# Is 4GB RAM enough for today's PC games.



## helloWorld (Sep 3, 2011)

I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?


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## Shihab (Sep 3, 2011)

helloWorld said:


> I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?



It is enough. As long as you don't run many background processes while you game, you won't run into any problems . And unless you're going for a laptop, it won't be a problem to add a coupla gigs in the future, so no worries there.

Edit: IIRC there were some games that ran smoother with extra RAM. It wasn't much of an improvement but it still is. Well, to be safe get 6GB or even 8GB of RAM. Sticks are cheap these days, so why not ?


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## JrRacinFan (Sep 3, 2011)

I've always been a firm beleiver of faster ram over capacity unless you do a ton of multitasking and photoshoping.

4GB is enough but more always helps.


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## helloWorld (Sep 3, 2011)

The thing is, and call me stupid all you want, I have an 8 GB kit, but two of the sticks are broken, and I don't know if I want to deal with the hassle of returning it when 4 of the 8 GB works.


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## Black Panther (Sep 3, 2011)

From my experience 4GB are enough even @ 2560x1440.

However, if you're sure they're broken I'd rma the kit. You paid for 8GB, why settle for less?


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## helloWorld (Sep 3, 2011)

Yeah. I will order another 8 GB pair from a different manufacturer and try those when I get it. If they work, then I will RMA the broken set.


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## Kreij (Sep 3, 2011)

I agree with BP. If they have a lifetime warranty get them replaced.
Win7 x64 will happily use it even if you don't need it.


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## Over_Lord (Sep 3, 2011)

helloWorld said:


> I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?



4GB better be, considering the "best graphics ever" games on PS3 come with 1080p 30/60fps and it has 256MB ram(system)


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## BrooksyX (Sep 3, 2011)

4gb is enough for now but I run with 12gb of ram and I can tell the difference.  Plus ddr3 ram is so cheap nowadays that why not go with at least 8gb.


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## t_ski (Sep 3, 2011)

IIRC, part of it depends on how much ram you have on your GPU's.  Your system will copy the GPU ram to memory, so if you have 4GB of GPU ram, you might run low on system resourses or start swapping ram out to the swapfile.


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## Shihab (Sep 3, 2011)

t_ski said:


> IIRC, part of it depends on how much ram you have on your GPU's.  Your system will copy the GPU ram to memory, so if you have 4GB of GPU ram, you might run low on system resourses or start swapping ram out to the swapfile.



Only in games based on DirectX versions prior to 10. DX10, 10.1 & 11 don't.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 3, 2011)

I used to have a laptop that maxed out at 2Gb ram for 5 years. then my desktops all used 4Gb ram but i recently jumped to 8Gb not long ago.

TBH. going from 4Gb to 8Gb, i cant really tell the difference unless im heavily multitasking. and im talking about Running a Spyware & Virus scan, listening to music, zipping up files and installing software off a mounted image all at the same time with a little video encoding on the side.

Most of the time my RAM usage sits around 2-2.2Gb while just surfin the net and listening to music with VLC player


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## Jstn7477 (Sep 3, 2011)

4GB is enough for now, but as of this year, I have begun to prefer 8GB in my machines. Take advantage of the oversupply of DDR3 that is occurring at this time, because it usually only happens once every few years. 8GB kits that used to cost ~$80+ literally 3 months ago are $40-50. Get as much as you want, you won't be sorry. Just beware that Win7 Home Premium x64 is limited to addressing 16GB of total RAM, including GPU (because Microsoft decided that home users don't need that much RAM I guess).


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## theeldest (Sep 4, 2011)

Agree w/ Jstn.

A couple companies announced they're getting out of the DRAM business so as of the beginning of the year, prices should start going up and not coming back this low for quite a long time.

Load up while you can. I'm goin 16GB!


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## Mussels (Sep 4, 2011)

4GB is enough with some room to spare.


In my case i can use an extra 2GB for all the other apps i leave running while gaming, so its not enough for my apps AND the games at the same time - but either one is just fine.


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## overclocker (Sep 4, 2011)

8GB helped my laptop a lot and I will never go back to 4GB.


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## n-ster (Sep 4, 2011)

4GB is enough, but at today's prices, it is much more worth it to buy 8GB, especially when it is on sale


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## digibucc (Sep 4, 2011)

Kreij said:


> Win7 x64 will happily use it even if you don't need it.



i thought that was funny


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## t_ski (Sep 4, 2011)

Hell, just looked at my 3x4GB kit and saw it's down to $80 shipped.  I might have to get another for fun


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## Robert-The-Rambler (Sep 4, 2011)

*I would upgrade now*

I just doubled my memory on my 2nd I7 PC to 12gb. The 6 gb was only $40. My memory usage listening to music and surfing the web is about 3 gb right now in Vista 64 bit Ultimate. I would be interested if somebody could test out memory usage in a variety of games in this buyers market. Why even take the chance of having a bottleneck?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 4, 2011)

since i had 6gb with my X58 rig, 4 just seems to small now. 8gb is definitely worth it or even more ram prices are so low now


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## Mathragh (Sep 4, 2011)

4Gb is enough, but the gains in responsiveness with 8GB are quite high imho. Especially when you use a couple of different programs regulary and dont totally shut down your pc, but instead let it stay on standby.

With 8GB in my laptop, I notice theres almost never 'free space'(task manager shows there is lots of RAM 'available' but practically never alot of it is 'free'). Most of the 8GB is always being used as prefetch buffer which in turn decreases loading time for the various programs I use.

Especially when you dont have an SSD or very fast hard drive, more ram usually means quicker loading of random things that are getting prefetched. 

So yeah, 4GB ram is enough, but more is better!


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 4, 2011)

I would say no.  More and more games are benefiting (as in not crashing) from large address aware and the best way to get the most out of large address aware is to have >4 GiB of RAM.  That way, any given 32-bit application has access to the maximum amount of RAM without being recompiled.  I think 6 GiB is ideal.  Operating systems these days consume ~1 GiB, a single game can consume up to 4 GiB, and that leaves ~1 GiB for background tasks.  I wouldn't recommend a "gaming" computer with less than 6 GiB of RAM.

As the next generation of consoles come out, it is very, very likely PC games are going to have to trend towards 64-bit.


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## de.das.dude (Sep 4, 2011)

4GB is more than enough if you arent multitasking when playing games.


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## MilkyWay (Sep 4, 2011)

I think most games use 2gb of ram and then the OS uses at least 1gb so 4gb is still usable. With the price of ram these days it makes sense to get a 8gb kit, 1600mhz kits with low voltage are common but spend a little more and get tighter or faster ram.

Ive got 8gb of ram and its fine id say it was worth the £65 i paid but that ram is now worth about £40.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 4, 2011)

Mathragh said:


> 4Gb is enough, but the gains in responsiveness with 8GB are quite high imho. Especially when you use a couple of different programs regulary and dont totally shut down your pc, but instead let it stay on standby.
> 
> With 8GB in my laptop, I notice theres almost never 'free space'(task manager shows there is lots of RAM 'available' but practically never alot of it is 'free'). Most of the 8GB is always being used as prefetch buffer which in turn decreases loading time for the various programs I use.
> 
> ...



not only is it not "Free" is in the cache. which is waht Windows Vista did to the ram and made everyone think Vista was a ram whore


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## The_Ish (Sep 4, 2011)

thunderising said:


> 4GB better be, considering the "best graphics ever" games on PS3 come with 1080p 30/60fps and it has 256MB ram(system)



It's called optimization. Something games many times on PC doesn't have, because it's a port.. But that's another flame war 

I've got 6GB, but the OS tells me all the time I need to close my games because there isn't enough. And i really try to keep all background applications, desktop icons (no, those won't matter i know, just illustrating a point here) etc to a bare minimum. Usually I can just close the warning and continue to play though.


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## Mussels (Sep 4, 2011)

and if you ever look at a PS3 game up close, you'll realist the textures are incredibly bland and blurry - they just put a few crisp ones on the ass of whatever character you're looking at, and hide the rest behind motion blur.


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## The_Ish (Sep 4, 2011)

Mussels said:


> and if you ever look at a PS3 game up close, you'll realist the textures are incredibly bland and blurry - they just put a few crisp ones on the ass of whatever character you're looking at, and hide the rest behind motion blur.



I owned SNES, N64, PS2, PS3.. But right now I feel that I will not buy another console until I get proper AA in games. That's what always get's to me. Bad AA ruins it for me. At least on PC I can buy hardware that supports it.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 4, 2011)

AA is useless when you're running a high resolution on a high DPI screen.  It blurs that which doesn't need to be blurred.


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## The_Ish (Sep 4, 2011)

Umm no.. 720p isn't high enough for me obviously. And even on PC I need to max out AA or the jagged edges will make my eyes bleed (1920x1200).


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## Mussels (Sep 5, 2011)

The_Ish said:


> Umm no.. 720p isn't high enough for me obviously. And even on PC I need to max out AA or the jagged edges will make my eyes bleed (1920x1200).



he said high DPI screen. 1080p on anything larger than 24" would need AA.


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## Soylent Joe (Sep 5, 2011)

Yup, 4GB is completely good for a gaymen rig. DDR3 is dirt stinkin' cheap right now though, might as well go for at least 8GB, for the e-peen factor.


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## n-ster (Sep 5, 2011)

to me, high DPI is more like 15~17" 1080p screens. I'm just waiting for freaking 2560x1440 on 23~24ish inch screens, 21.5 ideally. it should have been here ages ago


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 5, 2011)

Soylent Joe said:


> Yup, 4GB is completely good for a gaymen rig. DDR3 is dirt stinkin' cheap right now though, might as well go for at least 8GB, for the e-peen factor.



Dropped 8 gigs into my bros new machine even though win 7 runs fine on 1 gig


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## InnocentCriminal (Sep 5, 2011)

helloWorld said:


> I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?



If you want more info on the topic, specifically for SB have a read of this.


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## n-ster (Sep 5, 2011)

eidairaman1 said:


> Dropped 8 gigs into my bros new machine even though win 7 runs fine on 1 gig



I dropped in 24GB of RAM in my PC even though 4GB is enough  but I basically bought the RAM first and found ways to use it afterwards. Same thing for HDD space, I'd barely use 40~60GB out of 80GB on my laptop, bought a 2TB RAID 0 array, and after the firt month I had 750GB free space left, no I got 200 GB free space


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## The_Ish (Sep 5, 2011)

Mussels said:


> he said high DPI screen. 1080p on anything larger than 24" would need AA.



Well, I'm clearly not aware of what you mean. I have yet to see a pc monitor or TV where no AA looked good.


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## n-ster (Sep 5, 2011)

The_Ish said:


> Well, I'm clearly not aware of what you mean. I have yet to see a pc monitor or TV where no AA looked good.



I think he means that you don't need more than 2x MSAA until that, or at least that's what I think. some of the more modern games have some type of AA already built in so that helps too


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 5, 2011)

Tell u the truth i think the more ram the happier a machine gets but the other trouble is windows still relies on a HD paging file whether if a HD or SDD, cant put all paging into the Ram I guess...


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## robn (Sep 5, 2011)

eidairaman1 said:


> Tell u the truth i think the more ram the happier a machine gets but the other trouble is windows still relies on a HD paging file whether if a HD or SDD, cant put all paging into the Ram I guess...



Interestingly enough although Windows has given me a 24gig(!) page file for my (excessive, but was so cheap) RAM it doesn't touch it according to Resource Monitor. I've put it on an old 80gig IDE drive; the only file, and the disk sits doing nothing. So Windows isn't daft, it sees the RAM and makes the right decision.

On topic: 8gig is necessary for web development now days. Tomcat + Eclipse + 4 browsers + Office was killer slow on 4gigs at work. Bring up a minimized window and wait 5 sec for the blackness to fill in.

Best thing is my gaming machine can happily be my dev machine now, despite SQL Server and GlassFish processes running all day.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 5, 2011)

well 7 will run fine on 1 gig so i figured to quad the amt he had previously which was 2 gigs worked out well


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