16 gb vs 32 gb RAM 8600kvs8700kfor Gaming PC

[zanatos]

Hi,

since RAM now is becoming expensive I would like to know whether 16gb is enough for gaming or Not!

Last but not least is the lack of HT a big miss over the i7 8600k?

 

[R0H1T]

If you're asking about 16GB why do you have 26 vs 42 in the title? 16GB is most definitely enough for now, even the next couple of years, what you have to worry about more is the VRAM & the resolution you play at.

8700k will only matter in the most demanding of titles, six real cores is more than enough for the vast majority, alternatively you could choose 8700 non K.

 

[lyndonguitar]

i chose 8700k that way i probably won't have to upgrade for a very long time just like how my 2600k lasted very long. 16GB for me because Ram prices are too high AND it's more than enough right now. But I'll fill up the 2 extra slots though and go 32GB in the near future.

 

[metalfiber]

I went ahead and bit the bullet and got 4 matched sticks of 3333GHz 32GBs of memory to go with my 8700k. Manly because i didn't with my 4770k. With it i got 2 sticks of matched 2400GHz 4GB and then later i got the same brand, speed, timing and so on.
In the end they really wasn't the same, in saying that, everything seemed to work fine with the XMP profiles. I've read cases where it didn't go so well with other people. To cut the cost i just went down the middle of the road with 3333GHz and timing of 16-16-16-36 G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series.

 

[Komshija]

For gaming 16 GB is more than enough.

 

[Rehmanpa]

Unless you play planetary annihilation at max you'll be fine with 16. I got two pcs with 32gb and never use that much even when rendering videos

 

[Vya Domus]

since RAM now is becoming expensive I would like to know whether 16gb is enough for gaming or Not!

It's enough.

Last but not least is the lack of HT a big miss over the i7 8600k?

I would say so.

 

[natr0n]

You can get by on 8gb honestly, 16gb is fine.

 

[SnakeDoctor]

You could check your ram usage while you gaming and then you would know

 

[EarthDog]

16gb is plenty.

I wouldnt worry about HT on a six core processor personally. A 6c/6t cpu will last years.

 

[quimby999]

Since it States 6 cores and 12 threads it does support HT I've never seen it written anywhere but here that it doesn't support HT

 

[Jetster]

Since it States 6 cores and 12 threads it does support HT I've never seen it written anywhere but here that it doesn't support HT

Which one? The i5 does not support HT so 6 Core 6 thread
https://ark.intel.com/products/126685/Intel-Core-i5-8600K-Processor-9M-Cache-up-to-4_30-GHz

The i7 does 6 core 12 thread
https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_70-GHz

Honestly you wont be able to tell the difference with gaming alone

 

[cucker tarlson]

If you're still on 980Ti SLI, it'd be a better idea to get a 6850K with 40 pci-e lanes.

In other case, 8600K with 6c/6t and 16GB of 3000/3200 RAM should have no problem handling 1080Ti or even faster.

 

[las]

16GB is more than enough. Even 8GB is enough for 99% of the games (and in the last 1% you'll loose a little fps, not much.)

Forget about X299 for gaming. And forget about SLI. Keep what you have till next gen hit. Nvidia should release consumer gaming cards later this year. AMD will probably follow suit with Navi or Vega refresh.

HT often lowers performance in games. I have tested this myself too. Only very few benefits from HT (BF1 is one of them):

 

[Rehmanpa]

16GB is more than enough. Even 8GB is enough for 99% of the games (and in the last 1% you'll loose a little fps, not much.)

Just wait till you play planetary annihilation, the only game which has managed to use more than 16gb of ram and peaked my 4790k and gtx 1080. My ryzen 1700 does better since it has more cores/threads imo

 

[EarthDog]

16GB is more than enough. Even 8GB is enough for 99% of the games (and in the last 1% you'll loose a little fps, not much.)

8gb is closer to a minimum these days. Id say closer to 90% of titles are ok with 8gb - less and less being ok every month. If the budget allows, id certainly go 16gb now.

Running out of ram can lose FPS (they arent loose ), correct, but it can cause hitching when its paging out as well.

 

[las]

Just wait till you play planetary annihilation, the only game which has managed to use more than 16gb of ram and peaked my 4790k and gtx 1080. My ryzen 1700 does better since it has more cores/threads imo

Never going to play that game. Sounds like terrible code/optimization..

8gb is closer to a minimum these days. Id say closer to 90% of titles are ok with 8gb - less and less being ok every month. If the budget allows, id certainly go 16gb now.

Running out of ram can lose FPS (they arent loose ), correct, but it can cause hitching when its paging out as well.

Yep, but in games that benefit from more than 8GB RAM, you don't see huge fps gains anyway, only slightly higher min and avg. max is pretty much identical. Obviously you should get 2x8GB for a new rig, no doubt. But people with 8GB will still be fine in the majority of demanding/AAA games.

 

[EarthDog]

Again, its not really an FPS issue, running out system RAM...once you cross that threshold, it pages out and can cause hitching in games. With several titles out already eclipsing 8gb ram use, 16gb is prudent. Id honestly only go 8gb if i absolutely couldnt afford more.

I dont consider it enough if there are aready titles.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Hi,

since RAM now is becoming expensive I would like to know whether 16gb is enough for gaming or Not!

Last but not least is the lack of HT a big miss over the i7 8600k?

To sum up what others said, and a crusade I have championed here for two years, it is nice to see the majority on board. 16gb of RAM is the new norm for gaming. 8gb was it for about 6 years, but is becoming less and less acceptable.

Don’t worry about 32gb for gaming. If you are a heavy photo editor, then yes, get 32, but unless you are running a HEDT with the dedicated lanes, that extra RAM is overkill, even for photo editing.

 

[las]

Again, its not really an FPS issue, running out system RAM...once you cross that threshold, it pages out and can cause hitching in games. With several titles out already eclipsing 8gb ram use, 16gb is prudent. Id honestly only go 8gb if i absolutely couldnt afford more.

I dont consider it enough if there are aready titles.

In which games do you run out of system ram with 8GB?! A few games RUN BETTER with more than 8GB, but it's not like when you're running out of VRAM and fps drops like crazy because of flushing. There is tons of tests on youtube with 8 vs 16 (and more) RAM, and the 8GB system sometimes has SLIGHTLY less min and avg, not much.

Often 8GB fast memory / low cl offers better gaming perf than 16GB slower memory / higher cl.

I have 32GB, it's not like im trying to justify anything. I simply know that 8GB is more than enough in pretty much any game today, unless you run alot of programs in the background (browser with many tabs is not a good idea).

 

[rtwjunkie]

In which games do you run out of system ram with 8GB?! A few games RUN BETTER with more than 8GB, but it's not like when you're running out of VRAM and fps drops like crazy because of flushing. There is tons of tests on youtube with 8 vs 16 (and more) RAM, and the 8GB system sometimes has SLIGHTLY less min and avg, not much.

Often 8GB fast memory / low cl offers better gaming perf than 16GB slower memory / higher cl.

I have 32GB, it's not like im trying to justify anything. I simply know that 8GB is more than enough in pretty much any game today, unless you run alot of programs in the background (browser with many tabs is not a good idea).

You are simply out of touch with your 32gb. With just normal windows processes and a couple things like drivers and antivirus (which majority find essential), RAM total will regularly go over 8gb. Last night playing GTA 5 single player, my RAM use was 8978. Other recent games I recall off top of my head Dishonored 2, Batman Arkham Knight and Elex find system RAM between 8 and 9 and a 1/2.

I have 16gb RAM so I’m ok. I can however relate one of my systems a year ago had only 8. It was not unusual for gameplay to hit 8. At that point the game would hitch or pause as it tried to fix the situation by swapping out from RAM.

8gb is certainly not “more than enough” anymore. 2010 to 2017 is gone. 8gb is an absolute bare minimum if cost is an issue. Or if not gaming, of course.

 

[las]

You are simply out of touch with your 32gb. With just normal windows processes and a couple things like drivers and antivirus (which majority find essential), RAM total will regularly go over 8gb. Last night playing GTA 5 single player, my RAM use was 8978. Other recent games I recall off top of my head Dishonored 2, Batman Arkham Knight and Elex find system RAM between 8 and 9 and a 1/2.

I have 16gb RAM so I’m ok. I can however relate one of my systems a year ago had only 8. It was not unusual for gameplay to hit 8. At that point the game would hitch or pause as it tried to fix the situation by swapping out from RAM.

8gb is certainly not “more than enough” anymore. 2010 to 2017 is gone. 8gb is an absolute bare minimum if cost is an issue. Or if not gaming, of course.

The more memory you have, the more is allocated. Just like with VRAM. A Titan V with 12GB is going to have much higher usage than 1080 with 8GB, on exact same settings/res. It does not mean that amount is required.

This is pretty much common knowledge. As I already said, there is tons of tests with 8GB vs 16GB in gaming. 8GB is enough in pretty much all games, and in the games where 16GB had better performance, it was not by much.

Just normal windows processes and antivirus? That would run just fine on 4GB. I never said 8GB was MORE than enough, I said it was enough for 99% of games. And the last 1% would also run "fine", altho slightly worse perf.

GTA V 8 vs 16 GB; Same performance.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Lol, you are SO out of touch. The loading of extra RAM just because is what happens with VRAM. This is not regular RAM behavior.

 

[las]

Lol, you are SO out of touch. The loading of extra RAM just because I’d what happens with VRAM. This is not regular RAM behavior.

Read up on RAM allocation. Watch the video btw. I only have 32GB because of VM's + CC.
Gaming does not require much memory.

Even 4GB holds up very well... Arkham Knight is a memory hog. And 4GB delivers 4 fps less than 16GB...
https://www.techspot.com/article/1043-8gb-vs-16gb-ram/page3.html

"With 16GB of memory available we found that Chrome plus GTA V used 9GB of memory but there was absolutely no difference between the 16GB and 8GB configurations. Moreover, just a single frame was dropped when moving down to 4GB of memory in a single-channel configuration."

"Batman: Arkham Knight might not seem like a wise choice here but it's a memory hog, using almost 10GB of memory with Chrome running in the background. Despite this, the 16GB configuration was just 1fps faster than the 8GB config and 4fps faster than the 4GB config. To put it another way, 16GB was 4% faster than 4GB."

"Of the now 20 plus games we actively benchmark with, the only other game to exceed 6GB of memory usage was F1 2015 and all three memory configurations delivered the exact same 109fps."

"In gaming scenarios we were surprised to see 4GB will help you extract most out of your system (actual gameplay frame rates versus say, loading levels) but 8GB remains ideal. Those of you focused solely on gaming who don't have the extra cash to splurge on 16GB of memory, fear not, you aren't missing out on any hidden performance."

I'm not saying 16GB is useless. I'm saying that 99% of games will run just fine with 8GB and the last 1% are still highly playable. You will lose 5-10% perf, at worst.

 

[Vayra86]

Read up on RAM allocation. Watch the video btw. I only have 32GB because of VM's + CC.
Gaming does not require much memory.

Even 4GB holds up very well... Arkham Knight is a memory hog. And 4GB delivers 4 fps less than 16GB...
https://www.techspot.com/article/1043-8gb-vs-16gb-ram/page3.html

"With 16GB of memory available we found that Chrome plus GTA V used 9GB of memory but there was absolutely no difference between the 16GB and 8GB configurations. Moreover, just a single frame was dropped when moving down to 4GB of memory in a single-channel configuration."

"Batman: Arkham Knight might not seem like a wise choice here but it's a memory hog, using almost 10GB of memory with Chrome running in the background. Despite this, the 16GB configuration was just 1fps faster than the 8GB config and 4fps faster than the 4GB config. To put it another way, 16GB was 4% faster than 4GB."

"Of the now 20 plus games we actively benchmark with, the only other game to exceed 6GB of memory usage was F1 2015 and all three memory configurations delivered the exact same 109fps."

"In gaming scenarios we were surprised to see 4GB will help you extract most out of your system (actual gameplay frame rates versus say, loading levels) but 8GB remains ideal. Those of you focused solely on gaming who don't have the extra cash to splurge on 16GB of memory, fear not, you aren't missing out on any hidden performance."

I'm not saying 16GB is useless. I'm saying that 99% of games will run just fine with 8GB and the last 1% are still highly playable. You will lose 5-10% perf, at worst.

Riiiight. Now let's go back to reality, or actual user experience like mine: I ran an 8 GB rig not too long ago with an i5 3570k + GTX 1080 (ie sufficient CPU/GPU power) and it was the 8GB RAM that caused stutter. Did it lower my average FPS? No - that's where the CPU came in. But it did kill my frame times and is one of the main reasons I upgraded to a new rig with 16 GB. Every stutter I used to have is gone, same GPU, same games, same situations.

Fact remains: if you increase framerate, the chance of a frame not getting rendered in time increases too. Building a rig today with a faster quad core than what I had is a 100% guarantee for stutter @ 8GB RAM. And no, you don't need to be CPU/GPU limited for it either.

Can you get by with 8GB? Of course, in a similar way as you can get by on 4GB these days: the applications will function, just don't ask how.

I guess your post is a great example of why Youtube is a crappy source for PC enthusiasts.

Also, RAM is not allocated in the same way as VRAM. Its in fact a completely different world you're talking about here. On top of that, RAM Is also permanently allocated at least in part to everything else you run: Windows, services, literally everything that runs on your rig resides in RAM or Pagefile. Most notably a Chrome browser, which is known to take upwards of 1GB.