Would have loved to see 6GB (4+2) and 12 GB (8+4) added to the tests. I want to see how much mismatching the memory kits affects performance. (especially useful for people who use laptops and want to add more ram)
How Much RAM Should You Get? 4GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB Tested
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
Tibeardius
Posts: 64 +42
Cool test. Idea for next test is Ram speed. I remember it having a huge impact on the Fallout 4 benchmark when it was accidentally underclocked. It'd be cool to know if everything is so heavily impacted by it. I know AMD's APUs sees a huge benefit but with DDR4 coming out it'd be nice to see it on Intels side too.
Kibaruk
Posts: 3,836 +1,189
It's funny how some people mistake multi-tasking with having useless thing running.
First of all, for us as humans it's IMPOSIBLE to multi-task effectively, it's not something some can manage better than others because as soon as we start working on something, our brains go into that one thing, if you then start doing another thing the brain goes that way, and so on. Multitasking is not having a lot of things open and working in everything, we attack things by different fronts, or we find enough "free" time to dedicate to another task but we don't do everything at the same time and if you try you are loosing "efficiency".
Ok with that cleared, then there's the second part, people that think it's always faster if you have things at your finger tips (AKA having everything running)... if you are thinking into getting 16gb of ram you probably have a fast enough machine that won't take "HUGE" (As in minutes) amounts of time into opening something new (Unless, again, you have tons of things open that will take that sweet performance you tightly put inside your computer).
THEN! after all the above, there are the power users, people who not only knows how to do more things than a normal user but do them arranging their time around the tasks at hand.
PS: I loved how someone checks their firewall for viruses, da-bomb.
First of all, for us as humans it's IMPOSIBLE to multi-task effectively, it's not something some can manage better than others because as soon as we start working on something, our brains go into that one thing, if you then start doing another thing the brain goes that way, and so on. Multitasking is not having a lot of things open and working in everything, we attack things by different fronts, or we find enough "free" time to dedicate to another task but we don't do everything at the same time and if you try you are loosing "efficiency".
Ok with that cleared, then there's the second part, people that think it's always faster if you have things at your finger tips (AKA having everything running)... if you are thinking into getting 16gb of ram you probably have a fast enough machine that won't take "HUGE" (As in minutes) amounts of time into opening something new (Unless, again, you have tons of things open that will take that sweet performance you tightly put inside your computer).
THEN! after all the above, there are the power users, people who not only knows how to do more things than a normal user but do them arranging their time around the tasks at hand.
PS: I loved how someone checks their firewall for viruses, da-bomb.
Interesting article, in particular seeing that gaming benefits very little from over 4GB. I find it strange though, considering that current consoles have more, and Batman: Arkham Knight was said to require 12GB to assure smoothness (though that may be with AMD cards). So I'm guessing that more comprehensive testing could show different results.
adisoftcafe
Posts: 56 +34
adisoftcafe
Posts: 56 +34
Really? Write an article in Wordpress/Joomla. You need at least 3 apps running, and use all of them! (Text editor, Photoshop, Fireworks, etc...)
Kibaruk
Posts: 3,836 +1,189
Yes... but you don't need to have 60+ tabs openned, NetBeans, SQL connection, Starcraft, Diablo and what the heck else people seem to need opened to do that kind of work.
Background running antivirus and whatever you have residing on memory as a background service won't ever consume 8 gb of ram, unless you have a load of badly coded crap installed.
deemon
Posts: 321 +104
Yeees, you kind of need. We are using PC, not some single-task console. We're power users. Also the PC-master-race and whatnot :-D
With games that actually use memory. Try Heroes of the Storm with Ultra settings for few hours. Try WoW and fly through all zones and run few raids and dungeons on top. There are many more probably. Also windows pre and superfetch could load your entire 20+GB game into RAM once and they stay there. This does not affect fps that that much (as this article's testing showed us), but more likely to reduce loading times and microfreezes and stutters and stuff, when new models and textures are being loaded from disk.
And please don't forget actual work. Editing 4k videos and such for example. Running multiple VM-s maybe?
Last edited:
cliffordcooley
Posts: 13,141 +6,441
I had no issues on my i7 with 6gb of ram, played games, etc.
But I play games, and was forced to upgrade everything due to the motherboard unable to do PCI-E 3.0 and ran SSD's at half speed apparently.
So I went with an i5 and 8gb of ram. Windows 7 was fine too. But that pop up got the best of me, and I am now on Win10. Spyware hopefully removed...
I just rebooted, have Comodo, and Avira running, a few Asus apps from my motherboard running. Steam, Firefox ( just this one tab so far ). Had to manually count 104 processes running... Under my "user" tab in task manager I am using 800mb of RAM. Cam2.0 (NZXT) , tells me its 2.9gb total.
I have seen my RAM go to around 8gb and I had tabs open I am sure, I leave stuff running all the time. So I bought 8gb more which I will hopefully install tomorrow. Maybe I won't need it, maybe it will do nothing. But I will be happy to know it is there.
People overclock PC's and get a few fps more. Pointless it seems.
Adding more RAM does nothing on that front... Well no real surprise. Are we seeing that there is no real bottleneck ? Everything doing its job ?
But anyone who "needs" more RAM as others have said are PC users who do rendering and the likes. It helps. Gamers possibly due to the increase in power these games are demanding.
Office work and social networking... well these people don't care what RAM they have right ?
But I play games, and was forced to upgrade everything due to the motherboard unable to do PCI-E 3.0 and ran SSD's at half speed apparently.
So I went with an i5 and 8gb of ram. Windows 7 was fine too. But that pop up got the best of me, and I am now on Win10. Spyware hopefully removed...
I just rebooted, have Comodo, and Avira running, a few Asus apps from my motherboard running. Steam, Firefox ( just this one tab so far ). Had to manually count 104 processes running... Under my "user" tab in task manager I am using 800mb of RAM. Cam2.0 (NZXT) , tells me its 2.9gb total.
I have seen my RAM go to around 8gb and I had tabs open I am sure, I leave stuff running all the time. So I bought 8gb more which I will hopefully install tomorrow. Maybe I won't need it, maybe it will do nothing. But I will be happy to know it is there.
People overclock PC's and get a few fps more. Pointless it seems.
Adding more RAM does nothing on that front... Well no real surprise. Are we seeing that there is no real bottleneck ? Everything doing its job ?
But anyone who "needs" more RAM as others have said are PC users who do rendering and the likes. It helps. Gamers possibly due to the increase in power these games are demanding.
Office work and social networking... well these people don't care what RAM they have right ?
The article says if you are trying to get the most bank for your buck you should get a Radeon R9 370, but looking at them here http://amzn.to/1Id7FnI they look to be costly. If on a budget, I would keep the GPU budget to around $100 or so, which is enough for everything but high end games at highest settings for a bearable framerate.I would probably go for a Radeon R7 260X http://amzn.to/1PQLIxo or a GeForce GTX 750 Ti http://amzn.to/1PQLSVv
LBXZero
Posts: 6 +5
The test was performed wrong. The 4GB test needed to be done with a 2x2GB setup if at all possible. Otherwise, all of the tests should have been performed with a single 4GB stick, a single 8GB stick, and a single 16GB stick in order to rule out dual-channel verus single-channel scenarios.
Obviously if only one app is running the 8gb to 16gb won't show much of a difference but if you're running many apps then there is a big difference. I also notice that Chrome takes up gobs of memory when I'm opening new tabs, also the website has something to do with it as well. I have 16gb and if I leave chrome open with tons of tabs open it will slowly reach my 16gb limit! I have to reboot to clear things up because shutting down chrome doesn't do the job. This is running on windows 7 professional and running chrome Version 46.0.2490.86 m
Most who post in these forums are very tech savvy and 8gb or more ram is what fits them best.
However for the average user who does basic computing 4gb is plenty. I am a Linux user but
I also use Windows 8.1 and 10. I have several older laptops with 2gb ram to 4gb and all work
fine with multiple browsers open and office running or PS.
If you game 8gb or more but for Facebook, basic photo editing, email and office work 4gb is
fine. If money is a issue I would suggest a SSD over more ram.
However for the average user who does basic computing 4gb is plenty. I am a Linux user but
I also use Windows 8.1 and 10. I have several older laptops with 2gb ram to 4gb and all work
fine with multiple browsers open and office running or PS.
If you game 8gb or more but for Facebook, basic photo editing, email and office work 4gb is
fine. If money is a issue I would suggest a SSD over more ram.
transerv
Posts: 12 +1
I bought a 4K then went and bought a 4690K with 16 G ram you have to have 16 or more for 4K then 2 970 then found out I really need 2 980TI for 4K. Now I read D12 will be a whole New Platform so 16 G will be the Norm. Don't buy a new VC because late next year ALL VC will be Twice as Powerful for D12.
How does that make sense to you? I could understand if you were saying that 4GB is NOT enough and our results showed 4GB to be slower.
But we saw virtually no difference in performance between 4GB and 8GB of memory so how does the fact that 4GB as only tested in single-channel matter??!!?
R
Raoul Duke
Geez, all this anguish over how much DRAM.
for what it costs, go buy 4 x 4 GB kit if you want to save money or get a 2 x 8 GB, install it, close the computer and spend the rest of your life thinking about better things.
If you can benefit from more, I am sure you have the technical knowledge to determine your wants or needs.
For those that simply want it, I think when you ask why, the reply "because I can" is good enough for me.
for what it costs, go buy 4 x 4 GB kit if you want to save money or get a 2 x 8 GB, install it, close the computer and spend the rest of your life thinking about better things.
If you can benefit from more, I am sure you have the technical knowledge to determine your wants or needs.
For those that simply want it, I think when you ask why, the reply "because I can" is good enough for me.
I don't think there is any anguish, more interest. Clearly a typical user doesn't need more than 8GB of RAM like some would have you believe.
Why would 4 x 4GB be more expensive than 2 x 8GB? They are both 16GB combos that start at $60.
Obviously if you are building a budget machine and want to save as much money as possible you are far better off with a maximum of 8GB and spending the $30 - $40 you save on a slightly more power graphics card (if gaming) or a faster processor or perhaps an SSD for general usage.
If $60 - $90 is nothing to you then obviously you would just buy a 16GB kit and be done with it.
R
Raoul Duke
I agree Steve, judging by the posts there is huge interest in this topic and I am glad you have done the research so that I know for me that 16 GB is more than enough.
I don't know why 4 x 4 is more expensive than 2 x 8, but they all are at my local shop.
Given how long folks use their computer I figure they should just forgo ordering that pizza, eating out, fancy coffee or whatever to come up with the $30 - $90 which really isn't a lot of money I suspect for many Techspot readers, especially compared to what graphics cards sell for in Canada these days. Not that long ago I bought a Sapphire Nitro R390, price at the moment here is $529.99 CAD. An R9 Fury is $784.99, a Fury X hits $900. When I read the prices in USD the difference in price is mind-boggling. DRAM seems like nothing by comparison
I don't know why 4 x 4 is more expensive than 2 x 8, but they all are at my local shop.
Given how long folks use their computer I figure they should just forgo ordering that pizza, eating out, fancy coffee or whatever to come up with the $30 - $90 which really isn't a lot of money I suspect for many Techspot readers, especially compared to what graphics cards sell for in Canada these days. Not that long ago I bought a Sapphire Nitro R390, price at the moment here is $529.99 CAD. An R9 Fury is $784.99, a Fury X hits $900. When I read the prices in USD the difference in price is mind-boggling. DRAM seems like nothing by comparison
Kibaruk
Posts: 3,836 +1,189
We are simply not ment to "multitask", we might leave something running that needs time to complete ok but that is not multitasking, we work "batch" like, even if you won't recognize it.
Anyone who has 60+ tabs open clearly doesn't know how to bookmark or "read later" and I won't consider him a poweruser just because.
Anyone who has 60+ tabs open clearly doesn't know how to bookmark or "read later" and I won't consider him a poweruser just because.
Digital painting in Photoshop with image dimensions of 5000+ pixels and a dozen or so layers eats RAM up pretty quick. 6GB on my x58 rig couldn't handle it. I recently plugged in 24GB and things are running much better.
Unfortunately large brush sizes can still lag a lot. Particularly when spacing is set to a very low value, or while using the mixer brush. Ram doesn't help here, and I don't know if a CPU or GPU upgrade would help much with this or not. Maybe nothing helps here. No tech sites offer any suggestions. Even Adobe themselves make no mention of how to speed up brushes. Their advice ends with "more RAM for bigger files, and a GPU only helps with a handful of filter effects".
Unfortunately large brush sizes can still lag a lot. Particularly when spacing is set to a very low value, or while using the mixer brush. Ram doesn't help here, and I don't know if a CPU or GPU upgrade would help much with this or not. Maybe nothing helps here. No tech sites offer any suggestions. Even Adobe themselves make no mention of how to speed up brushes. Their advice ends with "more RAM for bigger files, and a GPU only helps with a handful of filter effects".
Similar threads
