Microsoft removes support page recommending 32GB RAM for gaming PCs

[poshflamingos]

So you think you can see 4K textures on a 1080p render/dispapy?

This makes it obvious you have no idea how textures work in games.

"4K textures" means texture files that are 4096x4096 pixels in size. It does NOT mean "textures made for 4K displays". Texture sizes have nothing whatsoever to do with display resolution.

And yes, you can absolutely see 4K (and higher) textures on a 1080p display. Depending on the size of the object where that texture is applied to and how close you can get to it, even 4K textures can get pixelated, regardless of what display resolution you're using.

As for the rest of the argument, the other commenters are right, 8 GB is no longer enough. Even the base consoles of this generation have more VRAM than that, and that's what AAA devs use as the target for the development of their games. Any game that makes full use of the consoles' VRAM cannot be run on an 8 GB card without ugly compromises. You either sacrifice texture quality, accept extra pop-in, or suffer awful performance at the same texture settings the consoles use. It's especially shameful for GPUs that are otherwise much faster than the consoles (like the RTX 3070, RTX 4060, RTX 5060, the 8 GB versions of the RTX 5060 Ti and RX 9600 XT) and yet are still unable to match the visual quality of a console, because they're starved for VRAM while the consoles aren't.

This video shows exactly that, many examples of games that run perfectly fine (at high or at least acceptable framerates, not "30 FPS" like you imply) on the 16 GB 4060 Ti but run poorly on the 8 GB version, despite everything else in these cards being identical. In some (The Last of Us, Callisto Prootocol, Resident Evil 4, Plague Tale Requiem) you get atrocious performance, in others (Halo Infinite, Forspoken) you get the same performance but horrid visual problems and pop-in on the 8 GB card. The only way to fix this is to sacrifice texture quality and lower settings, but then you have a GPU that cannot even run games looking as good as a 6-year-old PS5 can, which is pathetic.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

How is objective data a bad thing? If an 8GB GPU performs significantly worse than a 16GB how is that wrong? If the 16GB model can run games at 1440p, but the 8GB model cannot due to not having enough VRAM how is that a problem they created? You didn't provide any specific issues you have with the way they benchmark cards. Even when I disagree with them, I know they have a lot more experience than I do and probably still have the consumer's best interested in mind.

Keep in mind, you're arguing with a guy at war with reality itself.

Whatever he likes is objective, everything else is lies.

 

[Art C]

This has been going on for decades. Whatever amount of RAM microslop says is required for a particular operating system, you should triple it.

 

[Vanderlinde]

When I got my newest Desktop, I went all out: 5090, 64GB DDR5, 8 TB SSD and 285k knowing I wasn't going to upgrade again for years. I had no idea that the market was going to flip and become completely unaffordable just a week after I got my computer.

16GB is enough for most uses, but 32 gives you a nice cushion for games that demand more.

For me: 64GB is future proofing till 2035.

64GB is more then enough, and here I am running with 4x 32GB lol. And my servers having 384GB.

16GB is enough for "most use cases" and most people don't understand, ram being USED is actually a good thing in regards of performance. Think of it as caching all your favourite apps and games. When it's not needed or when RAM demand is increasing windows will simply release the cached stuff and grant RAM to the app demanding it.

Linux is doing the same thing; it is filling up unused RAM for one thing only: caching. And with that you increase performance because on for example a webserver, many queries don't have to be executed every second knowing you can store those in the form of Memcached or Opcache (or Redis caching).

 

[QuaZulu]

"This isn't the ram you're looking for. You can go about your business." Hmm, I've seen that trick before, I think...

 

[Hotlynx16]

Kinda crazy, when I was spec’in out my build a few years ago I was going for 16GB of ram but it was actually cheaper to get a 32GB kit at the time, it was all so dirt cheap. Same with nvme drives. Even still have a spare 32GB kit in the drawer, but I see little need for 64gb of ram for what I do atm.

I bought a two stick kit of 64GB of DDR4 3600Mhz in early 2025 for $118, I had 64GB but 4 sticks of 16GB,wouldn't do 3200Mhz But the two stick kit does! Look at the price now!!

 

[jbright]

Nothing to see here, just a tech company memory-holing its own advice the same year it starts shipping 8GB laptops at a premium price.

The real punchline is Nadella talking about winning back Windows "fans" while the OS itself is held together with Electron wrappers eating the RAM nobody can afford anymore.

 

[Axeia]

So you think you can see 4K textures on a 1080p render/dispapy?

Yes, without a doubt, guaranteed. I'll raise the bar. I don't just think but know for a fact you can as well.

Imagine a 100% flat wall. The texture doesn't even wrap around a wall shape, just flat on the front of it all glorious 4k facing directly towards you (best case situation).
Now think about what happens when you move closer to that wall.
You only see part of it, but you see that part up close - effectively what you're doing is zooming in.

Now, you may have had a point if all games were something like say League of Legends where you're working with a fixed camera/zoom level. But for any game where you can get close to an object high resolution textures matter. When I walk up close to say a tent in a game and I can see the threads of the fabric that's so much more immersive then when it simply looks like color with dithering applied to it.

 

[LordVile95]

Yes, without a doubt, guaranteed. I'll raise the bar. I don't just think but know for a fact you can as well.

So you think it’s possible to see a higher resolution than is displayed? Like if I gave you a 720p display and played you a 720p source and a 16K source with everything else bar the resolution the same you think you’d be able to tell the difference?

Imagine a 100% flat wall. The texture doesn't even wrap around a wall shape, just flat on the front of it all glorious 4k facing directly towards you (best case situation).
Now think about what happens when you move closer to that wall.
You only see part of it, but you see that part up close - effectively what you're doing is zooming in.

But it’s rendered at 1080p so the change doesn’t matter, if anything it’s worse as you’re introducing scaling and artifacting whilst degrading performance.

Now, you may have had a point if all games were something like say League of Legends where you're working with a fixed camera/zoom level. But for any game where you can get close to an object high resolution textures matter. When I walk up close to say a tent in a game and I can see the threads of the fabric that's so much more immersive then when it simply looks like color with dithering applied to it.

Aside from the fact that the game isn’t displaying that resolution. It’s like playing 24 bit audio source through 16 bit headphones, you’re downscaling it to 16 bit anyway what’s the point in the extra compute to get the same output.

 

[Axeia]

So you think it’s possible to see a higher resolution than is displayed? Like if I gave you a 720p display and played you a 720p source and a 16K source with everything else bar the resolution the same you think you’d be able to tell the difference?

The simple answer: No.

The longer answer:
Presumably downscaling would have to be used to display a 16k source on a 720p display. Depending on how well whatever tackles that a difference might be visible although it's unlikely to be for the better.
Although arguably for video games that is exactly what has been done in some cases to achieve anti-aliasing which does visually look better albeit at the loss of detail.

But it’s rendered at 1080p so the change doesn’t matter, if anything it’s worse as you’re introducing scaling and artifacting whilst degrading performance.

You're only seeing part of the texture when you get close, the change does matter.
If I send you a 4k image and you watch it on your 1080p monitor, you see a fourth of it at a time, you're zoomed in but that fourth is at full quality.

If I had downscaled it to 1080p you could watch it all at once but you wouldn't be able to see as much detail.

Bringing something with a 4k texture close to your camera pov in a game does the same, you won't see the entire texture all at once anymore. But you see a part of it close up (zoomed in), regardless of your screen resolution the lower the texture resolution the more detail is lost.

Aside from the fact that the game isn’t displaying that resolution. It’s like playing 24 bit audio source through 16 bit headphones, you’re downscaling it to 16 bit anyway what’s the point in the extra compute to get the same output.

Very different, you have an actual bottleneck there. The bottleneck for textures is how close you can get that texture to your games camera pov. In a lot of games the answer is until collision with the object it's on occurs, which tends to be pretty dang close.

If the game allows fine grained controls and there's no collision detection you can theoretically get so close that your entire screen would be covered by a single pixel of the texture.

--

I'm not sure how I can make the relationship between texture resolution and distance to the camera any more clear. Perhaps something will click if you read something like:

Texture Resolution Guide: When to Use 1K, 2K, or 4K

Not every project needs 4K textures. Learn how to choose the right resolution for web, games, film, and print to optimize file size and render time.

texturize.app

or try to see if you can convince an LLM of your pov - you'll be met with resistance (which is rare from those yes-men).

 

[RaXelliX]

To be honest I don’t trust this site (particularly Steve and Tim) on anything to do with RAM as they clearly have an axe to grind and do not approach the issue fairly or objectively.

And we should trust you, an anonymous commenter who clearly has an axe to grind and does not approach the issue fairly or objectively?

There’s a reason why they typically bring up tailor made benchmarks for the “low VRAM” GPUs they’ve decided are a problem

Since when is benchmarking the most demanding section of a game a "tailor made benchmark"?

It's common sense. If a card can handle the most demanding section then it can handle the rest of the game just fine. Low VRAM GPU's are a problem. 1080p medium stuttering on 8GB cards is not enough evidence?

declare sub 60 FPS as adequate performance if it supports their position rather than use the standard suite, which for some unknown reason removes merely all noticeable difference between the “bad” and “good” SKUs of the card.

When have they declared sub 60 as adequate?
Tim recommends 60+ as he mostly plays singleplayer games. Steve recommends much more since he usually plays multiplayer games.

The "standard suite" as you call it are built in benchmarks which in most cases are notoriously unreliable metrics of actual gameplay performance. These are usually too light and dont stress either the GPU or CPU enough.

Anyone who takes built in benchmarks as gold is going to have unpleasant surprises in their actual gameplay.

 

[LordVile95]

This makes it obvious you have no idea how textures work in games.

"4K textures" means texture files that are 4096x4096 pixels in size. It does NOT mean "textures made for 4K displays". Texture sizes have nothing whatsoever to do with display resolution.

And yes, you can absolutely see 4K (and higher) textures on a 1080p display. Depending on the size of the object where that texture is applied to and how close you can get to it, even 4K textures can get pixelated, regardless of what display resolution you're using.

Oh no you don’t know how resolution works. Getting closer to an o heat in game is not the same as getting closer to it in real life or getting closer to the display.

As for the rest of the argument, the other commenters are right, 8 GB is no longer enough. Even the base consoles of this generation have more VRAM than that, and that's what AAA devs use as the target for the development of their games. Any game that makes full use of the consoles' VRAM cannot be run on an 8 GB card without ugly compromises. You either sacrifice texture quality, accept extra pop-in, or suffer awful performance at the same texture settings the consoles use. It's especially shameful for GPUs that are otherwise much faster than the consoles (like the RTX 3070, RTX 4060, RTX 5060, the 8 GB versions of the RTX 5060 Ti and RX 9600 XT) and yet are still unable to match the visual quality of a console, because they're starved for VRAM while the consoles aren't.

The benchmarks literally show you’re wrong

This video shows exactly that, many examples of games that run perfectly fine (at high or at least acceptable framerates, not "30 FPS" like you imply) on the 16 GB 4060 Ti but run poorly on the 8 GB version, despite everything else in these cards being identical. In some (The Last of Us, Callisto Prootocol, Resident Evil 4, Plague Tale Requiem) you get atrocious performance, in others (Halo Infinite, Forspoken) you get the same performance but horrid visual problems and pop-in on the 8 GB card. The only way to fix this is to sacrifice texture quality and lower settings, but then you have a GPU that cannot even run games looking as good as a 6-year-old PS5 can, which is pathetic.

I don’t know if you looked but there’s maybe one game the 8GB models runs poorly on that the 16GB doesn’t and both are still under 60, if rhey turned RT off both cards would be the same. Also in the multi game averages they’re very close.

The 16GB model can’t run games as well as the PS5 what’s your point?

 

[amghwk]

This is the reason sometimes, if you have the money at the moment of purchase, "future-proofing" or getting the best you can afford at the time of purchase, without overspending, will be the best decision you would have made. Those who purchased at least 64GB DDR5, before the current AI-induced memory price crisis, are the real winners now.

 

[LordVile95]

This is the reason sometimes, if you have the money at the moment of purchase, "future-proofing" or getting the best you can afford at the time of purchase, without overspending, will be the best decision you would have made. Those who purchased at least 64GB DDR5, before the current AI-induced memory price crisis, are the real winners now.

I mean how many people need 64GB though? 32 is more than enough, 16GB performs the same as 32GB and even 8GB runs fine in 99% of cases if you’re not doing too much in the background.