How Much RAM Do Gamers Need? 8GB vs. 16GB vs. 32GB

[Julio Franco]

Today we're looking into how much RAM you need to play the latest and greatest gaming titles. About this time each year we set on a memory capacity quest and last year's expedition lead us to conclude that for gamers 4GB is out, 8GB was the minimum, 16GB is the sweet spot and 32GB is overkill. Read on for our 2018 test.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1770-how-much-ram-pc-gaming/

 

[R00sT3R]

At this point I've put all new hardware purchases on hold until I see what Cyberpunk 2077 will demand for a maxed out experience on a 21:9 Ultra wide monitor at 60fps, as it is literally the only game I'm remotely interested in and the only one I'd consider spending big bucks on new hardware for.

..Until then, my i5 4690K, Nvidia 970 and 8GB of 2400Mhz DDR3 will suffice, As it still does everything I need it to.

 

[toooooot]

Mycopinion: 1 stick of 4gb and 3 fake sticks with rgb lights for 90% boost

 

[Carrandas]

..Until then, my i5 4690K, Nvidia 970 and 8GB of 2400Mhz DDR3 will suffice, As it still does everything I need it to.

My PC is now about 6 years old and still runs all games, I just put in a 1060 last year. Running a i5 3570K, a 256gb SSD and 16gb of ram.

I'll probably upgrade once the nvidia 30x0 is out.

 

[Vulcanproject]

You can get away with 8GB but for peak performance 16GB is definitely required on a multitude of titles today.

Batman Arkham Knight was the first title that drew major headlines for this. The PC port wasn't handled well, but most of the problems reported like the stuttering came down to people playing with 8GB of RAM. It was one of the first games that easily peaked beyond 10GB system RAM usage under Windows 7/8/10 and you knew about it performance wise, the game didn't handle it gracefully.

I played it with 16GB a year after it came out and wondered what all the fuss was about. It ran perfectly fine for me. So since that 16GB was the default minimum choice for anyone seriously gaming.

 

[fktech]

Working with 16GB I can say there is never enough ram or processing speed!

 

[Forebode]

I've had Forza Horizon crash if I left google open in the background.. @ 3440x1440.. When I monitored it without chrome running, it used close to 13GB at max settings. on a 1080ti ftw3/1600x/16GB@2933/ssd. Since motherboard stability seems to focus on only 2 dimms, I'd like to see high performance 32gb kits more widely available..

 

[gamerk2]

Remember that games don't need 10+GB of RAM at any single point in time; a lot of that RAM usage is just old data that hasn't been cleaned up yet. I honestly believe you could shrink RAM usage a ton if devs actually went out of their way to clean up and free old/unneeded data.

That being said, without enough physical RAM you have to worry about paging performance loss; even with a SSD reading data off a hard drive is still a relatively slow task.

These days, 8GB isn't enough; I've seen games happily gobble all of it and slow to a crawl. 16GB is fine, though going to 32GB is probably good for at least the next half decade. Regardless, devs are free from the old 32-bit 2GB user space limit, and are happily using all the RAM they can get now.

 

[dirtyferret]

The RGB on my 4gb of ram prevents any bottlenecks for today's games and future proofs me for any of tomorrow's games.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Remember that games don't need 10+GB of RAM at any single point in time; a lot of that RAM usage is just old data that hasn't been cleaned up yet. I honestly believe you could shrink RAM usage a ton if devs actually went out of their way to clean up and free old/unneeded data.

That being said, without enough physical RAM you have to worry about paging performance loss; even with a SSD reading data off a hard drive is still a relatively slow task.

These days, 8GB isn't enough; I've seen games happily gobble all of it and slow to a crawl. 16GB is fine, though going to 32GB is probably good for at least the next half decade. Regardless, devs are free from the old 32-bit 2GB user space limit, and are happily using all the RAM they can get now.

OTOH, keeping that "old data" in RAM means dramatically reduced load times, as it does not need to be reloaded. It is an intentional thing I think, largely to get around the slow CPUs and long load times of consoles.

Not that I am complaining. We have had all this RAM sitting in systems for years now. Hell, my ivy bridge system had 16GB in it since the day it was built, and it took until 2016 that ANY game used more then 4GB. Now we have tons of games actually using the hardware PCs provide.

 

[kira setsu]

Seems this should've been called "how much v-ram do you need?"

pretty much any pc geared towards gaming has 16gb of system memory, gpu on the other hand is what can knock down your framerates, I run a 980ti and it can still max most games but because it only has 6gb of vram it cant always push the best, seems the devs and gpu makers know this and fluff their games up just enough to make you wanna buy new hardware, most former flagships can still push hard but memory is a pain, when the vaunted 2080ti see's its massive tank of ram get sucked dry in probably a year or two it's time to call these unoptomizing devs out.

 

[dirtyferret]

Seems this should've been called "how much v-ram do you need?"

pretty much any pc geared towards gaming has 16gb of system memory, gpu on the other hand is what can knock down your framerates, I run a 980ti and it can still max most games but because it only has 6gb of vram it cant always push the best, seems the devs and gpu makers know this and fluff their games up just enough to make you wanna buy new hardware, most former flagships can still push hard but memory is a pain, when the vaunted 2080ti see's its massive tank of ram get sucked dry in probably a year or two it's time to call these unoptomizing devs out.

Depends on your resolution but even AC Odyssey is under 5GB for 1080p

 

[BrianMontanye]

Decent article, although I do not like your choice of processor. I would think a more mainstream proc would have lead to a better standard. Not many people are going to be running that i9 proc. Decent nonetheless.

 

[poohbear]

Whoah 8gb "is out"? u said 4gb is out and nobody would argue with that, but "8gb is out" implies that we can't play games on 8gb without serious performance hits, which is totally not true. ALL of your games played totally fine with 8gb, it never hindered performance in any noticeable way the way 4gb would. Just sayin.

 

[poohbear]

You can get away with 8GB but for peak performance 16GB is definitely required on a multitude of titles today.

Batman Arkham Knight was the first title that drew major headlines for this. The PC port wasn't handled well, but most of the problems reported like the stuttering came down to people playing with 8GB of RAM. It was one of the first games that easily peaked beyond 10GB system RAM usage under Windows 7/8/10 and you knew about it performance wise, the game didn't handle it gracefully.

I played it with 16GB a year after it came out and wondered what all the fuss was about. It ran perfectly fine for me. So since that 16GB was the default minimum choice for anyone seriously gaming.

a year after released it was patched so tight it couldn't so much as fart. it had little to do with 16gb u used.

 

[gamerk2]

OTOH, keeping that "old data" in RAM means dramatically reduced load times, as it does not need to be reloaded. It is an intentional thing I think, largely to get around the slow CPUs and long load times of consoles.

Let me rephrase: There's a difference between "data I don't need now, but might need again later" and "data that is no longer needed; why am I still holding onto it again?". I was referring to the second category, not the first.

 

[gamerk2]

Whoah 8gb "is out"? u said 4gb is out and nobody would argue with that, but "8gb is out" implies that we can't play games on 8gb without serious performance hits, which is totally not true. ALL of your games played totally fine with 8gb, it never hindered performance in any noticeable way the way 4gb would. Just sayin.

Provably wrong; my old PC was a 2600k, 1080 (non-Ti), 8GB RAM, and choked the death on Deus Ex: Human Revolution when it happily ate every bit of free RAM that I had available. There's a subset of games where 8GB simply isn't enough to play at maximum settings.

 

[emmzo]

Long story short: 16Gb. I thought it was common knowledge by now.

 

[Pastuch]

My 2500K with 8gbs of RAM and 1080 TI definitely needs another 8gbs of ram. Good article. 7 year old CPU FTW. I play at 4k HDR on a 55 inch LG OLED.

 

[Vulcanproject]

a year after released it was patched so tight it couldn't so much as fart. it had little to do with 16gb u used.

Unfortunately not. The publishers actually revised the recommended specs to the game when it was re-released 4 months on with the major patch. They actually stated you want at least 12GB for the best experience. The remarkably high RAM usage was improved, but not 'fixed.' VRAM usage to boot.

Patches helped all sorts of problems but not that inherent problem many encountered. To this day you'll still potentially have problems running 'only' 8GB of RAM. Digital Foundry tried it just a couple months ago, attempted to brute force it in 4K and address the stutter. It worked, if you had the best system available.

 

[Stingy McDuck]

Whoah 8gb "is out"? u said 4gb is out and nobody would argue with that, but "8gb is out" implies that we can't play games on 8gb without serious performance hits, which is totally not true. ALL of your games played totally fine with 8gb, it never hindered performance in any noticeable way the way 4gb would. Just sayin.

Provably wrong; my old PC was a 2600k, 1080 (non-Ti), 8GB RAM, and choked the death on Deus Ex: Human Revolution when it happily ate every bit of free RAM that I had available. There's a subset of games where 8GB simply isn't enough to play at maximum settings.

I think you meant Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

#1 It's not just the RAM that makes the difference. The CPU, Hard Drive, RAM and GPU all make a big difference.

a) A Core i7 offers obvious advantages in gaming over the i5 and i3.
b) an SSD offers obvious advantages over the older HDD.
c) a 2080Ti offers obvious advantages in gaming over just about anything made by AMD.

#2 That said: When all things are equal and you have a fast CPU, fast SSD and fast GPU, I have recognized that 8GB of DDR3 or 4 RAM just isn't enough because of how Windows 10 manages resources.

16GB is more than adequate for the time being. Probably more than any intensive game actually needs. I believe the sweet spot is 12 GB or 14GB. 16GB gives you more to play with.

I always run no less than 32GB because I like to do other things while I finalize 4K video. 4K 60fps video, even with my core i9 ex, takes a long time and reduces resources significantly.

More is better. It just is. The more you have, the less you'll ever worry about needing.

The absolute safest space to be in is 32GB unless you absolutely need 64GB for video editing.

or 128GB...

 

[NahNood]

8 is really still fine today, especially if coupled with an ssd. But more and more, 16 is the new comfort zone, especially for bloated games on Frostbite engine, e.g.

 

[MonsterZero]

No reason to have 8GB anymore, that's not even enough for daily tasks for a business user.

With 3rd party bg apps for lighting, headphones, overclocking, synapse, CAM, etc I'd suggest 32GB, unless you want to hit above 75% of ram utilization while playing games.

 

[dirtyferret]

No reason to have 8GB anymore, that's not even enough for daily tasks for a business user.

With 3rd party bg apps for lighting, headphones, overclocking, synapse, CAM, etc I'd suggest 32GB, unless you want to hit above 75% of ram utilization while playing games.

Clearly you have no clue to what you are talking about. Today on my work PC I had the following open on my dual monitors all at once;

chrome with ten tabs open
firefox with ten tabs open
chrome with a single tab open
file explorer open
bitdefender up and running
notepad open
three separate versions of MS excel open each with their own spreadsheet
two PDFs

I have 6GB on my work PC and was only using 4.2GB of DDR3 RAM. I would say all those programs are 90% over what the average person has open on their laptop/PC but yeah 8GB is not enough for "daily tasks for a business user"....