at 1080p apart from crysis

[Zak33]

I've had 8 gig for ages....

will be giving 4gb of it to my Dad to up his 4 to 8 cos he's the film and photo editor and I recently took it out and it made not one jot of difference to my PC for gaming, excel, or anything else I do.

To be fair, I also have the pagefile off...

[smargh]

I've had 8 for a few years - since I think RAM prices were a lot cheaper.

I have two permanent VMs (VMware Workstation): work VPN, and one for services, temporary DHCP server & fiddling - these mean that I use 5GB or memory all the time. There's another VM which I use for remote testing from my workplace during weekdays - that VM has 1.5GB allocated. Sometimes I have 5 or 6 VMs running and get very close to using all 8GB.

If you don't intend to use any VMs, then 4GB will probably be the sweet spot. Otherwise, go for 8GB.

[jim]

I'm on 8GB on my main desktop, Civ5 is the only thing that's ever pushed me over 4GB, and I never bother closing down software when I play games.

Last night for example, I didn't bother shutting down Football Manager whilst playing CoD - with more than 4GB of RAM things can be a bit easier sometimes.

Certainly not a necessity, but nice to have.

[Iron Sights]

I would be tempted to put that money aside and spend it in other areas of your build or perhaps put it towards an ssd.

[Georgy291]

I've had 8 gig for ages....

will be giving 4gb of it to my Dad to up his 4 to 8 cos he's the film and photo editor and I recently took it out and it made not one jot of difference to my PC for gaming, excel, or anything else I do.

To be fair, I also have the pagefile off...

assuming looking at your specs, with that hardware i wouldnt expect you to max out many games so yeah you wouldnt notice a difference in 8 to 4. But when the games are maxed out then it can become rather obvious