# When can 16gb of RAM become a bottleneck?



## Carsomyr (Aug 12, 2019)

I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?


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## natr0n (Aug 12, 2019)

No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.

But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.


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## tabascosauz (Aug 12, 2019)

Carsomyr said:


> I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
> I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?



16GB is enough for *all* gaming situations. Feel free to get 32GB if you just feel like it, but if you're just gaming, it's not necessary.

I have a friend who never closes his Chrome tabs and thus, sometimes 16GB doesn't feel like enough. But by that logic, no amount of RAM will ever be enough for a lazy man.


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## Solaris17 (Aug 12, 2019)

natr0n said:


> But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.



Hell yeah brother, eat that ram.


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## windwhirl (Aug 12, 2019)

16 GB should be enough for nearly every single game available right now and for the next year or so. 

Beyond that, I can't really tell.


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## biffzinker (Aug 12, 2019)

natr0n said:


> No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.
> 
> But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.


Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.


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## Toothless (Aug 12, 2019)

I'll have 30 Chrome tabs open, two games, two chat apps, and music and still won't hit 16GB on a 3440x1440. You're fine.


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## anachron (Aug 12, 2019)

With Anno 1800 maxed out, playing on 2560x1440 and discord/chrome and a few others open on a second screen, I sometimes go very close to the 16GB used. Screen taken on an early game, it got worse as the game advance...


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## londiste (Aug 12, 2019)

Display resolution is almost always irrelevant in this context.

I see games often enough using 10-12GB right now. With a bunch of memory-eating things in the background - A browser or two, Steam, Origin, UPlay, Skype and some other stuff plus Windows itself can take 4-6GB - I see 20+GB of used RAM in my machine quite regularly.


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## Voluman (Aug 12, 2019)

Probably in a 1-3 years, in a way as recommended amount to future games. 
In practice probably you are good to go for a few years. But you can never have enough of it 

(I have a browser with 3k opened tabs and a downloader prog, those can max out my 8 gb on laptop)


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## silkstone (Aug 12, 2019)

biffzinker said:


> Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.



I get close to 16gb at times with Chrome, though that is due to inefficient web code on some of the pages I often have open. Ram being as cheap as it is, I upgraded to 32Gb so I wouldn't have to worry about RAM for a few years


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## bonehead123 (Aug 12, 2019)

As someone once said:  "nobody will never need more than 128*k* of ram" (yea I know who said it ) hahahaha

I run lots of apps of all kinds, *but no games*, with 32GB, and have occasionally noticed my system using upwards of 18GB.....

My feeling is "Better to have it & not need it, than need it & not have it". 

Computing history has shown that ram requirements have steadily increased over the past 20 years and will only get worse as time goes on, at least until programmers learn how to make their code more memory-efficient and/or leak-proof

But, if you're gonna buy more ram, do it soon, as the prices are set to go way up later this year/early 2020 due to price manipulations of the mfgr's.......


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## las (Aug 12, 2019)

Many games already started recommending 16GB.
Next gen consoles should get 24-32GB (shared, tho). I'd take 32GB for a new rig, considering the prices now.


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## xtreemchaos (Aug 12, 2019)

I game in VR and the most ive seen being used is 9gb and that's with fallout 4 vr with about 50mods running.


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## Durvelle27 (Aug 12, 2019)

I’m one of those people who keeps a lot of programs open while gaming so I’ve seen as much as 27GB of RAM usage


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## Sithaer (Aug 12, 2019)

I think the highest I had while gaming was around 11 gigs,most of the games I've played stayed under 8-9.

That being said I don't keep my browser open while gaming but even if I would it doesn't matter cause I don't keep tabs open.
Not running memory hungry softwares in the background either.

On the other hand my bro can easily use up 16+ gigs with nothing but browsing cause he has more tabs open than I want to know.


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## kapone32 (Aug 12, 2019)

16GB of RAM can be used up in some 4K games at Ultra settings like TWWH2 but only for a short time. There is currently no need to worry about that though.


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## Bones (Aug 12, 2019)

If you want 32GB's that's OK and may even help extend the useful time of the system if you'd really need to do that.

For other things it may help, perhaps not today but we all know as time passes requirements for system resources do increase and that would include the amount of RAM in a system. If planning for what's expected within the next year or so it's not anything to worry over and 16GB's will be fine.

Note that typically most would have upgraded by the time any such requirements will begin to become mandatory for whatever but if having to run it for the long haul then 32GB's wouldn't be such a bad idea to think about.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 12, 2019)

biffzinker said:


> Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.



Anything in services.msc/msconfig too.


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## hzy4 (Aug 12, 2019)

if you needed to ask the question, you need more ram.
if you play some early access non AAA games they might come with a memory leak issue, like Escape from Tarkov


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## king of swag187 (Aug 12, 2019)

When you use more than 16GB of RAM


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## Carsomyr (Aug 12, 2019)

Do you guys have a good guide recommendation for optimizing windows 10 to be more efficient?

I remember finding one in the past which listed the services which were safe to turn off and other tweaks as well


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 12, 2019)

Www.blackviper.com


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## Vario (Aug 12, 2019)

I have never used up more than 10 GB of 16GB.  Been running 16GB since December 2012.  For gaming, its a matter of 8GB not being quite enough for all circumstances, and 16 being more than enough for all circumstances.


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## Calmmo (Aug 12, 2019)

When i bought my last PC in 2013 people were swearing by 8gb. I went with 16 and I've had more than enough scenarios where I needed/used over 8gb used over the years. So I don't regret it. Feel like we're in a similar situation atm.
Not right now, but if you end up keeping a new PC built now for 5-6 years like I have with my x79 one you probably will end up wanting that extra bit of ram and it's not gonna be as easy finding good DDR4 ram in a few years when the market shifts to DDR5 to be able to properly upgrade.


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## phanbuey (Aug 12, 2019)

it's hard to run 32gb at a very high speed on a dual channel board right now.  4 dimms of 8 will limit how far you can push the ram and 16gb high density dimms are slower by default, so 16gb faster > 32gb slower unless you need it for work.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 12, 2019)

Vario said:


> I have never used up more than 10 GB of 16GB.  Been running 16GB since December 2012.  For gaming, its a matter of 8GB not being quite enough for all circumstances, and 16 being more than enough for all circumstances.



I have 16GB since 2014, I only see 24-64+ being for video editors


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## Mac2580 (Aug 13, 2019)

Ive noticed something regarding RAM usage that I dont fully understand. All 3 of my pcs have 4x4gb ram. My old Phenom Ii (1333Mhz) uses around 12GB Ram when launching FIfa 19. My i7(2400mhz) and Ryzen(2666Mhz) use less than 8GB. Not sure if its because of ram speed, chipset, or GFX memory. Ive started assuming that you need more RAM if its slower, but an actual explanation would be welcome.


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## windwhirl (Aug 13, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Ive noticed something regarding RAM usage that I dont fully understand. All 3 of my pcs have 4x4gb ram. My old Phenom Ii (1333Mhz) uses around 12GB Ram when launching FIfa 19. My i7(2400mhz) and Ryzen(2666Mhz) use less than 8GB. Not sure if its because of ram speed, chipset, or GFX memory. Ive started assuming that you need more RAM if its slower, but an actual explanation would be welcome.



That'd be strange, assuming you're using the exact same Windows version on each machine and that there is nothing running inmediately after startup.


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## Mac2580 (Aug 13, 2019)

Yeah the PC is 10 years old though. Even at idle on desktop it uses more RAM than my other two. All 3 of my PC's run the same settings, with everything possible disabled including background apps, and windows and microsoft store updates paused. In fact I was running 8Gb ram at first using matched  Vengeance sticks. The RAM is mismatched currently but running in dual channel. In fact I only added the extra 8GB because FIfa was using all the  available Ram and I thought adding some could help FPS. It didnt help; 35-40FPS is all such an old CPU can do. The only noticable improvement after adding ram was alt tabbing. Gaming performance seems to be limited by CPU already with 8GB only, which I confirmed with GTA V and BF1 which maxed the 8GB as well, used more than 10GB when 16GB present but FPS and general gameplay felt the same. I was actually quite surprised that the games dont stutter when all the RAM is being used. For reference I had only 4GB in my Q9400, and GTAV ran at 50FPS with lowest settings. Same GFX card too. Ive had this card (Asus R7 260x 1GB) since 2012 popped it in my i7 to make sure it wasnt the bottleneck, it held 60FPS at all 3 games on lowest settings. Im sure some Ram must be shared with the card, because GTA V shows 2300MB/1000MB yet the game runs smoothly.


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## biffzinker (Aug 13, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Ive noticed something regarding RAM usage that I dont fully understand. All 3 of my pcs have 4x4gb ram. My old Phenom Ii (1333Mhz) uses around 12GB Ram when launching FIfa 19.


Does the Phenom II system have a hard disk drive? Wonder if Windows disk caching might be responsible for the higher Ram usage.


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## Mac2580 (Aug 13, 2019)

Yeah it does. In fact its an old Seagate Momentus 640GB from a laptop. Could that be the cause of the excess RAM usage? The other PCs do have SSD's as boot drives.


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## biffzinker (Aug 13, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Could that be the cause of the excess RAM usage?


Honestly it was just a lucky guess about hard disk drive. I thought I seen my parent's older HP Phenom II exhibiting the same behaviour, and they don't play any kind of games on it.


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## Mac2580 (Aug 13, 2019)

biffzinker said:


> Honestly it was just a lucky guess about hard disk drive. I thought I seen my parent's older HP Phenom II exhibiting the same behaviour, and they don't play any kind of games on it.


Ah I see. Well ill be gifting the PC to one of my best friends as a housewarming gift this weekend. His Xbox One is broken, and I told him not to buy another one , and that the PC would run FIFA so he should only spend when the next generation is out, so I'm gonna try trade the CPU and 2x4GB sticks for at least a FX6300. Should run Fifa 19 and 20 easily.


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## Mussels (Aug 13, 2019)

16GB is more than enough for 4K gaming at present
that will change in the future, but it hasnt happened yet.

Most games are designed and optimised for 8GB systems at 1080p, and the system ram usage doesnt jump up that much as the res goes up (unlike VRAM, which does)

Years ago DX9 games shadowed GPU ram into system RAM, but that was corrected with DX9 and slowed down the increase of RAM needed for gaming systems



Mac2580 said:


> Ive noticed something regarding RAM usage that I dont fully understand. All 3 of my pcs have 4x4gb ram. My old Phenom Ii (1333Mhz) uses around 12GB Ram when launching FIfa 19. My i7(2400mhz) and Ryzen(2666Mhz) use less than 8GB. Not sure if its because of ram speed, chipset, or GFX memory. Ive started assuming that you need more RAM if its slower, but an actual explanation would be welcome.


I typed my above comments before seeing your post, but its probably the level of DX support on the GPUs, making a guess that the newer systems also have the newer GPUs


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## Turmania (Aug 20, 2019)

If you can afford it it is time to get 32gb prices never been this low for many years. And I do have a feeling they will go up soon again pretty soon.


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## John Naylor (Aug 21, 2019)

Running more than 2 sticks (assuming going from 2 x 8 to 4 x 8 from different packages) may put a damper on RAM speed, timings or even your CPU your OC.


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## RichF (Aug 21, 2019)

bonehead123 said:


> As someone once said:  "nobody will never need more than 128*k* of ram" (yea I know who said it ) hahahaha


The quote is 640K and Gates said it's apocryphal.

Pick most any hardware specification and software bloat will exceed it at some point. Game developers learned much from Crysis marketing. The idea has been to get used as a benchmark by all the review sites by going further than other games in terms of hardware demands. Since there is a marketing incentive to push the limits of hardware one can rest assured that RAM bloat will be an issue, likely before the games become advanced enough to truly need all that RAM. Do an EA and claim that the game has special secret tech that is really really advanced (remember SimCity 5 having to be always-online because of all the super-duper calculations EA claimed were being done by its supercomputers?).

It wasn't very long ago when 8 GB of RAM was considered plenty for gaming. Prior to that it was 4 GB. It doesn't seem really so long ago that the 1.5 GB buffer of the normal GTX 580 seemed like plenty.

Gates understood that hardware is always advancing. The only people who should take that quotation seriously are those who don't realize that tech insiders are highly-familiar with the way hardware is always advancing. No software or hardware guru would ever claim a certain amount of RAM is enough for anyone _going forward_. Claiming it's enough for them _at that point in time and in the near future_ is another matter.


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## Vario (Aug 21, 2019)

RichF said:


> The quote is 640K and Gates said it's apocryphal.
> 
> Pick most any hardware specification and software bloat will exceed it at some point. Game developers learned much from Crysis marketing. The idea has been to get used as a benchmark by all the review sites by going further than other games in terms of hardware demands. Since there is a marketing incentive to push the limits of hardware one can rest assured that RAM bloat will be an issue, likely before the games become advanced enough to truly need all that RAM. Do an EA and claim that the game has special secret tech that is really really advanced (remember SimCity 5 having to be always-online because of all the super-duper calculations EA claimed were being done by its supercomputers?).
> 
> ...


I mostly agree, but 8GB has not been considered plenty for some time.  In the Sandy Bridge era, 8 years ago, 16GB was the recommended amount.  System ram needs haven't increased very much on an individual application basis, but in the time since, there are now a lot of peripheral apps now that are considered a must have for many in online gaming such as OBS, discord, etc.


In a gaming sense, in your example of bloated ram usage, often this applies more to VRAM, but hopefully the truly bloated games that are worth playing can be tweaked in their settings to reduce the bloat for lesser provisioned systems.  Generally one can get by with a really minimal system for years by running lower settings, sometimes by modifying ini files.   A lot of the demanding settings are actually very subtle visually, and gameplay does not suffer as a result of disabling them.  However, you generally can't go wrong with getting a higher VRAM card if the option exists.

Right now, because ram is relatively cheap compared to the last 4 years, I'd probably go with a 32GB system if building a new machine, just to extend my system's useful life.


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## Mussels (Aug 21, 2019)

RichF said:


> The quote is 640K and Gates said it's apocryphal.
> 
> Pick most any hardware specification and software bloat will exceed it at some point. Game developers learned much from Crysis marketing. The idea has been to get used as a benchmark by all the review sites by going further than other games in terms of hardware demands. Since there is a marketing incentive to push the limits of hardware one can rest assured that RAM bloat will be an issue, likely before the games become advanced enough to truly need all that RAM. Do an EA and claim that the game has special secret tech that is really really advanced (remember SimCity 5 having to be always-online because of all the super-duper calculations EA claimed were being done by its supercomputers?).
> 
> ...



Thing is, 8GB of ram and that 1.5GB GPU can actually still run modern games just fine, if you're happy with 1080p at lower settings.

While we do get the hardware creep of needing new harwdare over the years, it seems like that creep is slowing down - year on year we may need 5% or 10% more RAM, but thanks to the nature of doubling in size, we get a hefty time gap in between

Right now 12GB of ram would easily be sufficient for gaming systems, but we cant get that with just two sticks of ram


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## Mac2580 (Aug 24, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Ah I see. Well ill be gifting the PC to one of my best friends as a housewarming gift this weekend. His Xbox One is broken, and I told him not to buy another one , and that the PC would run FIFA so he should only spend when the next generation is out, so I'm gonna try trade the CPU and 2x4GB sticks for at least a FX6300. Should run Fifa 19 and 20 easily.


I sold all 4 DDR3 1600Mhz sticks for a FX 8320 CPU. Popped in 3 random sticks of 1333Mhz totalling 8Gb. The PC is far slower when navigating Windows. Gaming FPS has improved in every title, and the PC can run FIFA 19 just like I promised. That said the lack of RAM is an issue, my PS4 controller randomly disconnects. (Ds4windows gets forgotten in the background) Thankfully he uses a wired XBox One controller which has no such issues. A far better idea would have been to have kept the matched 4GBx2 Vengeance(1866Mhz using manually set XMP timings) and paying a bit of cash for CPU, but i didnt want to spend money on a PC put together from obsolete/spare parts.


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## Mussels (Aug 25, 2019)

lack of ram wont cause programs to close in windows or wireless controllers to disconnect, everything is designed to prevent that

The PS4 controller or the bluetooth dongle is the problem there


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## Mac2580 (Aug 25, 2019)

Mussels said:


> lack of ram wont cause programs to close in windows or wireless controllers to disconnect, everything is designed to prevent that
> 
> The PS4 controller or the bluetooth dongle is the problem there


Whearas i do agree somewhat, its specifically the program that stops working, the controller remains connected via bluetooth to windows, but stops being recognized by DS4windows, I have to alt tab to have it recognize the controller again. I suppose I could look into it, but it never happens on my other 2 PCs. Does it matter that "Background Apps" is off perhaps?


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## Mussels (Aug 25, 2019)

you've still got 1.2GB of ram free, being used as cache in that image - you aren't low on ram there.

Whatever the problem is, its got to be related to the controller itself (in your case, the software)


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## Mac2580 (Aug 25, 2019)

Mussels said:


> you've still got 1.2GB of ram free, being used as cache in that image - you aren't low on ram there.
> 
> Whatever the problem is, its got to be related to the controller itself (in your case, the software)


I see thanks, I will try and reinstall the software. I have changed a fair amount of hardware since it was installed. Either way Im the only only one with a PS4 controller, and I play FIFA on Keyboard so it shouldnt bother my friend.


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## dinmaster (Aug 25, 2019)

have people not played satisfactory with a big save file? i got 16gb and it hits the limit, mind you its early access..


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2019)

Carsomyr said:


> Do you guys have a good guide recommendation for optimizing windows 10 to be more efficient?
> 
> I remember finding one in the past which listed the services which were safe to turn off and other tweaks as well


Don't. It's not worth it.

16GB is the sweetspot. It only becomes a bottleneck if you can use more than you have.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Aug 25, 2019)

Carsomyr said:


> I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
> I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?



When you hit 2000+ tabs. 32gb fixed it for me.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 25, 2019)

Carsomyr said:


> I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
> I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?


You're fine. 16GB of system ram will be good for at least the next 3 years.


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## spectatorx (Aug 25, 2019)

16GB is currently optimum standard for gaming. I can't imagine any scenario, except memory leak, where any game would hit 16GB of ram usage. There is plenty of games which utilize/allocate over 10GB of ram at 1920x1080 and higher resolutions but none actually hitting 16GB. I have some odd memory leak, i assume it is a memory leak, in rise of the tomb raider as this game can utilize on my pc with radeon r9 380 up to 14GB of ram. I assume it is a memory leak because when i tried the same game at the same settings at friend who owns 1080ti ram usage was under 10GB and that made me wonder wtf is going on.

Anyway, with 16GB of ram you are safe for next few years. If you are considering to go with more than 16GB then, purely for gaming, the only reasonable thing to do is to utilize extra ram as ramdisk where games work way better than from ssd. BTW, x570 is the first consumer chipset to support up to 128GB of ram and i would love to go with such amount of ram for ramdisk but that's too expensive to me at the moment.


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## er557 (Aug 25, 2019)

I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Aug 25, 2019)

natr0n said:


> No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.
> 
> But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.


I know a couple games that do, when using mods. One game ate 37gb ram...


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## biffzinker (Aug 25, 2019)

er557 said:


> I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.
> snip


I think your reading that wrong. Then again I couldn't make out the foreign language.


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## er557 (Aug 25, 2019)

The 19.2GB number in my photo on the bottom right side is "IN USE(compressed)",  and 75.9GB available, so yeah- 20GB (out of 96.0GB) easily right off the bat, just launched the game.
What I recommend is always MORE ram, as opposed to faster ram(after a certain reasonable speed)


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## biffzinker (Aug 25, 2019)

er557 said:


> The 19.2GB number in my photo on the bottom right side is "IN USE(compressed)",  and 75.9GB available, so yeah- 20GB (out of 96.0GB) easily right off the bat, just launched the game.


Don't mind me then. So how is it taking 20 GB of RAM? That seems unusually high for a game.


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2019)

er557 said:


> I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.
> View attachment 130040


Interesting ME:SOM doesnt remotely use that much ram for me at 4k...

...that said, some titles scale and will use more ram if it is available, and it doesnt improve game play.


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## EntropyZ (Aug 25, 2019)

I'm running BattleTech w/ RogueTech, and sometimes I cap out at around 12GB+ just for the game  + another 1.9GB for Steam/Windows, when I'm in the menus after loading a save. It gets worse as you get more equipment and AI turns can drag on longer as I run the game normally, until eventually after going into a mission at some point I will get an infinite load screen, which is normal.

I thought Skyrim and Fallout 4 were bad... but at least there are script extender plugins to mitigate all of that, unlike BattleTech.

PS: Loading a save shouldn't take more than 7-8 seconds for ANY game IMO, it's ridiculous how some game engines are made to be inefficient or include oversights, like including/using deprecated read/write code so the RAM and SSD just chill for no real reason. #rant


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## er557 (Aug 25, 2019)

That's what more ram is for, to increase speed between multiple game loads /saves, as most portions remain in ram.


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2019)

Save games are loaded from the hdd.


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## er557 (Aug 25, 2019)

Of course they are, you mean the 2~mb data file of the save itself, but all the heavy game assets and level data need to be re-loaded into ram, and if they are already there, that's what speeds up the load. That's what essentialy happens when you have enough ram and just quited your game to desktop, then re-launch the game- it will be super fast.


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## GoldenX (Aug 25, 2019)

Some emulators and Nvidia drivers can eat up 16GB in seconds.


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## DLGenesis (Aug 25, 2019)

disabled page file


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## anachron (Aug 25, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> You're fine. 16GB of system ram will be good for at least the next 3 years.


I find it quite strange that people keep responding that when it has been proven to be wrong multiple time on this thread. 

Some games definitly need more than 16GB. As you can see in the attached screen, i got an insufficiant virtual memory warning while playing Anno 1800 (with 16GB of ram and ~10GB Virtual memory allocated by windows). The screen indicate that Anno was using almost 20GB at the time, and it's the game alone. So 16GB will definitly not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.


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## Toothless (Aug 25, 2019)

16GB is good unless you play big games. /Thread


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## spectatorx (Aug 25, 2019)

anachron said:


> I find it quite strange that people keep responding that when it has been proven to be wrong multiple time on this thread.
> 
> Some games definitly need more than 16GB. As you can see in the attached screen, i got an insufficiant virtual memory warning while playing Anno 1800 (with 16GB of ram and ~10GB Virtual memory allocated by windows). The screen indicate that Anno was using almost 20GB at the time, and it's the game alone. So 16GB will definitly not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.


I'm curious what stands behind such high memory usage in anno 1800. What technical aspects make this particular game utilize such amounts of ram. We have many other city builders, economical and strategy games which even with mods do not go that high. If it is not caused by some unique technological features of this game then i would consider this as memory leak which should be fixed by ubisoft.


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## anachron (Aug 25, 2019)

To be honest i don't know of it's a memory leak or not. It was working fine with 16GB for me until the last expansion which added a third map with a very big island. Manually setting more virtual memory did fix the issue, but some people with less memory or low virtual memory setting have this issue since release (april). The game is very much more gpu intensive than the city builder/economical games i usually play though.


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## Mussels (Aug 26, 2019)

Toothless said:


> 16GB is good unless you play big games. /Thread



16GB is enough unless you use things with memory leaks /thread


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## Toothless (Aug 26, 2019)

Mussels said:


> 16GB is enough unless you use things with memory leaks /thread


Or play multiple games. I've hit 20GB+ easily with just two games and some chrome tabs.


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## EarthDog (Aug 26, 2019)

Toothless said:


> Or play multiple games. I've hit 20GB+ easily with just two games and some chrome tabs.


?

Mine drops game ram from previous games when exiting....if I'm at 9GB playing PUBG, I'll drop back to almost 3GB immediately.


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## er557 (Aug 26, 2019)

I dont consider a game that has been launched just now "a memory leak", it is valid use of ram as any use. Some games scale and use more ram, and it DOES improve their experience, because everything is smoother being in ram, less stutter and less micro-loading. This strange carrying on that 16gb is enough for anything is puzzling, and seems more like a justification for those who only have 16gb.
Screenshots dont lie, and as many users here reported that SOME mods and games do eat 37gb or more, I just cant agree to 2014 era misconseptions about 16gb. Now that ram is cheaper, 32gb or even 64 will only improve quality of computing.


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## EarthDog (Aug 26, 2019)

er557 said:


> This strange carrying on that 16gb is enough for anything is puzzling, and seems more like a justification for those who only have 16gb.


This strange carrying on about RAM use when having 96GB is puzzling... seems like justifying 96GB of RAM in a system...  

2014 era was 8GB is plenty for the majority... 

32-64GB will improve computing if you are actually using more than you have... otherwise, modded games which eat extraordinary amounts of memory, while real, isn't a majority of users. IF that is something they do, then by all means, 32GB....


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## Toothless (Aug 26, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> ?
> 
> Mine drops game ram from previous games when exiting....if I'm at 9GB playing PUBG, I'll drop back to almost 3GB immediately.


I mean I'll have multiple games at once. Banished, Cities Skylines, and maybe something else with Chrome open and a movie up. Depending on the day I'll easily pass that 16GB mark.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

Multiple games at once....that's, novel.


----------



## spectatorx (Aug 27, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Multiple games at once....that's, novel.


Not that much. One of uses for that is to farm steam cards. At least that's one of ways to do it. Currently exist dedicated farming programs which do not require game to actually run rather they bypass steam client to think the game is running.

I would love to say running multiple games at the same time is helpful in case of ac games unbearably long credits (up to over 40 minutes) but whenever ac's window is out of focus credits pause until window is back in focus.


----------



## Toothless (Aug 27, 2019)

Sometimes ya gotta let your virtual kids destroy themselves.


----------



## neatfeatguy (Aug 27, 2019)

DLGenesis said:


> disabled page file


I found games having memory issues with the paging file disabled.  Regardless of the games not making full use of the GPU memory and not even coming close to making use of the 16GB system RAM.

I don't recommend turning off the paging file.


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## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

spectatorx said:


> Not that much. One of uses for that is to farm steam cards. At least that's one of ways to do it. Currently exist dedicated farming programs which do not require game to actually run rather they bypass steam client to think the game is running.
> 
> I would love to say running multiple games at the same time is helpful in case of ac games unbearably long credits (up to over 40 minutes) but whenever ac's window is out of focus credits pause until window is back in focus.


Get some meds if you can't wait...


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 27, 2019)

anachron said:


> So 16GB will definitly not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.



"not be good " is an awfully vague and unproven claim just as well. An RTX 2060 might not be good for the next there years or a Ryzen 3600 or indeed, 16 GB of RAM. At best you can try and predict based on whats going on at the moment, next gen consoles are unlikely to sport more than 16 GB and the overwhelming majority of games still aren't even close to these values.

I argue 16 GB will "_be _good"  (whatever this metric is even supposed to mean) for the next three years, you can pin this comment somewhere and come back three years later and will see if it was true or not.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Aug 27, 2019)

anachron said:


> I find it quite strange that people keep responding that when it has been proven to be wrong multiple time on this thread.
> 
> Some games *definitely* need more than 16GB. As you can see in the attached screen, i got an *insufficient* virtual memory warning while playing Anno 1800 (with 16GB of ram and ~10GB Virtual memory allocated by windows). The screen indicate that Anno was using almost 20GB at the time, and it's the game alone. So 16GB will *definitely* not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.


First, spell-check is your friend. Use it.
Second, Anno1800 is the extreme exception rather than the rule.
Third, even in systems with 32GB and above Anno1800 still loads up "virtual memory" to a sizable amount. How much actual system ram you have is irrelevant as that behavior is a built-in function of the game.
Fourth, for 99% of all software the general public currently runs on their systems, including games, 16GB of system ram is more than enough and will be for the the next few years. Only power-users need more and they know this.



Vya Domus said:


> I argue 16 GB will "_be _good" (whatever this metric is even supposed to mean) for the next three years, you can pin this comment somewhere and come back three years later and will see if it was true or not.


Agreed.


----------



## ShrimpBrime (Aug 27, 2019)

16GB seems good. 
Just make sure it's fast and tight


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## Chomiq (Aug 27, 2019)

natr0n said:


> No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.
> 
> But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.


Squad has a single map that's so messed up it eats up the entire ram. But yeah, that's a title in Alpha stage with some memory leak on a single map.


----------



## anachron (Aug 27, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> "not be good " is an awfully vague and unproven claim just as well. An RTX 2060 might not be good for the next there years or a Ryzen 3600 or indeed, 16 GB of RAM. At best you can try and predict based on whats going on at the moment, next gen consoles are unlikely to sport more than 16 GB and the overwhelming majority of games still aren't even close to these values.
> 
> I argue 16 GB will "_be _good"  (whatever this metric is even supposed to mean) for the next three years, you can pin this comment somewhere and come back three years later and will see if it was true or not.



The original question was "I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?", so while i agree with you that the answer for the first part is yes in _most_ case, saying that there are no reasonable scenarios where there can be a bottleneck is not true.

I'm pretty much sure 16GB will still work in a 3 years, but that doesn't mean it will not be a bottleneck in some cases. When i did get from 8GB to 16GB a few years ago, the economic simulation game i was playing was working previously, but i got a lot better loading times and less stuttering while playing after the upgrade.



lexluthermiester said:


> First, spell-check is your friend. Use it.


Well, thanks for the corrections, Chrome was only spell checking in French as English is not my native language. I didn't even think to check if i could add English 

As for the second part of your message, i would be curious to see if it does use that much virtual memory with more RAM, as it would be a quite annoying behavior to still need to allocate that much virtual memory when the game could just sit in RAM.


----------



## Jism (Aug 27, 2019)

Toothless said:


> I'll have 30 Chrome tabs open, two games, two chat apps, and music and still won't hit 16GB on a 3440x1440. You're fine.



Try to disable your "Virtual memory" on DISK (SSD) and then 'reattempt". I had so many messages from Windows that the system was running low on memory. I've disabled the pagefile completely to prevent excessive wear on the (old) SSD.  Now i have 32GB of RAM where 4GB is reserved for caching purposes, and there was'nt a single situation i could not fully tax it.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Aug 27, 2019)

anachron said:


> Well, thanks for the corrections, Chrome was only spell checking in French as English is not my native language. I didn't even think to check if i could add English


Ah, language barrier, fair enough.


anachron said:


> As for the second part of your message, i would be curious to see if it does use that much virtual memory with more RAM, as it would be a quite annoying behavior to still need to allocate that much virtual memory when the game could just sit in RAM.


A client of mine came in not to long ago having a similar problem and we upgraded them to 48GB(from 32GB) and it was still behaving the same way. While the extra RAM improved performance a bit for that game, it wasn't much and everything else stayed the same. We then tried taking their original 32GB out and little changed. They ended up keeping the extra RAM. All I can say is that Anno 1800 is an isolated example. The devs likely did not optimize the game before release and need to fix it. Most of the systems I build/sell are mid-range mainstream systems and 8GB is a solid sweet-spot for most tasks, gaming included. 16GB would benefit some brand new AAA titles, but only just. Where 16GB or more is going to be of the most benefit is in programs that need a ton of system ram, such as a video rendering, 3D rendering or data-base type.


----------



## Toothless (Aug 27, 2019)

Jism said:


> Try to disable your "Virtual memory" on DISK (SSD) and then 'reattempt". I had so many messages from Windows that the system was running low on memory. I've disabled the pagefile completely to prevent excessive wear on the (old) SSD.  Now i have 32GB of RAM where 4GB is reserved for caching purposes, and there was'nt a single situation i could not fully tax it.


I used to run no pagefile for the longest time, and never had issues with it even on 16GB. I leave it on for the 4864MB it has on my boot drive since 1. it's a 970 EVO and 2. I don't really care to change it. It won't make a difference to me to have it on or not because I don't get those errors.


----------



## Vayra86 (Aug 27, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> 16GB of RAM can be used up in some 4K games at Ultra settings like TWWH2 but only for a short time. There is currently no need to worry about that though.



Screens or it didn't happen. Never seen that, and I have clocked over 300 hours in the game. Usually seeing about 5.5 - 7 GB used - and that includes Windows - and I tend to run my rig pretty 'clean' while gaming.



anachron said:


> With Anno 1800 maxed out, playing on 2560x1440 and discord/chrome and a few others open on a second screen, I sometimes go very close to the 16GB used. Screen taken on an early game, it got worse as the game advance...



Blame Anno for that. Its not exactly optimized, might even have a memory leak.

16GB for the foreseeable future is fine for gaming + background applications. I would refrain from buying more _unless you notice hitching while using 16GB RAM. _That should be the cue, not some hard to grasp number in task manager. After all, there is a pagefile and Windows can manage things just fine.

In fact, a majority of games can still get by with 8GB just fine. See example above.



anachron said:


> no reasonable scenarios where there can be a bottleneck is not true.
> 
> I'm pretty much sure 16GB will still work in a 3 years, but that doesn't mean it will not be a bottleneck in some cases. When i did get from 8GB to 16GB a few years ago, the economic simulation game i was playing was working previously, but i got a lot better loading times and less stuttering while playing after the upgrade.



It depends on your definition of a reasonable scenario. I know what you're getting at - try Cities Skylines with a lot of mods and build a nice little city and you see the GB's fly away. But is a city builder with lots of mods _at the endgame_ truly a reasonable scenario? Or more of a very personal (niche) use case?

Also, you are forgetting that while you may have upgraded from 8GB to 16GB, you probably also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4, and a faster CPU, etc. Its not _just_ capacity, fwiw, your new rig with 8GB might have done just fine.



lexluthermiester said:


> Ah, language barrier, fair enough.
> 
> A client of mine came in not to long ago having a similar problem and we upgraded them to 48GB(from 32GB) and it was still behaving the same way. While the extra RAM improved performance a bit for that game, it wasn't much and everything else stayed the same. We then tried taking their original 32GB out and little changed. They ended up keeping the extra RAM. All I can say is that Anno 1800 is an isolated example. The devs likely did not optimize the game before release and need to fix it. Most of the systems I build/sell are mid-range mainstream systems and 8GB is a solid sweet-spot for most tasks, gaming included. 16GB would benefit some brand new AAA titles, but only just. Where 16GB or more is going to be of the most benefit is in programs that need a ton of system ram, such as a video rendering, 3D rendering or data-base type.



Lol, hadn't arrived at page 4 yet.


----------



## er557 (Aug 27, 2019)

Ok, some things to consider, this is an enthusiast forum, beleive me you WANT that ram, anything from ram disk, hdd caching, improve game loading times, smoothness of multitasking in the OS, virtualization. BTW, having 96gb of ram(i know -excessive) leaves me with 48gb of virtual texture vram in the OS, allowing for extreme high-res texture mods, 4k, AA, and vram will never run out. (I'm talking about the windows reserved virtual vram in addition to the vram on the gpu)


----------



## anachron (Aug 27, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> It depends on your definition of a reasonable scenario. I know what you're getting at - try Cities Skylines with a lot of mods and build a nice little city and you see the GB's fly away. But is a city builder with lots of mods _at the endgame_ truly a reasonable scenario? Or more of a very personal (niche) use case?


It's always personal as it depends on your own use of your computer. I don't know what OP play, but if he do play this kind of game, i still think he should consider buying more than 16GB of ram.



Vayra86 said:


> Also, you are forgetting that while you may have upgraded from 8GB to 16GB, you probably also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4, and a faster CPU, etc. Its not _just_ capacity, fwiw, your new rig with 8GB might have done just fine.


I didn't forget, as i didn't upgrade my rig beside adding more RAM 
I had an i5 3570k with 2x4GB of DDR3-2133 bought in the end of 2012, and i added 2x4GB in 2015 specifically for this game (Train Fever with a bunch of mods). It lasted until i bought my current i5 8600k.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 27, 2019)

er557 said:


> Ok, some things to consider, this is an enthusiast forum, beleive me you WANT that ram


This is a good point.

@OP and others,
In case I perhaps didn't give this advice, if you can afford to have 16GB or more ram, do so as it will never hurt system performance and can be a life-saver if you ever need it.


----------



## kapone32 (Aug 27, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> Screens or it didn't happen. Never seen that, and I have clocked over 300 hours in the game. Usually seeing about 5.5 - 7 GB used - and that includes Windows - and I tend to run my rig pretty 'clean' while gaming.
> 
> 
> I can't tell you how many hours I have played that game. It could come down to a few things. I play at 4K using crossfire and I have the unit size set to extreme. I also have the Radious mod installed. What are your setting like?


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

This post is blank to me... did you bork a quote again kapone?


----------



## Eskimonster (Aug 27, 2019)

When are you going to need more ram then 16 GB ?, is just as likely as getting struck by lightning imho.
But if you are one of the few who get stricken offen , i think you should buy 32 GB


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 27, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> This post is blank to me... did you bork a quote again kapone?


I see it too.


----------



## anachron (Aug 27, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> This post is blank to me... did you bork a quote again kapone?


His response is actually inside the quote :
_I can't tell you how many hours I have played that game. It could come down to a few things. I play at 4K using crossfire and I have the unit size set to extreme. I also have the Radious mod installed. What are your setting like? _


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

As I thought (I have the person on ignore he quoted). So like I said....... he borked the quote (by replying inside).


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## Vya Domus (Aug 27, 2019)

er557 said:


> Ok, some things to consider, this is an enthusiast forum, beleive me you WANT that ram



Oh please, not this enthusiast stuff again that I hear all the time.

I code all sorts of things that need large datasets and I always end being limited by speed not by memory, I bet my use case goes way outside what most "enthusiasts" do on here, these things don't hold any meaning.

Yes, I understand we can always come up with some stupid extreme case but this isn't what happens most of the time for most people, even on a forum of enthusiasts. Let's stop making this more RAM meme into a requirement because it just simply isn't true, not now at the very least. Some time in the future, yes, it will be but not now.


----------



## kapone32 (Aug 27, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> As I thought (I have the person on ignore he quoted). So like I said....... he borked the quote (by replying inside).



I figured it out. It posts inside when I am replying to a multi quote post. I am going to reach out to the staff to help me figure that one out.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I figured it out. It posts inside when I am replying to a multi quote post. I am going to reach out to the staff to help me figure that one out.


Maybe that is happening... but what I quoted was a single quote, not multi...

Just pay attention where your cursor is and the quote codes.... You need to reply outside of the [quote*]words words words[*/quotes] to be seen... 

I digress.


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## kapone32 (Aug 27, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Maybe that is happening... but what I quoted was a single quote, not multi...
> 
> Just pay attention where your cursor is and the quote codes.... You need to reply outside of the [quote*]words words words[*/quotes] to be seen...
> 
> I digress.


 Ok sounds good. BTW I am loving the RC100


----------



## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Aug 27, 2019)

My brother gets very close to using all 16GB of his RAM when playing Fallout 4 with all the mods.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 27, 2019)

anachron said:


> It's always personal as it depends on your own use of your computer. I don't know what OP play, but if he do play this kind of game, i still think he should consider buying more than 16GB of ram.
> 
> 
> I didn't forget, as i didn't upgrade my rig beside adding more RAM
> I had an i5 3570k with 2x4GB of DDR3-2133 bought in the end of 2012, and i added 2x4GB in 2015 specifically for this game (Train Fever with a bunch of mods). It lasted until i bought my current i5 8600k.



@kapone32
If you cannot quote from external sources or just can't paste external sources, just make a snip of it and paste that. You can straight copy paste it on TPU. Hit start, type snip, click New and drag what you want to post, paste where you need it.

But yeah, radious mods, with enough mods you can break any 'usual limit'. I pointed out a similar one with Cities Skylines. Again, a modded version of the game. I saw Fallout 4 pass us by too, again modded. Skyrim is right up there too.

Still though, this does not tell us 'the games need more than 16GB'. You can push any ridiculous amount of assets and horribly inefficient code through modding, is that really something you should go on? In that case, might as well just scale up to 64GB while you're at it. I'm sure you can find someone who exceeds that too 

Wrt the OP's question, its good to make this distinction very clear. For 'mainstream', ie using games as they were intended, 8-16GB is easily enough and will be for the coming years. And if you do need more because you mod your games, you're not making these topics on TPU, you _know_ the answer


----------



## kapone32 (Aug 27, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> If you cannot quote from external sources or just can't paste external sources, just make a snip of it and paste that. You can straight copy paste it on TPU. Hit start, type snip, click New and drag what you want to post.
> 
> But yeah, radious mods, with enough mods you can break any 'usual limit'. I pointed out a similar one with Cities Skylines. Again, a modded version of the game.
> 
> Still though, this does not tell us 'the games need more than 16GB'. You can push any ridiculous amount of assets through modding, is that really something you should go on? In that case, might as well just scale up to 64GB while you're at it. I'm sure you can find someone who exceeds that too



Thanks for the info. I don't think 64 is necessary the game would use about 12-14 GB of RAM so I went to 32 and am happy. I agree with you that there are people out there with 128GB of RAM that have no real need for it. I was going to be one of them when Amazon f.ed up and was selling 128GB (8*16GB) of Corsair DDR4 3200 RGB for $198.99 instead of $1989.99. Unfortunately my order was cancelled before it shipped  .


----------



## John Naylor (Aug 27, 2019)

RichF said:


> It wasn't very long ago when 8 GB of RAM was considered plenty for gaming. Prior to that it was 4 GB. It doesn't seem really so long ago that the 1.5 GB buffer of the normal GTX 580 seemed like plenty.



Every one of out Sandy Bridge build had 2 x 8GB .... 8 GB fell by the wayside about a decade ago.


----------



## er557 (Aug 27, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> Wrt the OP's question, its good to make this distinction very clear. For 'mainstream', ie using games as they were intended, 8-16GB is easily enough and will be for the coming years. And if you do need more because you mod your games, you're not making these topics on TPU, you _know_ the answer



Agreed, but who wants to be limited in not being able to play mods of his favourite games? Just to check again, i fired up the 2014 dragon age inquisition, it launched and ate 16gb, hardly comfortable for 16gb users, I repeat - 4K ultra. Then I proceeded to play the not-so-new GTA V, redux mod, 4K ultra, started to play and went to check out task manager. I was eerily surprised the ram usage was 48GB and creeping up as the game loads assets, I took a screenshot and closed up task manager. So again, this is another perspective to this topic.







As the situation progressed, my 72 threads were screaming under the AIO's, from the game effectively using many cores, with all the alt-tabbing the system became sluggish(gta v bug), and I proceeded to log-out safely


----------



## Vayra86 (Aug 27, 2019)

er557 said:


> Agreed, but who wants to be limited in not being able to play mods of his favourite games? Just to check again, i fired up the 2014 dragon age inquisition, it launched and ate 16gb, hardly comfortable for 16gb users, I repeat - 4K ultra. Then I proceeded to play the not-so-new GTA V, redux mod, 4K ultra, started to play and went to check out task manager. I was eerily surprised the ram usage was 48GB and creeping up as the game loads assets, I took a screenshot and closed up task manager. So again, this is another perspective to this topic.
> 
> 
> View attachment 130222
> ...



Well that's the thing, I also mod (most) games I play extensively, and have yet to exceed the 16GB. You have to get pretty deep in your modding to fill that up. Yes, its an enthusiast forum... but we also have a tendency to throw endless amounts of hardware at nonexistant problems. So if we're just going to do that, why even discuss this


----------



## er557 (Aug 27, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Thanks for the info. I don't think 64 is necessary the game would use about 12-14 GB of RAM so I went to 32 and am happy. I agree with you that there are people out there with 128GB of RAM that have no real need for it. I was going to be one of them when Amazon f.ed up and was selling 128GB (8*16GB) of Corsair DDR4 3200 RGB for $198.99 instead of $1989.99. Unfortunately my order was cancelled before it shipped  .


I ordered that ram as well, they cancelled the order as they came to their senses, but I proceeded to order the warehouse deal of 64gb ram of very good condition(open box)... shipped it from amazon canada via host based shipping service.


----------



## kapone32 (Aug 27, 2019)

er557 said:


> Agreed, but who wants to be limited in not being able to play mods of his favourite games? Just to check again, i fired up the 2014 dragon age inquisition, it launched and ate 16gb, hardly comfortable for 16gb users, I repeat - 4K ultra. Then I proceeded to play the not-so-new GTA V, redux mod, 4K ultra, started to play and went to check out task manager. I was eerily surprised the ram usage was 48GB and creeping up as the game loads assets, I took a screenshot and closed up task manager. So again, this is another perspective to this topic.
> 
> 
> View attachment 130222
> ...




I think you may have hit on something



er557 said:


> I ordered that ram as well, they cancelled the order as they came to their senses, but I proceeded to order the warehouse deal of 64gb ram of very good condition(open box)... shipped it from amazon canada via host based shipping service.





Nice!!!



Vayra86 said:


> Well that's the thing, I also mod (most) games I play extensively, and have yet to exceed the 16GB. You have to get pretty deep in your modding to fill that up. Yes, its an enthusiast forum... but we also have a tendency to throw endless amounts of hardware at nonexistant problems. So if we're just going to do that, why even discuss this



Could it be that each Core uses some RAM. 48GBs is insane I am not sure what else would explain such high usage. Maybe we can ask TPU to run a test on things like the 2990WX and I9 7980XE to see if that is indeed the case.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

er557 said:


> Agreed, but who wants to be limited in not being able to play mods of his favourite games? Just to check again, i fired up the 2014 dragon age inquisition, it launched and ate 16gb, hardly comfortable for 16gb users, I repeat - 4K ultra. Then I proceeded to play the not-so-new GTA V, redux mod, 4K ultra, started to play and went to check out task manager. I was eerily surprised the ram usage was 48GB and creeping up as the game loads assets, I took a screenshot and closed up task manager. So again, this is another perspective to this topic.


Just to put a perspective on things...

1. You game at 4K... according to steam stats, that is about 1.5% of users.
2. Modded games. Few people mod games. I would imagine it's more than 1.5% like 4K gamers, but, perhaps you get the point...


... reiterating the fact that one-off/extreme minority situations do not make the rule. 

So in the end, it takes a perfect storm of a situation to break the 16GB of use. If you play at 4K and no mods, I can't think of any game which REQUIRES more than 16GB of RAM. Mod an already difficult resolution to game at and perhaps some titles will show more use.

Just simply recommending more than 16GB without details is an injustice to the person you are helping. Considering an overwhelming majority would be fine for the next couple of years at 16GB, more is just a waste of money for most people. Again, we can all think of situations where it can be useful, but that isn't the point.



John Naylor said:


> Every one of out Sandy Bridge build had 2 x 4GB .... 8 GB fell by the wayside about a few years ago.


FTFY.


----------



## er557 (Aug 27, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Could it be that each Core uses some RAM. 48GBs is insane I am not sure what else would explain such high usage. Maybe we can ask TPU to run a test on things like the 2990WX and I9 7980XE to see if that is indeed the case.



I'm pretty sure ram is shared by all cores, as is L3 cache, there are two numa junctions and each thread can access any part of ram it wants. It is not like each core needs some ram to work. However, now sitting at idle my pc uses 11GB ram already(several tray icons running) , so that may be a steep starting point.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 27, 2019)

Resolution does not affect RAM usage in any way, the same applies to most other graphical settings, only major exception is textures because they have to be loaded from system memory.

The more RAM is available the less the page file will be used and the more likely will be that the OS will keep active pages in memory, similarly it's also less likely that RAM contents are going to be compressed. All of these things contribute to the fact that when more RAM is available more will appear to be used, this is not an indicator that the system was running out of memory.

Yes, for the millionth time, mods can do whatever to your RAM usage, don't use this as an argument that 16 GB isn't adequate, mods do not generate normal behavior in games. This is as meaningless as me claiming that 16 GB isn't adequate because I wrote some dumbass program that keeps allocating memory forever until it crashes.

Are we done yet ? What's the point of all this ?


----------



## er557 (Aug 27, 2019)

I agree that IN GENERAL, 16gb is a sweet spot, of course always depends on purpose of machine. Funny that OP is nowhere to be seen, we must have overwhelmed him... It could make a nice poll as to how much ram each user has and what uses do they put it to


----------



## Wavetrex (Aug 27, 2019)

16 today is a bit tight, when I'm working I'm easily hitting the page-file.... but unfortunately it's the largest available while also having high-performance transactions and latency. (3400 CL14 and up)
32GB kits are significantly slower, and using 4 sticks will cut down on performance considerably on dual-channel CPU's.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, Samsung already announced higher capacity chips being in production, so very likely 32G in two fast "top-end" modules will be possible next year.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 27, 2019)

Wavetrex said:


> 32GB kits are significantly slower, and using 4 sticks will cut down on performance considerably on dual-channel CPU's


they are and it does? Link please..


----------



## Metroid (Aug 27, 2019)

Cities skylines itself eats 13gb doing nothing, just loading a map with no mods, customs things or anything else. I had to add another 16gb to play the game  comfortably. So I guess in my case 32gb minimum. From 16gb 3466mhz, I had to lower it to 3333mhz 32gb to boot, ran memtest using 30gb for 30 minutes and no problems, pretty stable.

16 to 32, 32 to 64gb, will always have to lose timings or mhz to make it stable if you have not paid $1000 - $2000 for your kit.


----------



## ShrimpBrime (Aug 27, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> Resolution does not affect RAM usage in any way, the same applies to most other graphical settings, only major exception is textures because they have to be loaded from system memory.
> 
> The more RAM is available the less the page file will be used and the more likely will be that the OS will keep active pages in memory, similarly it's also less likely that RAM contents are going to be compressed. All of these things contribute to the fact that when more RAM is available more will appear to be used, this is not an indicator that the system was running out of memory.
> 
> ...



Wait.... People still use page file with 16GB of memory or more? HAHA. 

The point is for a bunch of opinions thrown on the table for good debate.

But nobody has seemed to address the bottleneck. 

OK so easy peasy. check this out. 
When windows informs you that you've used all the memory up, it's time to go buy more. If not, then worry not. (turn off page file)

Bottle neck typically is a speed issue or lack thereof. It's been tested through all time that fast memory speeds with tight as possible timings improves system performance. Opinion need not apply.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 27, 2019)

It's not a good idea to turn off page file, it's a system meant to work even with terabytes of RAM. It's not there for some sort of speed gain as much as it is for properly managing the memory for different threads/processes.


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## ShrimpBrime (Aug 27, 2019)

Meh Ive never had a problem. But I suppose CODBO and posting at forums like this isnt far off from anyone elses daily usage and really havent a need to use page file.

Now I wonder if I could set page file to my Ramdisk??? Hhhmmm...


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## Toothless (Aug 27, 2019)

Now I'm starting to think of sticking one of my m.2 drives in and making the entire thing pagefile to see if there's a difference.


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## ShrimpBrime (Aug 27, 2019)

Page file is mostly used when system memory is full.... And if its full you go buy more memory.

Theres actually no other real use for page file. Lol.


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## Toothless (Aug 27, 2019)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Page file is mostly used when system memory is full.... And if its full you go buy more memory.
> 
> Theres actually no other real use for page file. Lol.


Unless you're on Z97 where the cap is 32gb.


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## trog100 (Aug 28, 2019)

windows virtual memory.. made up of ram and a storage drive..

when the system runs out of the real stuff it used a page file.. years ago with spinning disks windows fake ram pretty much made the system unusable.. it wouldnt crash but it was silly slow..

what happens if a page file comes off a new fast nvme drive i havnt a clue.. relatively speaking it could still be silly slow but maybe not..

i run with no page file.. i do have 32 gigs of ram though..

trog


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## EarthDog (Aug 28, 2019)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Page file is mostly used when system memory is full.... And if its full you go buy more memory.
> 
> Theres actually no other real use for page file. Lol.


Page file is used by many things if it simply exists. Ive got 32GB of RAM and with 27.7 GB free almost 1GB  is used (static size set to 2GB). Not much... but, it is used even if it there is free RAM. Process with less activity can go there.


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## ShrimpBrime (Aug 28, 2019)

It existed years and years ago... Like when a system had 1 or 2gb of memory and programs often would fill RAM.
Today, you dont need it for anything. 
Recommended amount of page file is a minimum of 1.5x the amount of RAM in your system.

Try it off EarthDog. See if it makes any real difference for you. You might utilize a few extra mb out of you RAM at best I reckon.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> Resolution does not affect RAM usage in any way


Completely incorrect. Textures are loaded into system RAM for preprocessing BEFORE they are sent to the GPU. No game loads data directly to the GPU. Otherwise we would not have a need for powerful CPU's and system ram for gaming.



ShrimpBrime said:


> Recommended amount of page file is a minimum of 1.5x the amount of RAM in your system.


For some that would mean 12GB, 24GB, 48GB or more for pagefile size which is completely unneeded. Times have changed, that 1.5x system ram notion became out dated when we moved beyond 4GB of system ram.


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## EarthDog (Aug 28, 2019)

ShrimpBrime said:


> It existed years and years ago... Like when a system had 1 or 2gb of memory and programs often would fill RAM.
> Today, you dont need it for anything.
> Recommended amount of page file is a minimum of 1.5x the amount of RAM in your system.
> 
> Try it off EarthDog. See if it makes any real difference for you. You might utilize a few extra mb out of you RAM at best I reckon.


I've tried to run with it disabled but I have had issues with software (I want to say Photoshop?) and just left it as is (outside of setting a static size). I've also disabled it and it worked... so it depends on the use and user. For most that should be fine.


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## ShrimpBrime (Aug 28, 2019)

Nice being so selective from sentences in my post!! That's kind of exactly my point there LexLutherMiester. 

Times have changed Indeed. 

So Memory has usually been faster for CPU to access than the HDDs, ahem, SSDs.... well that's where you want your programs. 
That's why RAMdisk works so well. If you can fit all your programs on the memory and run what you need to without the need for pagefile, then you'd want all your programs readied in Random Access Memory, not on disk. That's why the mention of laggy system response. 

The nice thing about the pagefile feature is that you can turn if back on after turning it off. If windows tells you that RAM is full (this happens when pagefile is enabled and used) then it's still time to go buy more memory lol.....

Bottleneck is still in the speed and bandwidth. 

Not sure exactly where the topic of this thread went. lol, stupid pagefile. If you feel the need to have it on, by all means....



EarthDog said:


> I've tried to run with it disabled but I have had issues with software (I want to say Photoshop?) and just left it as is (outside of setting a static size). I've also disabled it and it worked... so it depends on the use and user. For most that should be fine.



Oh there could be instances here and there. But I've never seemed to encounter an issue, but I don't do a lot of photoshopping. I buy online (jk)

Do believe there's a pop up when disabling it, that windows wont record errors if set smaller than 800MB, but that's on W7 x64. I'd have to run upstairs and see what W10 does.


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## biffzinker (Aug 28, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Completely incorrect. Textures are loaded into system RAM for preprocessing BEFORE they are sent to the GPU. No game loads data directly to the GPU. Otherwise we would not have a need for powerful CPU's and system ram for gaming.


Also worth mentioning is a majority of games have their textures on the storage drive in a compressed format. Requires a performant CPU for decompression.



EarthDog said:


> I've tried to run with it disabled but I have had issues with software (I want to say Photoshop?) and just left it as is (outside of setting a static size). I've also disabled it and it worked... so it depends on the use and user. For most that should be fine.


Could try setting a minimum size of 16MB with a maximum of your choosing. It's worked for me without any issues noticed.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2019)

biffzinker said:


> Also worth mentioning is a majority of games have their textures on the storage drive in a compressed format. Requires a performant CPU for decompression.


Good point. That's actually part of what I meant. There are other processing tasks that CPU's excel at and are not done on the GPU.


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## rtwjunkie (Aug 28, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Completely incorrect. Textures are loaded into system RAM for preprocessing BEFORE they are sent to the GPU. No game loads data directly to the GPU. Otherwise we would not have a need for powerful CPU's and system ram for gaming.


Yes sir, correct except...with the use of say, ENB with Skyrim.  Many, including myself use it not as a visual wnhancer, but for its ability to bypass system RAM and load textures directly to VRAM.  This allows the 32 bit game to dump everything else into the limited system RAM it can use and virtually eliminates the number one reason for modded Skyrim crashing: not enough RAM.  It also allows you to go crazy on texture mods!

I’m assuming if ENB can do this, some devs must be able to manipulate their game engines to do it as well?


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2019)

rtwjunkie said:


> Yes sir, correct except...with the use of say, ENB with Skyrim.  Many, including myself use it not as a visual wnhancer, but for its ability to bypass system RAM and load textures directly to VRAM.  This allows the 32 bit game to dump everything else into the limited system RAM it can use and virtually eliminates the number one reason for modded Skyrim crashing: not enough RAM.  It also allows you to go crazy on texture mods!


Interesting. This would require that all textures be in a completely preprocessed state on storage. That's gotta take up a lot of space...


rtwjunkie said:


> I’m assuming if ENB can do this, some devs must be able to manipulate their game engines to do it as well?


Anything is possible.


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## biffzinker (Aug 28, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Interesting. This would require that all textures be in a completely preprocessed state on storage. That's gotta take up a lot of space...


Probably no worse than the Xbox One or Playstation 4 requiring uncompressed textures on the storage drive because of the weak Jaguar CPU cores.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2019)

biffzinker said:


> Probably no worse than the Xbox One or Playstation 4 requiring uncompressed textures on the storage drive because of the weak Jaguar CPU cores.


This would explain the huge game installation sizes.


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## Chomiq (Aug 28, 2019)

Heh, I've tried to setup VM on work laptop today for the first time "Oh, so that's when 32GB can come in handy".


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## Vya Domus (Aug 28, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Completely incorrect. Textures are loaded into system RAM for preprocessing BEFORE they are sent to the GPU. No game loads data directly to the GPU. Otherwise we would not have a need for powerful CPU's and system ram for gaming.



I see you still refuse to read stuff just for the sake of disagreeing with someone, I wrote this literally a few words after that :



Vya Domus said:


> Resolution does not affect RAM usage in any way, the same applies to most other graphical settings, *only major exception is textures because they have to be loaded from system memory.*



Resolution does not affect RAM usage, only the GPU's memory.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 28, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> I see you still refuse to read stuff just for the sake of disagreeing with someone, I wrote this literally a few words after that


Or I was ignoring you...


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## Vya Domus (Aug 28, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Or I was ignoring you...



Nah, unfortunately this is simply the extent of your comprehension. Couple of words is the best you can do, we went over this in another thread.


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