(I know it's a repeated subject) A friend said they have 32GB for gaming *eyeroll*

Been really getting into my computer building frame of mind again and doing lots of comparisons and what not. It came up in a discussion with someone recently who had said in their machine they had 32GB of RAM. At the time I was thinking who needs all that but they were adamant that it helped so not knowing myself I just let it be.
On my new build I will have 16GB of RAM which will be the most I have ever used.
I've been doing research on the best use and basically everything is telling me MOST people need an absolute max of 8GB. Even the most intensive games the most the entire system used at peak times was 6GB. I'm still happy that 16GB is good for me though because I'm using photo processing with the view of video in the future so I will be able to get an advantage with mine at being able to cut video/photo render times.
Things you teach yourself can be fun! I do love learning about my fave subjects!

well in my extensive games testing (by using same machine since 2009) the older games used less memory so 8GB was plenty. could have TF2, Unreal 2k4, Left 4 Dead 2, GRID all open at the same time and alt-tab between them.

the more recent games I'm seeing 2gb for windows and then 4gb or so just for 1 game, try and open another game and my computer locks up and processes crash.
Its even starting to struggle a little bit if I alt-tab to look at a game wiki.
I'm seeing 7GB used on average after half an hour or so of gaming. The games memory leak, don't unload stuff from memory an so on.


so if you are into multi-tasking and keeping your computer for more than a year then I would say 16GB is the minimum nowadays.

I have 32GB, but I sure as hell didn't buy it for gaming!

You can tell people until you're blue in the face, but logic often can't override emotions.

Indeed, for gaming 32GB is overkill. I have 32GB RAM and the most I've ever had in use was 22GB, with hundreds of browser tabs open, WoW and at least 1 other game I forget, itunes, GIMP etc etc. I could probably manage with 16 with no issues 99.9% of the time, and issues only when I'm being silly.

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Originally Posted by Agent

I have 32GB, but I sure as hell didn't buy it for gaming!

You can tell people until you're blue in the face, but logic often can't override emotions.

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Some people just believe what they want to believe, regardless of how many facts and how much evidence is thrown in their faces. Especially today in the internet age, when any view, no matter how stupid or bizarre, can be backed up by referring to two dozen bloggers espousing equally bizarre and unsupported views.

That said, having 32 gigabytes is great. Not because they're all needed, but because 20-25 of them can be set aside for a ram drive.

Don't forget a lot (most) people cannot interpret the memory information displayed in Windows and think they are "using" the memory that windows is using for cache.

Having just upgraded to 16GB myself for virtual machines, I have yet to notice any difference in any game I play, as I fully expected.

I have 16gb and have never got close to maxing out.

while having a mere 8GB I can understand people buying more DDR3 at the moment, as the price will only go up from now on. so maybe not today or next month but eventually they may end up needing more, especially when they don't upgrade their machines more often than once every few years. when I bought my previous pc, people would often laugh when I told them I'm buying Q6600 for games. after 5 years i was quite happy I went for it.

As I understand it 16 gb is more than is really needed for gaming, over that only really helpful for heavy rendering and the like

Maybe not critically needed, but more RAM is always better,
if only for caching disk reads...

I have 16GB only because 4 sticks with moving lights on looks far better than just 2!!

I recently read a article for performance difference between Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 and the later was often ahead thanks to using/utilizing a lot more RAM (VRAM or system RAM) than Windows 8/8.1. Maybe for the future more RAM makes sense. > https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...-text=&act=url

Not for gaming, but I use big spreadsheets and the difference between 8Gb & 16Gb is quite noticeable. I'll probably get 32Gb next time I upgrade.

I would agree that 8GB is quite sufficient for gaming. I would agree lots of people think they need 16GB, when they could be investing the money saved buying just 8GB in a better GPU.

You can lead a horse to water.....

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Originally Posted by ajcardiac

You can lead a horse to water.....

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But you can't stop them replying to a thread when the OP made the post nearly a year ago ;)

8 is fine. In have never use a paging file and never go over more than 5 at max. Only time I ever had issues was with far cry 4 and its awful memory leaks. ( that reminds me I must go back and complete it.]