I always hear 16gb memory is an overkill - but why ?

[shaithis]

Most people are still running 32-bit apps, which are limited to 2GB each.

3GB if they have added the LMA flag.

RAM is one of those things where its best to "suck it and see". It's damn easy to take a look at how much of it is being used at any time.

[sha-1]

I have 16GB of RAM (2x8GB), it's very convenient for storing temporary data and reducing writes to my SSD.

[flearider]

look at the price who cares what others think get it and stick it in .. you'll use it some day .. maybe ...

[shaithis]

look at the price who cares what others think get it and stick it in .. you'll use it some day .. maybe ...

You don't really save anything by buying now. You may not use the extra RAM......EVER...it will most likely drop in price over time until DDR4 is released. Doesn't make any sense at all IMO.

[Millennium]

Windows will generally use your free memory as a disk cache, even though it won't really tell you, since Vista. Granted, we all have SSDs so you won't notice as much, but it will use it.

Also, +1 for ramdisk, I use this freeware. I only set it up as 500mb (a bit small) as I have 8gb, day to day it's fine and I have seen a good boost (even from SSD), however I have to mess about sometimes to get stuff to install as there's not much temp space on it.

I use it for all browser caches, TMP and TEMP, it's worth doing. Doesn't take long to set up - also using it on my laptop with 4gb ram, helped there.

[nomissivraj]

Because most applications (especially games) don't use enough to make it necessary. For instance I just opened a game, a video, chrome, firefox, an excel file, a png file and a pdf file. I'd still only used 15% of my 16Gb. I got 16Gb just in case, because the extra cash meant nothing to me.

Exactly this ^
The only reason to get more than 8GB currently would be if you were planning on doing a lot of high definition video encoding/editing/rendering or even 3D modeling.
Some get 16GB just for future proofing... Better just to wait until you actually need 16GB before getting that much though as the cost will be far lower than it is now.

[pipTheGeek]

3GB if they have added the LMA flag.

And the exe header flags say the exe is compatable with a larger address space.

Up to Office 2010, Microsoft recommend using the 32bit version becuase there are so few add-ins that will work with the 64 bit version of Office. I don't know if this is still the case with Office 2013.

My home PC has 6GB RAM and even with local SQL express and other dev stuff running I've never noticed it run out, but again, Visual Studio is a 32 bit app.

Of course, having more RAM won't make your PC any slower, it just probably won't make it any faster, so if you can afford the extra then why not?

[Konstantin1]

I upgraded from 6Gb to 12Gb few months ago, and I must say I did notice a difference in snapiness around windows / minimizing games etc. Especially ones like GTA 4 (bad console port). Windows 7 is pretty good at caching data into RAM too, around 70% is at standby for me.

[stilkun]

It depends really on the computer or laptop setup if it has dedicated graphics card or integrated graphics card. The integrated graphics card will use some of your RAM resource as VRAM to process the graphics.

Applications continue to hog more RAM resource when you have large quantity of data and processing them. 8GB is good enough but you can buy more if you find all you RAM is being used...

[quady]

As others have said, its OTT because its difficult to use that much RAM.

However the cost difference of 16gb over 8bg is no negligible unless you're on a real budget you'd be mad not to get 16.

[Mehta23]

16GB is just less than double the price of 8GB.

[BatXDude]

I have 16gb and I'm upping to 32gb after the current prices go down for DDR3 memory. I'm a video editor so the use of RAM is key for me. The more the merrier I believe.

[SuperJag86]

I was thinking of setting up a Ramdisk but is it that much better than a good SSD?
And what are the best uses for one?

I was debating on whether 16 GB is overkill myself but if I can find a solid reason for using the unused RAM then I might as well go for it!

[Dooms]

I have 16Gb because I have more money than sense (or requirement).

[superlattice09]

Overkill also means future proof?

[teppic]

I've got 16gb because I run virtual machines (I can run two full VMs at the same time very comfortably). That's three full operating systems running at once with applications. 32gb would be basically ludicrous for anyone without very specific needs.