My Chrome uses about 4800mb when I have 2 windows and a total of less than 40 tabs. A lot of them are UA-cam, so IDK if that makes them heavier than average. Resolution is 2560x1440, or 1080p on display 2.
What I noticed going from 32GB to 64GB was my video encoding times dropped significantly. The time required to encode a 10 minute 4K video dropped by over 30%.
Just the operating system will run smoother the more it has. On 8 gigs yoyr PC idle uses alnost 4. As soon as you drop in 16 or 32, even 64 the system will start using more and more idle because it really wants more but it knows it cannot take too much. So this logic works for most apps. Even games that run perfectly fine on 8 gig video cards and show 7.2 vram usage, you drop in a 16 gig card and the game will start using 11 gigs or similar, and this all happens on same in game settings. So yeah programs, games and even the OS are all coded to use what they got available to the best of their abilities.
@@Strahinja_Djordjevicsadly my rtx 3050 laptop with only 4gb Vram can't open some heavy AAA games, it's not require enough Vram. But i used 32gb 16x2 of ram and its wayyyy more smooth compare to 16gb 2x8 which used before, and yeah more ram means the system will use more space.
@@Strahinja_Djordjevic yep 64gb DDR5 and 20GB 7900xt and 7800X3D all using SAM as well. excellent always left with 15Gb of RAM left or more depending on my usage
Current machine has 8GB DDR3 (i7 4770K). New machine will jump to 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30, which will be like coming up for air after being underwater a long time. Good video, thanks.
When I went from DDR2 4 GB to DDR4 16 GB there was a noticeable difference. The main one was that on the old one we had to care about minimalism, optimisation etc. Now we don't need to care as much, but if we implement some of those strategies, the new RAM works even better. Note that just having additional RAM, it does not mean all is gonna be faster. The CPU has to work to keep those apps up. So if you have bloat and using 10 out of 16, the person that has the same CPU and uses 4 of 8 will have a better experience and performanve even though they have 2GB less free RAM.
@@mesaber86 I can confidently tell you that you're wrong. I have 64GB and no game ever has used all of it. What you're telling me is that you don't have enough memory.
When I play Elden Ring, I'll often have a browser with an interactive map and/or podcast going. It's really nice to have 32GB to be able to not have to worry about RAM usage, the game uses 12GB to 13GB if just the game is running.
I've been playing Elden Ring recently and with only things like Steam, MSI Afterburner, and Hardware Info in the background it still eats up 14.5 GB in certain areas.
“The last time we bothered was 2018” The change from 2018 to 2024 is massive and rightfully deserved! You give us geeks the best possible explanation and details on stuff that we have doubts about our are just curious to know more about! Great job to everyone at Hardware Unboxed and wishing you all much more for the years to come! Cheers 🍻
@alargecorgi2199 but i guess they are not all active. i have probably more than that and i have ONLY 16 GBRAM i even have Tabs in Groups THe Top of my Browser is full of Groups that contain many Tabs. i don't understand why people say Chrome is slow because of Tabs, i have no issues. With Edge my system freezes if i have just 200Tabs open.
I use 64GB of ram but of course I use my computer mainly for work. It's overkill for just gaming but when you need to work on client projects and have Unity, Unreal, Rider or Visual Studio, Blender and Photoshop at the same time, that amount of ram just makes sense.
My old Cities: Skylines maps easily ate 20 of my 24GB of ram. That was even with a mod that made sure, sprites of similar assets were only loaded once. When I upgraded my PC a year ago, I installed 64GB and the same maps ate up to 34 or 36GB. I of course need to say, I had a lot of mods and custom assets installed, but that's kind of the situation for anyone playing C:S on a serious level. Oh, and if you wanna ask why on earth I only had 24GB on the old system, it was because I originally built it with 16GB, around 2013, but when I wanted to upgrade around 2016, that was when prices on ram skyrocketed. 8GB was like DKK 1000 or $140. It was actually insane. A year ago, I only paid DKK 1800 for 64GB DDR5.
it doesnt make sense, theyre clearly wrong things and shouldnt be done let alone normalized, i wouldnt want to accostumed in such environment and leave as soon as i get rich
Great video Steve! I agree. I don’t think the extra charts were needed for this one. I’m running 64gb of RAM, with heavy usage the most I’ve seen it go up to is slightly above 32gb (if I leave Premiere and Photoshop open while hopping into a quick game).. I run dual monitors with a ton of Rainmeter widgets and I’ve learned with time that the extra headroom helps. I look at this much like the conversation of using an Ultrawide monitor and needing to go for a GPU that’s capable of pushing 4K. I usually have to account for the overhead but most people with a single display and no extra background apps don’t really need it. Keep up the great work!
Depending on what size video or images you're working on, Premiere or Photoshop could consume 64 GB all on their own, so for your use case having that much RAM makes perfect sense.
11:20 "We can't find a single gaming example requiring that much memory" Escape From Tarkov is your answer. Specifically, on the Streets of Tarkov map. I've seen that push 28GB in the past.
I have 96gb Ram and was playing Red Dead 2 yesterday and after a while I saw total system usage was at 28gb. Hogwarts legacy quite happily gets to around 28gb too. Obviously you can still play them fine with 32gb though, I'm curious to know how the compression effects things.
Yeah, but if you have a lot of RAM, games will use more because more is available. It's not like they NEED it. For instance, when I had a GPU with 10GB VRAM, games would often use around 6-8GB VRAM, and they would run perfectly fine. Now I have a card with 24GB VRAM, and suddenly, those exact same games at the exact same resolution use 11GB VRAM and so on. In other words, the system will use more if it can, but it's not like it's going to make a difference always.
Lmfao... Really tho' this changes so quick. A few years "8gbs" was the "minimum" for a gamer, now should be 16 minimum, 32 just ideal and 64 to be safe with everything else, but that might change even quicker, specially with game devs caring less and less about optimizations, which ain't right anyway.
Great video and a refreshing change from frame rate comparisons! I'm on the little CPU that could (Ryzen 3600) with 32GB (2 x 16GB) Viper Steel 3600mhz.
Another benefit I noticed is for long sessions of single player games (especially heavily modded ones) is a large drop in load times between instances you've already loaded before the RAM has to make space again. Older but still played titles like Skyrim will in theory, entirely fit on 32GB of RAM accounting for up to 18GB of mods.
One thing to bear in mind is that expanding memory later may not always be straightforward. For example, in some of my builds, I've noticed that going from two sticks to four sticks requires lowering some timings or bandwidth to run stable, either because the motherboard doesn't like four sticks or that two ram kits of the same SKU still showed minor differences in actual use. You can replace your memory kit to a higher capacity, but it feels a bit wasteful to have leftover memory sticks 😅
It does depends what else you have going on. Remember that OS itself uses RAM to smooth out things and many common apps use bucket loads of RAM. Leave a browser open to a few UA-cam tabs, open a few Word documents, etc. and suddenly one of those can start your game to start using virtual memory. Maybe less so a 1080p, but happens.
@@TheCth777 I don't know man, it's not like a couple of DDR5 16GB 5600Ghz is several hundred dollars, it's like less than a hundred to upgrade to 32GB. The convenience of NOT having to close all my shit in order to open a game is totally worth it, that RAM will last you like 5 years anyways. I say this as someone that spent the last 10 years doing that.
@@devildante9 I mean, you’re not wrong in that it’s nice to have and not that expensive. It’s still not necessary. Most people aren’t gaming with tons of other stuff open to begin with
@@TheCth777 If we go by that, sleeping in a bed is only nice and not necessary, the floor with a bedsheet is enough. If someone is using a computer for gaming, I would think that they would care about the performance at least a bit, and upgrading from 16 to 32, and from 4800 to 5600 or 6000, IS going to make a difference. It just makes no sense to me to not do it, and I live in south america where we make peanuts for money, and even then I don't find the cost expensive at all.
32gb would be enough for me if it were not for flight sims, Digital Combat Simulator (dcs) chews through 32 well into the high 40gb/low 50gb in minutes! MSFS, whilst not as bad as DCS does also use up 32gb quick with addons!
@@evers6214 It can stutter pretty badly. It depends enormously what map, what plane and if you fly offline or on a server. You can play DCS with 16, but 64GB is definitely not overkill for DCS with some planes/maps, especially online. Its also the only reason I have 64GB in mine, otherwise I think 16GB would be enough.
@@evers6214 as vertigo says yes it can well do. Especially for people using VR instead of pancake mode. I saw a reasonable uplift of performance going to 64gb in terms of micro stutters, especially in high asset population missions spanning thousands of sq miles.
@@noisytwit VR is just 2 pancakes, with motion sensors. I also have VR glasses, but I don't have to prove people, that the earth is round. It's like humiliating people using monitors, and you are way superior human being, because you ate all your pancakes, and now you have discovered bacon and eggs!
I went all the way up to 64 on my last build.... necessary? no, not at all. But I really do appreciate that I can pause my single player game, tab out, open a multiplayer game with friends and queue up for a match, then keep playing my single player game during queue. All while leaving my absurd chrome-tab-count windows open too. I don't have to worry about closing out of anything before I open another program/game. It really is more about multitasking than about single-game performance. I can be streaming netflix on one monitor, playing a game on another, recording my gameplay with obs, and still leave my current chrome session open along with another game (or two) paused in the background. That said - one of the much better options really is probably to just buy 16 or 32 to start with, and then a year or so later, you can buy another set of ram to fill your other two slots and double your capacity if you find that you actually are having to go close out of windows/applications before starting up your favorite games. If it's not an issue then just keep going with your original amount.
This was a good format for this topic. No need for dozens of bar graphs. I'm rocking 32 (16x2) gigs of DDR5 in my new PC and 16 (4x4) gigs of DDR3 in my older PC.
@@samsonite187 Depends on what your after. 4x8 is going to have a higher latency, and makes overclocking more difficult. But if you touch the page file even semi regularly it's worth it for the better frame times, and general smooth OS operation.
In November 2022 I built a 13700K system for gaming and production with a then very expensive 64GB kit of 5600 CL36 RAM. Turns out I almost never did any heavy production tasks on that machine, so in January 2024 I replaced the two 32GB sticks with a now much less expensive 32GB kit of 6400 CL32 RAM, and gaming performance improved a measurable and sometimes mildly perceivable amount. I'll use that slower 64GB kit in a dedicated production machine later this year, but I could have saved some cash by buying that 64GB kit in 2024 instead of 2022. Live and learn.
intel scales quite decently with ram speed so it is not a surprise that your gaming performance improved. If you had 7200 memory you would also notice visible improvement even moving from 6400, and going with even faster ram continues to give improvements up to 8000 or so, specially in terms of low 1% frames. After that i guess one enters in the realm of hardly noticeable diminutive returns .
You can run 64GB @ 6400CL28 just fine.. This has more to do with the fact that you went from 5600CL36 slow Samsung/Micron chips, to 6400CL32 fast SKHynix. The actual capacity had nothing to do with it. And to be technical if both 32GB and 64GB kits were both at 6400CL28, the 64GB kit will be faster because it will have lower latency. The sweet spot is 48GB SKHynix new M-die. 6400-8400 are all the same chips, adjust timings and voltage. Thumbs down on your comment for not understanding what you're talking about, and as a result spreading misinformation. Nothing personal, this video is not any better.
@@jakehutchens I know capacity had nothing to do with it. My comment was meant to convey agreement that 64GB is not needed for gaming and to note that for a gaming system, as long as you have enough RAM, it's better to go faster than to go higher capacity. Thumbs down on your comment for completely misinterpreting my comment and for being uppity.
Good points. Now if the memory companies can just plainly state if their kits are dual or single rank would help a ton. I called GSkill to ask if a certain memory kit was single or dual rank and THEY DIDN'T KNOW.
My current PC has 16GB and I've decided to go with 64GB for the new one I'm building out. Its not so much games requiring more memory but the amount of applications I have running in the background, especially the amount of tabs I like to have open in Chrome. I thought about going with 32GB initially and going to 64GB when I need it, but there's some risk with doing that. With RAM, you want to stick with the same exact modules and there's a risk the original 32GB I buy may not be available to buy anymore when it's time to upgrade to 64GB. Stability can also be an issue, especially with overclocking, when running 4 RAM sticks instead of 2. Buying a new set of 2x32GB sticks could be cheaper in the future overall, but who knows what pricing will actually be. For me, going with 64GB now is worth avoiding any possible hassle that may come with upgrading the RAM in the future.
I thought I'd be okay for years on 32GB. Then Lightroom started slowing to a crawl and checking the system usage it was using 19.5GB while editing. I wasn't even doing anything too strenuous. For gaming alone 32GB is fine but even light editing in Lightroom has disabused me of that notion. And at the time I was using a crop sensor camera, I was intending on moving to a full frame camera with double the megapixel rating and that scared me into moving to 64GB.
Doing astrophotography I even seen Photoshop eating up 14GB ram while editing a SINGLE image 😂. If I take some photos on family trips and I want to edit them in lightroom it's always fun to check the ram usage graph in task manager going up untill there is nothing left 😂
Hey there. I tend to build all my "general use" systems around 32GB of ram. For my workstation-related systems, i.e., content creation and work-related, I would like to have 64GB for the headroom. When hitting photoshop hard, I'll see usage go way above 32GB. So if I'm building a gaming PC, 32 is really good. If it's going to be a mixed use case with Adobe apps with a side of gaming, then 64 is my go-to. Cheers Rick
Good call on the format of the video! The time saved on bajillions of benchmarks that wouldn't paint a very clear picture, was spent explaining implications for real PC use-cases, and giving due emphasis to the few graphs and benchmarks that pretty well demonstrate the point. As for my machine: I intended to get 16GB, but I realized at the last moment the bundle I was picking up had the 16GB as one stick. So I had to pay for a second stick. I'm not too unhappy with 32GB, it's never not enough, and there's a certain "charmed life" aspect to that not needing to worry about it. I also enjoy gaming on a 3200G with 16GB of DDR4. It's enjoying the games that matters the most, really. I think 16GB is enough, 32GB will really do it those rare times. It's paying a premium to just never have to worry about it, basically. For those who can afford it, go for it. If your budget is tight, don't feel you're missing out on a ton though, it doesn't appear to make a difference that often according to the video. If stuttering, maybe dial down textures one setting or close some browser tabs and let 'er rip.
1X16GB + 2x 8GB. Right. I recommended 2x 4GB + 2x 2GB about ten years ago for a better performance than with 8GB and still cheaper than 16GB. For DDR2 2x 2GB + 2x 1GB was still acceptable at one point, to get over the minimum 4GB.
Great video. I’m currently running 16 GB of DDR for 3800 MHz with my 5800x3D and RTX 4090. Thought about upgrading to 32 GB as I won’t be doing a system overhaul for another few years probably not until AM6. This video tells me I probably should considering are just going to use more and more for the next few years. Thank you.
You should upgrade your platform too to get full potential, a 5800x3d holds back a 4090. Pretty sure Steve just did a video on it. Save up instead of adding more ram.
@@bluej511 It all depends on what game you're playing and at what resolution. Something is always the bottleneck unless your GPU and CPU are both at 100%. 5800x3d is still one of the best gaming CPUs out there, even beating the 7000-series non-x3d CPUs.
I don’t run any background tasks when gaming. I just game. I’m old school lol. I generally play single player games at max setting on 1440p ultrawide. Currently replaying Witcher 3 next gen. Looking forward to stalker 2 in sept. If my 5800x3D bottlenecks the 4090 I don’t think it’s by much as my GPU usage is typically 95-99%, but it might a little at times. Do you have a link to that video? I think I missed that one.
I find it unceptable that some mid range laptops stil come with only 8GB. My work laptop only has 8GB and it's pretty much used as soon as all the company mandated background apps have finished loading at startup. 16GB should be the minimum for anything, let alone gaming. On my current gaming laptop (Zephyrus M16 2023) I specifically went for a 32GB model as I don't expect 16GB to be the minimum forever. I'm glad I did, based on your graphs, as I enjoy playing hogwarts legacy.
This is why I built a 96 core Genoa for doing LLM models. 12 channels of memory bandwidth and 192 threads for running gguf LLMs (can find on eBay with motherboard used for about same price as a 4090) and can handle up to 6TB of ram or like me get the cheep 32gb sticks x12 = 384GB of ram at 12x ddr5 bandwidth! 460.8 GB/s per socket cheers
Great video. Running 32 GB of VRAM on an AM4 platform. To be fair, I do go frequently above 16 GB, as I do a bit of hobby streaming as well. So during streaming it is running not just the game, but Firefox, OBS, Discord and at least one game client. 🧡💛🧡
If you're playing DCS on a server with a ton of 3rd party mods enabled, and you're recording for replay/tacview later, you can breach over 128gb usage. I've seen some players cite a need to get 192gb ddr5 kits.
I downloaded a huge asset pack for Cities Skylines 1 and it ate over 32GB alone. 64GB is ok if you want to play heavily modded games. Running 64GB DDR5 6400 C32 in my 7800x3d/4090 system, mostly use it for gaming and programming, which sometimes eats over 32, so yeah
Yeah exactly, people are always forgetting that there are strategy and economic games out there that are very scalable and they have completely different loads on CPU and RAM compared to mainstream stuff.
Thanks for the update, looking to do a ground up build next year so all good info. Fyi Star Citizen is a ram monster so I'll be looking to go from 32 ar least 64 , hoping 9000 use faster ram .... Great coverage on computer too keep up the good work thanks for your time and effort.
Oh wow! I had no idea when the GPU VRAM runs out it can borrow from your Memory RAM instead. Insane. This gives another strong point towards getting the 32GB as opposed to 16GB. Thanks a lot for this!
I have 64GB of DDR5 paired with a 7950X3D and RTX4090. I multibox several Eve Online clients at the same time, and also screen record with Shadowplay. I always have Discord open, and usually watch UA-cam or Twitch or a film in VLC, and use many many chrome tabs. As it wasn't a budget build, I figured better to have and not need, rather than need and not have.
@@wasitacatisaw83nice build sir I have the same thing, does it matter to have 2x32 or 4x16? I currently have 2x 16 gb 5400hz dominator expo (had to have it pretty)
just bought a 64 gb kit to replace my 16gb, since multiple games were using all 15.8 gigs of it. this video really helped! just earned yourself a new subscriber!
About the whole "adding another 16 GB" ... that's what I tried to do with my 2x8 GB Corsair DDR4 3600 kit. Bought another exact same kit, threw it into my motherboard ... and started to get stability issues. Windows reliability-report was chock full of red warning icons. Took me a while to figure out and/or to acknowledge that it was probably the RAM upgrade that was to blame - or possibly that it was me since that particular kit (although highly popular/common) wasn't, and IIRC still isn't, on the compatible RAM list from MSI for this board. So I went and bit the bullet, bought a "certified" 2x16 GB kit from G-Skill (one that *is* listed as compatible) and the problems instantly went away. Of course, now I'm stuck with two 2x8 GB Corsair kits that I have no more use for. My point being: If you plan on going, say, 32 GB "down the road", you might as well just buy that much right now and get a matching 32 GB kit. Might save you some headaches and added cost in the future.
Running 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4-3600 with a R9-5900X and RX 6900XT as a Gaming, Streaming & Editing multi-purpose rig, recently rebuilt from Win11 to Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 after being fed up with Win11 shenanigans and not regretting the change one bit so far. Yes; 64GB is overkill for pure-gaming, and to an extent gaming and streaming, but it provides enough legroom for me to have things processing in the background on otherwise unused cores the game and stream aren't commanding, and plenty of legroom for my editing and video rendering to spread out over.
Speaking about boatloads of benchmarks: Please consider testing the impact of RAM size, speed and rimings on games that actually are likely to be RAM bound too. As an example, megabasing in Factorio is a great example of a good benchmark for combined CPU and RAM performance. And for the more mainstream games, a great benefit of playing on PC is the ability to use mod packs. So testing with and without the most popular massive mod pack might give players a better picture of how the hardware impacts modability of such games.
Flight simulator 2020 can use 64 or even 128GB, but it's a niche game. Like Anno, Cities Skyline or even some assetto corsa with mods. So depending on the game 64GB is not that overkill
Anno 1800, Stellaris especially with certain mods, a couple of resource management Sims that I have, flight simulator, and half of paradox games actually... Yeah 64 is really nice to have
I had one stick of 32GB DDR5. After I learned that single channel is a no-no, I put another 32 GB stick there and the whole PC got much quicker (especially booting). Who would have thought. 😆
I'm running 32GB, and is lacking. Having left "normal" gaming for flight sims and DCS in particular... I'm only watching this to learn more about RAM. And it's good. But I wish there were more testing on simulation type games like MSFS, DCS, War Thunder, milsims and so on with a lot of AI units and munitions calculations etc. Testing with a "standard" HOTAS setup and face/IR tracking with the relevant background software running... it would be really really interesting. Difficult to set up, but even as the sim equipment often costs more than a 4090/7800x3D rig, it is still a quite big and persistant customer base. And I believe the results would be interesting also for pure hardware "research"
Been running 64GB for quite some time. I don't need that much. But I'd rather just have it and not worry about having a deficiency, as well as not needing to upgrade if/when 32GB isn't enough.
Exactly as said above. As this video shows, by the time you DO need 64gb of ram to play games, it will likely be more affordable and faster, so there's no point in spending the extra money these days if you don't actually need it.
Yeah, I bought a new PC just this month and went with 64GB as well. Is it needed? As shown, not at all really unless you have A LOT of stuff running in the background but it virtually costs nothing extra, so I figured: Why not ;)
@@cluckendip Not just games. If you suddenly find you want to do 4k video encoding or complex web development with a local SQL server and an VM running... well... if you can make the business case for buying another 32GB of RAM (or 64GB because your slots), you can probably make the case for another PC designed for that tasks -- larger SSDs, more cores, etc.
@@BW022 That's a different argument for those who do need the extra VRAM for that reason, which you're right about. This video is about gaming. The extra VRAM doesn't hurt, but for gamers, it doesn't make enough of a benefit either.
If you don't have the money or even the capability to upgrade your RAM (some old motherboards have a 16GB limit) I can recommend running a light weight Linux distribution instead of Windows. Manjaro with the Gnome desktop environment uses ~850MB of RAM instead of 4GB, and if you go with the XFCE desktop environment you actually go down as low as ~500MB. It's worth a try in my opinion. Proton has matured immensely and I honestly have better luck running games in Linux compared to Windows these days. (except those where the publishers haven't activated anti-cheat runtime for Linux).
Hogwarts is a good example of a Linux win. Currently people are crashing on Windows, but it's smooth on my system with no crashes. Also the game only uses around 5.4GB ram, everything on Ultra @3440x1440. You can also do some nerdy stuff like cache all of a games files and it will load everything from RAM instead of SSD/HDD. So you can take the slowest HDD and cache all the files(with vmtouch) and it will run as if on the fastest SSD.
@@jas0x139 Definitely. And on my laptop which has an older Ryzen 2500U APU (using shared DDR4 as VRAM), I get much less memory bandwidth bottlenecked and can reach far higher framerates in Linux. :)
For a few years, I happily ran topline 16 GB of "G-Skill F4-3200C14-8GFX x2" on a AX370-Gaming K7. A year or two ago, one of my sons sent me his redundant 16GB of a matching kit. Though It took a bit of work to get all 4 sticks running @ CL14, 3200MHz on reasonable volts. So I have been a happy gamer and general heavy tab user for a while now & have only just started thinking/planning of an upgrade. Mainly for more M.2 and a generation jump of CPU once prices settle. Sticking with AMD. Have been a HU fan for many years, love your no nonsense style & well edit, reliable videos. 👍
Extra RAM is used as filesystem cache. It would be interesting to see how it would affect load times between areas, in an large, open-world game such as Elden Ring. It is also interesting to me that many people spec their PCs just for the one task. Seriously, you don't do any other heavy stuff on your PC? Do you turn off hardware acceleration in the browser too, to avoid wear on the graphics card? To me, a PC is a powerful machine that should be capable of everything and the thought of a gaming-specific one is ridiculous.
The vast majority of people don't do much else with their PC than using a web browser, Word and Excel for household purposes and maybe a bit of photo editing or light video editing. For those tasks a gaming capable computer is already overkill. My own personal need is software development first and foremost, so I need all the cores I can get and all the RAM I the artificial limit of the consumer platform will allow. The GPU us just for fun, as anything graphics related is relegated to my wife who's a pro in that field. That said: I can't help but poke at bit at you last statement, as a good gaming computer is capable of everything. Like, what would you change on a high end gaming build to make it "more capable of everything"?
Love this approach to testing this question. Atm i running 32gb that i got back when i Ryzen3 came out i got that. Not super needed just for gaming back then, and i am only now starting to get close to running out of ram. Saying all of that, not sure i am typical gamer. Gamer 100%, but as this is a PC i use it for more than gaming. Besides gaming, i do YT video editing, run Docker and do little messing about in VS code. I am pretty lazy closing everything when firing up a game, probably should do that though :)
Keep in mind, many engines these days use some sort of data streaming. They often just use as much RAM as you will give them and just use it as a larger cache to reduce stutter.
Nah I hack it from bios to enable the secret ram on mobo. I'd told you how you can too but then it wouldn't be a secret lol. No internet connection needed
I think it'd be interesting to include a section with the background tasks in regular videos every now and again, especially for lower end/lower core count CPUs. If you have a 14900k, yeah, all the background tasks you want and then some will run fine, but the same can't be said when you don't have the same horsepower/thread count
I have 64GB in my current(2021) 12700K build. I had 32GB in my 6700K build in 2015. Memory is cheap(usually) and I've had a fair amount of stability issues in the past with mixing memory brands/models that were multiple years apart in manufacturing. So, I generally look at what is considered pretty good or more than enough for all current titles and programs and put double that amount in a build. This way I am typically set in for about 5 years or more if I find myself needing to hold onto a PC for longer than expected. Its not necessarily ideal or the most cost effective way; but Nearly every computer I've built for the last 15+ years has been; Build and forget about it until I am ready to build another new computer. I generally do not upgrade anything mid cycle, except the GPU or adding more storage. I also do occasionally do some circuit simulations that can get very memory hungry for large circuits. You can always fudge it with virtual memory, but I dont like waiting!
With 20GB RAM and memory swap off, I got out of memories so much. Everyone avatars is just horible optimize LOL. My avatar only 526 polygons and 128*128 single texture with Android comparible shader.
I decided on a 48 GB kit (24GB x2, 6400 MT/s CL 32) for my latest build. Largest kit you can buy that's still single rank. So, imo, it is the best combination of speed and capacity. The reason was to future proof as much as possible and be completely covered for heavily modified games/having other things open in the background without worries. Also, it's a bit unique.
Single rank helps with clock speed stability, but if you're running Ryzen, wouldn't dual rank be better? Edit: Yes it is according to frame chasers. Most games don't matter, but you get a boost in games that are latency bottlenecked. Ryzen can't do high clock speed, dual rank gives you the equivalent of high speed that won't run on AMD.
@@TimberWulfIsHere dual channel isn't dual rank. You can have dual rank on single channel. It's a double sided ram stick, been a performance hack since single channel sdram. The only issue is memory controller being able to handle dual rank and dual channel at xpo clocks. You can get a 10-15% increase from dual rank.
I tried adding 2x 8GB DDR4 to my existing 2x 8GB already in my system. I bought the same brand/model/frequency although a few years different in production and they just didn't behave when in the system together, causing occasional crashes despite trying all sorts of voltages and safe subtimings. In the end I ditched that RAM and went to 2x16GB. Much better and stable. It should last me until my next build in a few years.
I do agree with the overall approach of the testing, but I think it would have made sense to test a few more of the games with restricted memory. We've seen with VRAM that different games handle memory limitations differently, some are absolutely crippled.
You might want to try DCS World, its known for its huge ram usage because of the maps and terrain and many modules. I used 32 GB's but switched to 64 GB's which resulted in lower spikes. Also NVME 2 Drive of 1TB is recommended. Still good to see DCS World is still an edge case.
I just went with 64 GB for my new 7800x3d/ RTX 4080 super build. I'm planning on doing a custom loop by Christmas and the RAM was only like $45 more. I figure I have a great gaming machine and won't need to think about it for the next couple years.
A very interesting video which, got my attention as soon I saw the title. 👍 But I do have a question unanswered, what if you are a PC VR player? Maybe a topic for another video? :)
Very sensible way to determine what RAM is necessary. Denying use of the same RAM via a ram drive is a clever way of varying the available amount of "exact same ram". Better investment to buy the best quality RAM in the amount wanted, than going for greater quantity and lesser quality (and/or slower timings). But the one question left hanging, is whether we'd be better off using 4 x 8GB sticks (quad channel, maybe?), or 2 x 16Gb kits to make up that 32Gb. I'm assuming one stick of 32Gb, forcing single channel, won't be the winner here. I tend to have a LOT of background tasks active, and have noticed sluggish transition even with the 2x16Gb I have installed today. So, early planning of an upgrade from AM4 to AM5 late this year or early 2025, I plan to get to 64Gb. But the 4 x 16Gb versus 2 x 32Gb question remains. And even the "new" middle option of 48Gb is looming large...
@Steve: you don't need to use a ram disk, windows can boot with less memory using msconfig Second: due to how windows allocates memory, there must always be enough virtual memory (pagefile+physical) else applications will start crashing. Sometimes inexplicably. Even I got bitten by this. So the more RAM you have, the bigger the pagefile must be to accommodate for the virtual mem requirement overhead.
I've been running G.Skill Fortis 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-2400MHz CL16 For 7yrs now. Updated the MOBO & CPU recently using old RAM and GTX 1080Ti Lightning Z, still kicking good FPS.
Ryzen 9 5950X with 32GB (FCLK 1900 MHz) user. Not feeling limited with programming, gaming and video encoding on this platform. I’m planning to move to hypothetically Ryzen 9 9950X3D. 64GB seems too much, more interested in 48GB and maybe (let’s dream about manufacturers being ready on time) in CAMM2 modules.
Have 16GB DDR4 (2x8) Kingston Predator series ~2990mhz, Ryzen 2600, Radeon MSI RX560 Aero, a 1080p 165hz monitor, had it all for some time now. Using Linux without swap (virtual memory) and desktop Mate. Never had RAM issues but I am not playing too much of the most modern titles, though I have tried almost all of the free Steam games (including the modern ones) and have had no RAM issues at all. I I was to play more resource heavy titles, I would go for 32GB with newer CPU/GPU, DDR4 builds still go for a nice price/performance ratio ... If I was going to stream or develop games, then a modern ThreadRipper/64GB DDR5 RAM would be a must. Note that RAM timings and other parameters are much more crucial than the size of the RAM. It's very important that the CPU and MOBO can fully use up the actual speed potential of the RAM, the quantity is easy to achieve, however the timings/stability, not always so. And keep as much as possible bloat out of your way, try using Firefox instead of Chrome if you need to browse while gaming, there are many setting in the browsers themselves that affect performance ... almost any app has those.
I had 8 GB, then built my new PC with 32GB. I was, however, very paranoid for the first 3 months, until I decided enough was enough of me opening task manager and seeing if my ram wasn't stuck on 100% again, so I decided to go on a trip and see if I could max both the RAM and the GPU VRAM (12GB). It took like 20 firefox tabs, steam, discord, pdf files, word, excel sheets and god knows what else running on the background and both cyberpunk and hogwarts legacy running at the same time for me to max it out, and both games were running well over 120 fps each at 1080p + max settings, even with the other on the background running at locked 60 fps through the nvidia control panel - no stuttering other than hogwarts absolutely hating ray tracing inside the castle as usual. On a daily basis, I very rarely, if ever, see the RAM column on task manager go above 60% (quick calculator math says that's like 19GB out of the 32), and that's after a day's work without closing any browser tabs and having all sorts of crap running in the background. If I had to guess, the only type of people who'd ever need more than 32GB are people who work with 3D rendering and the likes. And even then, it's still 32GB.
I have been running 32 GB on my desktops since at least 2018 and recently I started to put 32 GB on a few of my laptops with upgradable DDR4 memory. It's so nice to not have to think twice about hitting the pagefile and slowing down the entire machine with a lack of memory.
If my only computer was Windows, I'd definitely be going to 64 GB just because I tend to have so many tabs open, plus music & Discord etc all at the same time while I'm playing games, and I've noticed that my RAM usage can creep up to 95% or so sometimes on 32 GB when I'm doing all of this on one machine. Plus, I do a bit of 3D modeling which takes all the RAM & CPU power I can throw at it. However, I have a weird hybrid Windows/Mac setup so I can offload tasks to my Mac when I'm using both. Obviously I'm not *just* a gamer so I'm not necessarily the target audience for this video, but still, I think many gamers who do a lot of multitasking all on one machine could still use the extra RAM, and that +2 GB figure for Discord plus one Chrome tab isn't very realistic. That said, I'm sure for some people 32 GB is enough, and I wouldn't recommend 64+ GB to most people. Still a solid video, and I was fine without the loads of graphs, honestly sometimes they bog down a video as much as I appreciate the data they can provide.
Yes I agree. Although benchmark should be isolated, but real world practice is different. Given that many people do many stuff with multiple monitors nowadays, there's just so many apps that I open to work on. Then when I want to game, it isn't practical to close everything just to run a game. My current old system idles at 20GB out of 32GB, Though not optimized, I could probably reduce down to about 14-16GB if i wanted. So 32GB is just nice at the moment if I were to start a game and it should have a healthy 16GB for any games. 1 Chrome Tab is really not a realistic comparison, putting work aside, at least throw in some commonly used websites and leave it open to simulate a buffer of ram usage... All in all, this is one of the best and closest video to even talk about background apps for amount and ram and gaming usage. Most video purely talks about benchmark or simply grabs data from a "purely dedicated gaming machine" with no practical usage. Given that I only upgrade my computer only after many years, the extra $90 for the peace of mind and no worry about bottlenecking is insignificant. The only headache would be the graphic card.
As much as they can download.
Based
common Jarrod W
69 likes, please keep that way
@@SleepDaemon It was already ruined by the time I got here, but my like made it 96.
@@nathanddrews when I saw it was 69
12:42 Jump scare
I actually LOLd
I had to rewatch to see what you were referring too, I lol'd
Nice catch. )
that part was actually hilarious
"Or Chrome with two tabs open..." 🤣 That really hit the spot.
My Chrome uses about 4800mb when I have 2 windows and a total of less than 40 tabs. A lot of them are UA-cam, so IDK if that makes them heavier than average. Resolution is 2560x1440, or 1080p on display 2.
Chrome typically has more than 100 tabs open.
This really hit me in the feels.
Sad thing is my work pc crashed the other day when I opened a 4th chrome tab. Took over an hour to get it back running.
Meh Firefox is sucking down 6 solid gigs of ram and there are only like 10 tabs open, I think it's just the nature of browsers these days.
What I noticed going from 32GB to 64GB was my video encoding times dropped significantly. The time required to encode a 10 minute 4K video dropped by over 30%.
Just the operating system will run smoother the more it has. On 8 gigs yoyr PC idle uses alnost 4. As soon as you drop in 16 or 32, even 64 the system will start using more and more idle because it really wants more but it knows it cannot take too much. So this logic works for most apps. Even games that run perfectly fine on 8 gig video cards and show 7.2 vram usage, you drop in a 16 gig card and the game will start using 11 gigs or similar, and this all happens on same in game settings. So yeah programs, games and even the OS are all coded to use what they got available to the best of their abilities.
@@Strahinja_Djordjevicsadly my rtx 3050 laptop with only 4gb Vram can't open some heavy AAA games, it's not require enough Vram. But i used 32gb 16x2 of ram and its wayyyy more smooth compare to 16gb 2x8 which used before, and yeah more ram means the system will use more space.
@@Strahinja_Djordjevic yep 64gb DDR5 and 20GB 7900xt and 7800X3D all using SAM as well. excellent always left with 15Gb of RAM left or more depending on my usage
Current machine has 8GB DDR3 (i7 4770K). New machine will jump to 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30, which will be like coming up for air after being underwater a long time. Good video, thanks.
8 to 16 is noticeable, 16 to 32 I didn't notice anything but I also stopped thinking about closing background apps, even before upgrading to an x3d
When I went from DDR2 4 GB to DDR4 16 GB there was a noticeable difference.
The main one was that on the old one we had to care about minimalism, optimisation etc.
Now we don't need to care as much, but if we implement some of those strategies, the new RAM works even better.
Note that just having additional RAM, it does not mean all is gonna be faster. The CPU has to work to keep those apps up. So if you have bloat and using 10 out of 16, the person that has the same CPU and uses 4 of 8 will have a better experience and performanve even though they have 2GB less free RAM.
I went with 16gb DDR3 already in 2012 with my 3770k. Now 64 gb DDR4 with 12700k
My i7-4790K is running 4x8GB (32GB total) of Corsair, DDR3, 2400Mhz.
3:34 Steve is living in 3024 with his 64-channel RAM config
🤣
@@Hardwareunboxed Boss try COD Warzone next time...20+ gb of ram using(((
@@inGameweTrustedit's on the list at 15.8GB
@@randomestdragonmost games uses as much ram as available otherwise pagefile/hd
@@mesaber86 I can confidently tell you that you're wrong. I have 64GB and no game ever has used all of it. What you're telling me is that you don't have enough memory.
2018 feels like a year ago, not like 5 year ago
Agreed!
You musta gone through a different pandemic to me!
@@formulaic78 Plandemic
But its 6 years ago
2015 was 20 year ago Aware
When I play Elden Ring, I'll often have a browser with an interactive map and/or podcast going. It's really nice to have 32GB to be able to not have to worry about RAM usage, the game uses 12GB to 13GB if just the game is running.
I've been playing Elden Ring recently and with only things like Steam, MSI Afterburner, and Hardware Info in the background it still eats up 14.5 GB in certain areas.
The more ram you have the more is allocated by software. As they say free ram is waste.
Why have hardware info on while gaming, that easily eats around 5% of the CPU performance@@originalscreenname44
@@sumansaha295allocated =/ used
@@MaxIronsThirdallocated and usage aren't the same......
“The last time we bothered was 2018”
The change from 2018 to 2024 is massive and rightfully deserved!
You give us geeks the best possible explanation and details on stuff that we have doubts about our are just curious to know more about!
Great job to everyone at Hardware Unboxed and wishing you all much more for the years to come! Cheers 🍻
"chrome with two tabs open"
I would laugh, but I'm too busy crying.
@alargecorgi2199 what you do with this much tabs? 😂
@alargecorgi2199 but i guess they are not all active.
i have probably more than that and i have ONLY 16 GBRAM
i even have Tabs in Groups
THe Top of my Browser is full of Groups that contain many Tabs.
i don't understand why people say Chrome is slow because of Tabs, i have no issues.
With Edge my system freezes if i have just 200Tabs open.
I legit have 1,700 tabs on Chrome open right now, 32GB RAM.
@@BluesFanUK_ How do you even know which tab is which, or click on the right one? I thought my 80 open tabs was crazy.
:D
Going from 16 to 32 arround the HG Legacy release was mindblowing. All my performance issues at that time was gone for 30€
I use 64GB of ram but of course I use my computer mainly for work.
It's overkill for just gaming but when you need to work on client projects and have Unity, Unreal, Rider or Visual Studio, Blender and Photoshop at the same time, that amount of ram just makes sense.
Thanks for explaining that on a "ram for gaming" video!
Java Development 😂😂😂
thats not overkill....thats futureproof
@@antman9501 As someone who uses his PC both for work and gaming, I find his comment insightful. Though 64GB might be overkill even for work 😂
Exactly, during work I push 20gb+ and occassionally max out my 32gb so decided to add another 32gb considering I also play during lunch etc.
Went from 16gb to 32gb, huge difference. I can play games while other software are running in the background without affecting 0.1% lows.
And no RAM is lost, it works as disk cache. RAM disk is 1980s nonsense nowadays.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions I don't think the video was recommending RAM disk, it was just using it to artificially limit RAM capacity.
And why the f*** you arę runnig other soft on background?
@@lafalamirr10dede81he could be streaming or playing music anything like that
@@lafalamirr10dede81why the hell not? It's a PC, not a console. Infinite reasons to.
My old Cities: Skylines maps easily ate 20 of my 24GB of ram. That was even with a mod that made sure, sprites of similar assets were only loaded once.
When I upgraded my PC a year ago, I installed 64GB and the same maps ate up to 34 or 36GB. I of course need to say, I had a lot of mods and custom assets installed, but that's kind of the situation for anyone playing C:S on a serious level.
Oh, and if you wanna ask why on earth I only had 24GB on the old system, it was because I originally built it with 16GB, around 2013, but when I wanted to upgrade around 2016, that was when prices on ram skyrocketed. 8GB was like DKK 1000 or $140. It was actually insane. A year ago, I only paid DKK 1800 for 64GB DDR5.
I agree on the graphs. Very nice analysis video. Thanks Steve 😊
it doesnt make sense, theyre clearly wrong things and shouldnt be done let alone normalized, i wouldnt want to accostumed in such environment and leave as soon as i get rich
Great video Steve! I agree. I don’t think the extra charts were needed for this one. I’m running 64gb of RAM, with heavy usage the most I’ve seen it go up to is slightly above 32gb (if I leave Premiere and Photoshop open while hopping into a quick game).. I run dual monitors with a ton of Rainmeter widgets and I’ve learned with time that the extra headroom helps. I look at this much like the conversation of using an Ultrawide monitor and needing to go for a GPU that’s capable of pushing 4K. I usually have to account for the overhead but most people with a single display and no extra background apps don’t really need it. Keep up the great work!
Depending on what size video or images you're working on, Premiere or Photoshop could consume 64 GB all on their own, so for your use case having that much RAM makes perfect sense.
11:20 "We can't find a single gaming example requiring that much memory" Escape From Tarkov is your answer. Specifically, on the Streets of Tarkov map. I've seen that push 28GB in the past.
It needs that much to simulate a working Anti-Cheat.
Doesn't really matter, you barely feel the effects if you don't have 28gb available.
I have 96gb Ram and was playing Red Dead 2 yesterday and after a while I saw total system usage was at 28gb. Hogwarts legacy quite happily gets to around 28gb too. Obviously you can still play them fine with 32gb though, I'm curious to know how the compression effects things.
Yeah, but if you have a lot of RAM, games will use more because more is available. It's not like they NEED it. For instance, when I had a GPU with 10GB VRAM, games would often use around 6-8GB VRAM, and they would run perfectly fine. Now I have a card with 24GB VRAM, and suddenly, those exact same games at the exact same resolution use 11GB VRAM and so on. In other words, the system will use more if it can, but it's not like it's going to make a difference always.
Try Star Citizen, that game loves some free RAM
"How much ram do you need?"
"..All of it!"
Lmfao... Really tho' this changes so quick.
A few years "8gbs" was the "minimum" for a gamer, now should be 16 minimum, 32 just ideal and 64 to be safe with everything else, but that might change even quicker, specially with game devs caring less and less about optimizations, which ain't right anyway.
MB says max is 128gb
Sooooooooooo.......
at least 48gb... but 64gb for future proofing.
Great video and a refreshing change from frame rate comparisons!
I'm on the little CPU that could (Ryzen 3600) with 32GB (2 x 16GB) Viper Steel 3600mhz.
Another benefit I noticed is for long sessions of single player games (especially heavily modded ones) is a large drop in load times between instances you've already loaded before the RAM has to make space again. Older but still played titles like Skyrim will in theory, entirely fit on 32GB of RAM accounting for up to 18GB of mods.
One thing to bear in mind is that expanding memory later may not always be straightforward. For example, in some of my builds, I've noticed that going from two sticks to four sticks requires lowering some timings or bandwidth to run stable, either because the motherboard doesn't like four sticks or that two ram kits of the same SKU still showed minor differences in actual use. You can replace your memory kit to a higher capacity, but it feels a bit wasteful to have leftover memory sticks 😅
I generally give my extra sticks of ram to someone else. Even if they have to lower timings it is still FREE performance if it costs them nothing.
16 is plenty for me. I game at 1080p and use a mix of medium/high settings and I don't have background stuff open, I just game and that's it.
It does depends what else you have going on. Remember that OS itself uses RAM to smooth out things and many common apps use bucket loads of RAM. Leave a browser open to a few UA-cam tabs, open a few Word documents, etc. and suddenly one of those can start your game to start using virtual memory. Maybe less so a 1080p, but happens.
Yeah this video just emphasizes that 80% or more of gamers are still fine at 16gb
@@TheCth777 I don't know man, it's not like a couple of DDR5 16GB 5600Ghz is several hundred dollars, it's like less than a hundred to upgrade to 32GB. The convenience of NOT having to close all my shit in order to open a game is totally worth it, that RAM will last you like 5 years anyways. I say this as someone that spent the last 10 years doing that.
@@devildante9 I mean, you’re not wrong in that it’s nice to have and not that expensive. It’s still not necessary. Most people aren’t gaming with tons of other stuff open to begin with
@@TheCth777 If we go by that, sleeping in a bed is only nice and not necessary, the floor with a bedsheet is enough. If someone is using a computer for gaming, I would think that they would care about the performance at least a bit, and upgrading from 16 to 32, and from 4800 to 5600 or 6000, IS going to make a difference. It just makes no sense to me to not do it, and I live in south america where we make peanuts for money, and even then I don't find the cost expensive at all.
32gb would be enough for me if it were not for flight sims, Digital Combat Simulator (dcs) chews through 32 well into the high 40gb/low 50gb in minutes! MSFS, whilst not as bad as DCS does also use up 32gb quick with addons!
But does performance actually tank or is it not a big deal to use the system swap file?
@@evers6214 It can stutter pretty badly. It depends enormously what map, what plane and if you fly offline or on a server. You can play DCS with 16, but 64GB is definitely not overkill for DCS with some planes/maps, especially online. Its also the only reason I have 64GB in mine, otherwise I think 16GB would be enough.
@@evers6214 as vertigo says yes it can well do. Especially for people using VR instead of pancake mode. I saw a reasonable uplift of performance going to 64gb in terms of micro stutters, especially in high asset population missions spanning thousands of sq miles.
@@noisytwit VR is just 2 pancakes, with motion sensors. I also have VR glasses, but I don't have to prove people, that the earth is round. It's like humiliating people using monitors, and you are way superior human being, because you ate all your pancakes, and now you have discovered bacon and eggs!
Star Citizen uses the vast bulk of 32Gb on its own, if you have other stuff in the background, it is beneficial to have 64GB.
I went all the way up to 64 on my last build.... necessary? no, not at all.
But I really do appreciate that I can pause my single player game, tab out, open a multiplayer game with friends and queue up for a match, then keep playing my single player game during queue. All while leaving my absurd chrome-tab-count windows open too. I don't have to worry about closing out of anything before I open another program/game.
It really is more about multitasking than about single-game performance. I can be streaming netflix on one monitor, playing a game on another, recording my gameplay with obs, and still leave my current chrome session open along with another game (or two) paused in the background.
That said - one of the much better options really is probably to just buy 16 or 32 to start with, and then a year or so later, you can buy another set of ram to fill your other two slots and double your capacity if you find that you actually are having to go close out of windows/applications before starting up your favorite games. If it's not an issue then just keep going with your original amount.
This was a good format for this topic. No need for dozens of bar graphs.
I'm rocking 32 (16x2) gigs of DDR5 in my new PC and 16 (4x4) gigs of DDR3 in my older PC.
I have 4x8GB sticks of 3600MT/s with my 5800X3D, I feel like by the time I'll need more RAM, it'll be time to upgrade my platform as well.
Same setup, I figure if I pair that with a 4070ti super or equivalent I’ll be good for a while
💯
@@Terracronz same but 4070 non tie
Is there a performance increase from 16? Might go get some tonight. Same cpu.
@@samsonite187 Depends on what your after. 4x8 is going to have a higher latency, and makes overclocking more difficult. But if you touch the page file even semi regularly it's worth it for the better frame times, and general smooth OS operation.
So..... @2:00 It depends?
In November 2022 I built a 13700K system for gaming and production with a then very expensive 64GB kit of 5600 CL36 RAM. Turns out I almost never did any heavy production tasks on that machine, so in January 2024 I replaced the two 32GB sticks with a now much less expensive 32GB kit of 6400 CL32 RAM, and gaming performance improved a measurable and sometimes mildly perceivable amount. I'll use that slower 64GB kit in a dedicated production machine later this year, but I could have saved some cash by buying that 64GB kit in 2024 instead of 2022. Live and learn.
intel scales quite decently with ram speed so it is not a surprise that your gaming performance improved. If you had 7200 memory you would also notice visible improvement even moving from 6400, and going with even faster ram continues to give improvements up to 8000 or so, specially in terms of low 1% frames. After that i guess one enters in the realm of hardly noticeable diminutive returns .
You can run 64GB @ 6400CL28 just fine.. This has more to do with the fact that you went from 5600CL36 slow Samsung/Micron chips, to 6400CL32 fast SKHynix. The actual capacity had nothing to do with it. And to be technical if both 32GB and 64GB kits were both at 6400CL28, the 64GB kit will be faster because it will have lower latency. The sweet spot is 48GB SKHynix new M-die. 6400-8400 are all the same chips, adjust timings and voltage. Thumbs down on your comment for not understanding what you're talking about, and as a result spreading misinformation. Nothing personal, this video is not any better.
@@jakehutchens I know capacity had nothing to do with it. My comment was meant to convey agreement that 64GB is not needed for gaming and to note that for a gaming system, as long as you have enough RAM, it's better to go faster than to go higher capacity. Thumbs down on your comment for completely misinterpreting my comment and for being uppity.
Super useful info! Have referred to this video multiple times already. Thanks, fellas!
Good points. Now if the memory companies can just plainly state if their kits are dual or single rank would help a ton.
I called GSkill to ask if a certain memory kit was single or dual rank and THEY DIDN'T KNOW.
a customer support guy doesn't know everything about all the products his company makes? oh the audacity!
My current PC has 16GB and I've decided to go with 64GB for the new one I'm building out. Its not so much games requiring more memory but the amount of applications I have running in the background, especially the amount of tabs I like to have open in Chrome. I thought about going with 32GB initially and going to 64GB when I need it, but there's some risk with doing that. With RAM, you want to stick with the same exact modules and there's a risk the original 32GB I buy may not be available to buy anymore when it's time to upgrade to 64GB. Stability can also be an issue, especially with overclocking, when running 4 RAM sticks instead of 2. Buying a new set of 2x32GB sticks could be cheaper in the future overall, but who knows what pricing will actually be. For me, going with 64GB now is worth avoiding any possible hassle that may come with upgrading the RAM in the future.
Unless you want to do extreme overclocks, having the same kit doesn't really matter. Binning only affects high frequency/low timings.
I thought I'd be okay for years on 32GB. Then Lightroom started slowing to a crawl and checking the system usage it was using 19.5GB while editing. I wasn't even doing anything too strenuous. For gaming alone 32GB is fine but even light editing in Lightroom has disabused me of that notion. And at the time I was using a crop sensor camera, I was intending on moving to a full frame camera with double the megapixel rating and that scared me into moving to 64GB.
Doing astrophotography I even seen Photoshop eating up 14GB ram while editing a SINGLE image 😂. If I take some photos on family trips and I want to edit them in lightroom it's always fun to check the ram usage graph in task manager going up untill there is nothing left 😂
@@mastroitek Sometimes I'm doing focus stacks with about 100 raw photo's, it's the reason I bought 128GB ram
@@jeroenvdw wow! I once was foolish enough that I believed my old 8gb laptop could stack 8 images, did not go as expected...
Which version of Lightroom do you have?
The more you buy the more you save
Helped me so much 😊
Hey there. I tend to build all my "general use" systems around 32GB of ram. For my workstation-related systems, i.e., content creation and work-related, I would like to have 64GB for the headroom. When hitting photoshop hard, I'll see usage go way above 32GB. So if I'm building a gaming PC, 32 is really good. If it's going to be a mixed use case with Adobe apps with a side of gaming, then 64 is my go-to.
Cheers
Rick
What GPU & RAM would you recommend for video editing?
I've notice that my GTX 1660 is getting hotter and slower when rendering 1080p videos.
Good call on the format of the video! The time saved on bajillions of benchmarks that wouldn't paint a very clear picture, was spent explaining implications for real PC use-cases, and giving due emphasis to the few graphs and benchmarks that pretty well demonstrate the point.
As for my machine: I intended to get 16GB, but I realized at the last moment the bundle I was picking up had the 16GB as one stick. So I had to pay for a second stick. I'm not too unhappy with 32GB, it's never not enough, and there's a certain "charmed life" aspect to that not needing to worry about it. I also enjoy gaming on a 3200G with 16GB of DDR4. It's enjoying the games that matters the most, really.
I think 16GB is enough, 32GB will really do it those rare times. It's paying a premium to just never have to worry about it, basically. For those who can afford it, go for it. If your budget is tight, don't feel you're missing out on a ton though, it doesn't appear to make a difference that often according to the video. If stuttering, maybe dial down textures one setting or close some browser tabs and let 'er rip.
48 GB kits exist too if you need memory between 32 GB and 64 GB.
It's sth with speed and dual rank.
Stupidly expensive in my country.
And even more, there is some 24GB kits. If price is OK, its a nice entry level amount of RAM
1X16GB + 2x 8GB. Right. I recommended 2x 4GB + 2x 2GB about ten years ago for a better performance than with 8GB and still cheaper than 16GB.
For DDR2 2x 2GB + 2x 1GB was still acceptable at one point, to get over the minimum 4GB.
@@axescar 24gb is entry level?
Great video. I’m currently running 16 GB of DDR for 3800 MHz with my 5800x3D and RTX 4090. Thought about upgrading to 32 GB as I won’t be doing a system overhaul for another few years probably not until AM6. This video tells me I probably should considering are just going to use more and more for the next few years. Thank you.
You should definitely get more ram, especially if you like to have discord or web browser open while gaming.
You should upgrade your platform too to get full potential, a 5800x3d holds back a 4090. Pretty sure Steve just did a video on it. Save up instead of adding more ram.
@@bluej511 It all depends on what game you're playing and at what resolution. Something is always the bottleneck unless your GPU and CPU are both at 100%. 5800x3d is still one of the best gaming CPUs out there, even beating the 7000-series non-x3d CPUs.
I don’t run any background tasks when gaming. I just game. I’m old school lol. I generally play single player games at max setting on 1440p ultrawide. Currently replaying Witcher 3 next gen. Looking forward to stalker 2 in sept. If my 5800x3D bottlenecks the 4090 I don’t think it’s by much as my GPU usage is typically 95-99%, but it might a little at times. Do you have a link to that video? I think I missed that one.
@@john066 forgot where it was but a 7800x3d gets more fps then a 5800x3d with a 4090. Again, you won't notice 150 fps compared to 180 lol.
I find it unceptable that some mid range laptops stil come with only 8GB. My work laptop only has 8GB and it's pretty much used as soon as all the company mandated background apps have finished loading at startup. 16GB should be the minimum for anything, let alone gaming. On my current gaming laptop (Zephyrus M16 2023) I specifically went for a 32GB model as I don't expect 16GB to be the minimum forever. I'm glad I did, based on your graphs, as I enjoy playing hogwarts legacy.
My work laptop has 32gb of ram and is still a laggy slow piece of shit swapping between or opening programs
This is why I built a 96 core Genoa for doing LLM models. 12 channels of memory bandwidth and 192 threads for running gguf LLMs (can find on eBay with motherboard used for about same price as a 4090) and can handle up to 6TB of ram or like me get the cheep 32gb sticks x12 = 384GB of ram at 12x ddr5 bandwidth! 460.8 GB/s per socket cheers
Great video. Running 32 GB of VRAM on an AM4 platform. To be fair, I do go frequently above 16 GB, as I do a bit of hobby streaming as well. So during streaming it is running not just the game, but Firefox, OBS, Discord and at least one game client. 🧡💛🧡
DCS World, in a heavily saturated MP setting will suck up over 50GB of RAM.
That's wild
Does Nvidia Frame gen/DLSS reduce any RAM usage?
Lol wtf
@@LuccianoNovano
If you're playing DCS on a server with a ton of 3rd party mods enabled, and you're recording for replay/tacview later, you can breach over 128gb usage. I've seen some players cite a need to get 192gb ddr5 kits.
I downloaded a huge asset pack for Cities Skylines 1 and it ate over 32GB alone. 64GB is ok if you want to play heavily modded games. Running 64GB DDR5 6400 C32 in my 7800x3d/4090 system, mostly use it for gaming and programming, which sometimes eats over 32, so yeah
Yeah exactly, people are always forgetting that there are strategy and economic games out there that are very scalable and they have completely different loads on CPU and RAM compared to mainstream stuff.
Thanks for the update, looking to do a ground up build next year so all good info.
Fyi Star Citizen is a ram monster so I'll be looking to go from 32 ar least 64 , hoping 9000 use faster ram ....
Great coverage on computer too keep up the good work thanks for your time and effort.
64 Really helps with that game. Highly recommended if you can
Oh wow! I had no idea when the GPU VRAM runs out it can borrow from your Memory RAM instead. Insane. This gives another strong point towards getting the 32GB as opposed to 16GB. Thanks a lot for this!
I have 64GB of DDR5 paired with a 7950X3D and RTX4090.
I multibox several Eve Online clients at the same time, and also screen record with Shadowplay. I always have Discord open, and usually watch UA-cam or Twitch or a film in VLC, and use many many chrome tabs.
As it wasn't a budget build, I figured better to have and not need, rather than need and not have.
I have the same build … what type of ram d u have ?
@@DrManany 2x 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 30-36-36-96
@@wasitacatisaw83nice build sir I have the same thing, does it matter to have 2x32 or 4x16? I currently have 2x 16 gb 5400hz dominator expo (had to have it pretty)
@@segasov the memory controller on Ryzen CPUs can't handle 4 sticks of ram. If you want 64, you have to do 2x32, not 4x16
12:41 that got me, hahahaha
This look is called "Magnum" in tech journalism circles
And Apple still thinks 8gb of ram ok in 2024.
you say that as if anyone would get a mac for gaming
@@Robo-xk4jm Imagine getting a new mac thinking it can run final cut. Then it cant run final cut.
It is okay if you know what for will you use it
@@_Cookie_Warrior_ Like buying a $1100 laptop for just web browsing and typing word documents? Because that's about what 8gb of ram can do nowadays
@@jonathanto99 I know, but its peoples choise to buy it, apple is giving them options.
From the games i have played: Minecraft, BeamngDrive, Starcitizen also eat 16+GB.
what a shitty games selection
Oh absolutely. I regularly see Star Citizen alone using 22Gb of memory when playing.
Especially beam ng multiplayer with 15 or more people ive had it go up to 24gb
Yes and PS6 will get maby 32gb ram.
@@kaimojepasltyou have smegma on your shaft🤣
just bought a 64 gb kit to replace my 16gb, since multiple games were using all 15.8 gigs of it. this video really helped! just earned yourself a new subscriber!
I love how you covered the history, cuz thats exactly what was going through my head "future proofing"
About the whole "adding another 16 GB" ... that's what I tried to do with my 2x8 GB Corsair DDR4 3600 kit. Bought another exact same kit, threw it into my motherboard ... and started to get stability issues. Windows reliability-report was chock full of red warning icons. Took me a while to figure out and/or to acknowledge that it was probably the RAM upgrade that was to blame - or possibly that it was me since that particular kit (although highly popular/common) wasn't, and IIRC still isn't, on the compatible RAM list from MSI for this board. So I went and bit the bullet, bought a "certified" 2x16 GB kit from G-Skill (one that *is* listed as compatible) and the problems instantly went away. Of course, now I'm stuck with two 2x8 GB Corsair kits that I have no more use for.
My point being: If you plan on going, say, 32 GB "down the road", you might as well just buy that much right now and get a matching 32 GB kit. Might save you some headaches and added cost in the future.
Valuable experience shared
Thanks. I was going to do the same thing
And memory controllers don't like to run 4 dimm ddr5 configurations
Video references a link in the description explaining the difference in single/dual/quad rank memory modules but it's not there
Running 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4-3600 with a R9-5900X and RX 6900XT as a Gaming, Streaming & Editing multi-purpose rig, recently rebuilt from Win11 to Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 after being fed up with Win11 shenanigans and not regretting the change one bit so far.
Yes; 64GB is overkill for pure-gaming, and to an extent gaming and streaming, but it provides enough legroom for me to have things processing in the background on otherwise unused cores the game and stream aren't commanding, and plenty of legroom for my editing and video rendering to spread out over.
Do you use Process Lasso too to lock the Cores for the Game and Stream or do you just let zhe System do it automatically?
What headroom are you making use of then, what additional tasks are you running? Or am I just reading cope?
Every application runs better with 64GB of RAM.
Nice. With 64GB it doesn't matter but Cinnamon desktop would idle at 1GB or under whereas Windows can use 3-4GB+ right after login.
@@Petephoenixdebloated windows is around 1.8/1.9gb.
This was a very good approach, and i believe you ended up coming to a more accurate conclusion with less benchmark grinds. Thank you.
Speaking about boatloads of benchmarks: Please consider testing the impact of RAM size, speed and rimings on games that actually are likely to be RAM bound too.
As an example, megabasing in Factorio is a great example of a good benchmark for combined CPU and RAM performance.
And for the more mainstream games, a great benefit of playing on PC is the ability to use mod packs. So testing with and without the most popular massive mod pack might give players a better picture of how the hardware impacts modability of such games.
Try Anno 1800 with a save file thats in the range of 500-1000 hours. Trust me, you NEED 64 GB! :D
Cities Skylines is like that, as well. Most city builders can heavily inflate the larger you build and expand.
Flight simulator 2020 can use 64 or even 128GB, but it's a niche game. Like Anno, Cities Skyline or even some assetto corsa with mods. So depending on the game 64GB is not that overkill
Anno 1800, Stellaris especially with certain mods, a couple of resource management Sims that I have, flight simulator, and half of paradox games actually... Yeah 64 is really nice to have
I had one stick of 32GB DDR5. After I learned that single channel is a no-no, I put another 32 GB stick there and the whole PC got much quicker (especially booting). Who would have thought. 😆
You were essentially running at half your ram speed. The speed on a ram kit is for dual channel even if you buy one stick, it's a bit deceiving.
surprised they even sell single ram sticks in the current year
...this setup has been recommended past +15 years.
Use two DDR RAM sticks
@@bluej511ddr5 is already dual channel for each module
@@bluej511you're kind of right in a way, but not for the reason you think lol
3:36 YOU DID WHAT
The Jenga version we never knew we needed.
I'm running 32GB, and is lacking. Having left "normal" gaming for flight sims and DCS in particular... I'm only watching this to learn more about RAM. And it's good. But I wish there were more testing on simulation type games like MSFS, DCS, War Thunder, milsims and so on with a lot of AI units and munitions calculations etc. Testing with a "standard" HOTAS setup and face/IR tracking with the relevant background software running... it would be really really interesting. Difficult to set up, but even as the sim equipment often costs more than a 4090/7800x3D rig, it is still a quite big and persistant customer base. And I believe the results would be interesting also for pure hardware "research"
Been running 64GB for quite some time. I don't need that much. But I'd rather just have it and not worry about having a deficiency, as well as not needing to upgrade if/when 32GB isn't enough.
But by that time you'll need to upgrade your entire PC, and then your old and incompatible 64GB will have to stay in your old PC -- doing nothing.
Exactly as said above. As this video shows, by the time you DO need 64gb of ram to play games, it will likely be more affordable and faster, so there's no point in spending the extra money these days if you don't actually need it.
Yeah, I bought a new PC just this month and went with 64GB as well. Is it needed? As shown, not at all really unless you have A LOT of stuff running in the background but it virtually costs nothing extra, so I figured: Why not ;)
@@cluckendip Not just games. If you suddenly find you want to do 4k video encoding or complex web development with a local SQL server and an VM running... well... if you can make the business case for buying another 32GB of RAM (or 64GB because your slots), you can probably make the case for another PC designed for that tasks -- larger SSDs, more cores, etc.
@@BW022 That's a different argument for those who do need the extra VRAM for that reason, which you're right about. This video is about gaming. The extra VRAM doesn't hurt, but for gamers, it doesn't make enough of a benefit either.
If you don't have the money or even the capability to upgrade your RAM (some old motherboards have a 16GB limit) I can recommend running a light weight Linux distribution instead of Windows. Manjaro with the Gnome desktop environment uses ~850MB of RAM instead of 4GB, and if you go with the XFCE desktop environment you actually go down as low as ~500MB. It's worth a try in my opinion. Proton has matured immensely and I honestly have better luck running games in Linux compared to Windows these days. (except those where the publishers haven't activated anti-cheat runtime for Linux).
Plus, you can “download more RAM” by installing zram-tools and configuring it :D
Hogwarts is a good example of a Linux win. Currently people are crashing on Windows, but it's smooth on my system with no crashes. Also the game only uses around 5.4GB ram, everything on Ultra @3440x1440. You can also do some nerdy stuff like cache all of a games files and it will load everything from RAM instead of SSD/HDD. So you can take the slowest HDD and cache all the files(with vmtouch) and it will run as if on the fastest SSD.
@@jas0x139 Definitely. And on my laptop which has an older Ryzen 2500U APU (using shared DDR4 as VRAM), I get much less memory bandwidth bottlenecked and can reach far higher framerates in Linux. :)
That upside-down front panel 3:53 😢
It's because Steve lives in Australia.
That's how they roll in Upside-down Land.
If adding to current memory please ensure you buy a matching kit to what you have already, matching revision/version number as well.
For a few years, I happily ran topline 16 GB of "G-Skill F4-3200C14-8GFX x2" on a AX370-Gaming K7. A year or two ago, one of my sons sent me his redundant 16GB of a matching kit. Though It took a bit of work to get all 4 sticks running @ CL14, 3200MHz on reasonable volts. So I have been a happy gamer and general heavy tab user for a while now & have only just started thinking/planning of an upgrade. Mainly for more M.2 and a generation jump of CPU once prices settle. Sticking with AMD.
Have been a HU fan for many years, love your no nonsense style & well edit, reliable videos. 👍
Extra RAM is used as filesystem cache. It would be interesting to see how it would affect load times between areas, in an large, open-world game such as Elden Ring.
It is also interesting to me that many people spec their PCs just for the one task. Seriously, you don't do any other heavy stuff on your PC? Do you turn off hardware acceleration in the browser too, to avoid wear on the graphics card? To me, a PC is a powerful machine that should be capable of everything and the thought of a gaming-specific one is ridiculous.
The vast majority of people don't do much else with their PC than using a web browser, Word and Excel for household purposes and maybe a bit of photo editing or light video editing. For those tasks a gaming capable computer is already overkill.
My own personal need is software development first and foremost, so I need all the cores I can get and all the RAM I the artificial limit of the consumer platform will allow. The GPU us just for fun, as anything graphics related is relegated to my wife who's a pro in that field.
That said: I can't help but poke at bit at you last statement, as a good gaming computer is capable of everything. Like, what would you change on a high end gaming build to make it "more capable of everything"?
Need 32
want 64
Desire 128
12:40 - LOL at the reflection face ya made 🤣
Love this approach to testing this question. Atm i running 32gb that i got back when i Ryzen3 came out i got that. Not super needed just for gaming back then, and i am only now starting to get close to running out of ram. Saying all of that, not sure i am typical gamer. Gamer 100%, but as this is a PC i use it for more than gaming. Besides gaming, i do YT video editing, run Docker and do little messing about in VS code. I am pretty lazy closing everything when firing up a game, probably should do that though :)
Keep in mind, many engines these days use some sort of data streaming. They often just use as much RAM as you will give them and just use it as a larger cache to reduce stutter.
Unless you are on a super small budget, the price of ram is cheap enough that 32gb should be the current standard.
Don't you guys download it when you need more? Lol
Overused joke, try something different next time.
@@EarthIsFlat456 Cry me a river
Nah I hack it from bios to enable the secret ram on mobo. I'd told you how you can too but then it wouldn't be a secret lol. No internet connection needed
@@EarthIsFlat456 It's not a joke though, I download RAM all the time. Give it a try.
@@El_Deen I'm sorry I hurt your feeling.
Oh no. At 12:44 you can see that the Phantom of unboxed Hardware is haunting Steve and Tim. I am so sorry.
I think it'd be interesting to include a section with the background tasks in regular videos every now and again, especially for lower end/lower core count CPUs. If you have a 14900k, yeah, all the background tasks you want and then some will run fine, but the same can't be said when you don't have the same horsepower/thread count
I have 64GB in my current(2021) 12700K build. I had 32GB in my 6700K build in 2015. Memory is cheap(usually) and I've had a fair amount of stability issues in the past with mixing memory brands/models that were multiple years apart in manufacturing. So, I generally look at what is considered pretty good or more than enough for all current titles and programs and put double that amount in a build.
This way I am typically set in for about 5 years or more if I find myself needing to hold onto a PC for longer than expected. Its not necessarily ideal or the most cost effective way; but Nearly every computer I've built for the last 15+ years has been; Build and forget about it until I am ready to build another new computer. I generally do not upgrade anything mid cycle, except the GPU or adding more storage. I also do occasionally do some circuit simulations that can get very memory hungry for large circuits. You can always fudge it with virtual memory, but I dont like waiting!
32GB RAM is the sweet spot now.
*ignores video, comments on video anyway*
Test VRChat next time, in a populous instance.
With 20GB RAM and memory swap off, I got out of memories so much. Everyone avatars is just horible optimize LOL. My avatar only 526 polygons and 128*128 single texture with Android comparible shader.
Jayztwocents had a video recently where he claimed that 16GB was more than anyone will ever need for gaming.
Obviously he's wrong about that.
awesome video… perfect imo! clear, concise and to the point without beating around the bush. Appreciate it. thnks!
Tinkered together a new machine last year. Got a 32 gig kit of brand new name brand ddr 4 for $59. Job done. Cheers!
*Thumbnail: Wolveram*
I decided on a 48 GB kit (24GB x2, 6400 MT/s CL 32) for my latest build. Largest kit you can buy that's still single rank. So, imo, it is the best combination of speed and capacity. The reason was to future proof as much as possible and be completely covered for heavily modified games/having other things open in the background without worries. Also, it's a bit unique.
Single rank helps with clock speed stability, but if you're running Ryzen, wouldn't dual rank be better?
Edit: Yes it is according to frame chasers. Most games don't matter, but you get a boost in games that are latency bottlenecked. Ryzen can't do high clock speed, dual rank gives you the equivalent of high speed that won't run on AMD.
You are running 2 sticks, you quite literally are in duel rank mode.
@@TimberWulfIsHere dual channel isn't dual rank. You can have dual rank on single channel. It's a double sided ram stick, been a performance hack since single channel sdram. The only issue is memory controller being able to handle dual rank and dual channel at xpo clocks. You can get a 10-15% increase from dual rank.
@@JohnDoe-ip3oq whoops, got my terms mixed up lmao.
Steve, when can we expect some more fortnite or gaming on Gaming Unboxed?
Love the content!
I tried adding 2x 8GB DDR4 to my existing 2x 8GB already in my system. I bought the same brand/model/frequency although a few years different in production and they just didn't behave when in the system together, causing occasional crashes despite trying all sorts of voltages and safe subtimings. In the end I ditched that RAM and went to 2x16GB. Much better and stable. It should last me until my next build in a few years.
3:34 Man, just Thank You for this RAM Tower! 😍😍😍
I do agree with the overall approach of the testing, but I think it would have made sense to test a few more of the games with restricted memory. We've seen with VRAM that different games handle memory limitations differently, some are absolutely crippled.
You might want to try DCS World, its known for its huge ram usage because of the maps and terrain and many modules. I used 32 GB's but switched to 64 GB's which resulted in lower spikes. Also NVME 2 Drive of 1TB is recommended. Still good to see DCS World is still an edge case.
love the background task section, we need more of this
I just went with 64 GB for my new 7800x3d/ RTX 4080 super build. I'm planning on doing a custom loop by Christmas and the RAM was only like $45 more. I figure I have a great gaming machine and won't need to think about it for the next couple years.
A very interesting video which, got my attention as soon I saw the title. 👍
But I do have a question unanswered, what if you are a PC VR player?
Maybe a topic for another video? :)
Very sensible way to determine what RAM is necessary. Denying use of the same RAM via a ram drive is a clever way of varying the available amount of "exact same ram".
Better investment to buy the best quality RAM in the amount wanted, than going for greater quantity and lesser quality (and/or slower timings).
But the one question left hanging, is whether we'd be better off using 4 x 8GB sticks (quad channel, maybe?), or 2 x 16Gb kits to make up that 32Gb. I'm assuming one stick of 32Gb, forcing single channel, won't be the winner here.
I tend to have a LOT of background tasks active, and have noticed sluggish transition even with the 2x16Gb I have installed today. So, early planning of an upgrade from AM4 to AM5 late this year or early 2025, I plan to get to 64Gb. But the 4 x 16Gb versus 2 x 32Gb question remains. And even the "new" middle option of 48Gb is looming large...
@Steve: you don't need to use a ram disk, windows can boot with less memory using msconfig
Second: due to how windows allocates memory, there must always be enough virtual memory (pagefile+physical) else applications will start crashing. Sometimes inexplicably. Even I got bitten by this. So the more RAM you have, the bigger the pagefile must be to accommodate for the virtual mem requirement overhead.
I've been running G.Skill Fortis 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-2400MHz CL16
For 7yrs now. Updated the MOBO & CPU recently using old RAM and GTX 1080Ti Lightning Z, still kicking good FPS.
Ryzen 9 5950X with 32GB (FCLK 1900 MHz) user. Not feeling limited with programming, gaming and video encoding on this platform.
I’m planning to move to hypothetically Ryzen 9 9950X3D. 64GB seems too much, more interested in 48GB and maybe (let’s dream about manufacturers being ready on time) in CAMM2 modules.
Have 16GB DDR4 (2x8) Kingston Predator series ~2990mhz, Ryzen 2600, Radeon MSI RX560 Aero, a 1080p 165hz monitor, had it all for some time now.
Using Linux without swap (virtual memory) and desktop Mate.
Never had RAM issues but I am not playing too much of the most modern titles, though I have tried almost all of the free Steam games (including the modern ones) and have had no RAM issues at all.
I I was to play more resource heavy titles, I would go for 32GB with newer CPU/GPU, DDR4 builds still go for a nice price/performance ratio ... If I was going to stream or develop games, then a modern ThreadRipper/64GB DDR5 RAM would be a must.
Note that RAM timings and other parameters are much more crucial than the size of the RAM. It's very important that the CPU and MOBO can fully use up the actual speed potential of the RAM, the quantity is easy to achieve, however the timings/stability, not always so.
And keep as much as possible bloat out of your way, try using Firefox instead of Chrome if you need to browse while gaming, there are many setting in the browsers themselves that affect performance ... almost any app has those.
I had 8 GB, then built my new PC with 32GB.
I was, however, very paranoid for the first 3 months, until I decided enough was enough of me opening task manager and seeing if my ram wasn't stuck on 100% again, so I decided to go on a trip and see if I could max both the RAM and the GPU VRAM (12GB).
It took like 20 firefox tabs, steam, discord, pdf files, word, excel sheets and god knows what else running on the background and both cyberpunk and hogwarts legacy running at the same time for me to max it out, and both games were running well over 120 fps each at 1080p + max settings, even with the other on the background running at locked 60 fps through the nvidia control panel - no stuttering other than hogwarts absolutely hating ray tracing inside the castle as usual.
On a daily basis, I very rarely, if ever, see the RAM column on task manager go above 60% (quick calculator math says that's like 19GB out of the 32), and that's after a day's work without closing any browser tabs and having all sorts of crap running in the background.
If I had to guess, the only type of people who'd ever need more than 32GB are people who work with 3D rendering and the likes. And even then, it's still 32GB.
Great video. Helped me out with deciding how much I needed for my system.
MSFS 2024 is saying 64GB ideal.
How did you even do a RAM usage test without including Flight Simulator or Star Citizen?
I have been running 32 GB on my desktops since at least 2018 and recently I started to put 32 GB on a few of my laptops with upgradable DDR4 memory. It's so nice to not have to think twice about hitting the pagefile and slowing down the entire machine with a lack of memory.
One of the best videos about this topic! Excellent work!
If my only computer was Windows, I'd definitely be going to 64 GB just because I tend to have so many tabs open, plus music & Discord etc all at the same time while I'm playing games, and I've noticed that my RAM usage can creep up to 95% or so sometimes on 32 GB when I'm doing all of this on one machine. Plus, I do a bit of 3D modeling which takes all the RAM & CPU power I can throw at it. However, I have a weird hybrid Windows/Mac setup so I can offload tasks to my Mac when I'm using both.
Obviously I'm not *just* a gamer so I'm not necessarily the target audience for this video, but still, I think many gamers who do a lot of multitasking all on one machine could still use the extra RAM, and that +2 GB figure for Discord plus one Chrome tab isn't very realistic. That said, I'm sure for some people 32 GB is enough, and I wouldn't recommend 64+ GB to most people.
Still a solid video, and I was fine without the loads of graphs, honestly sometimes they bog down a video as much as I appreciate the data they can provide.
Yes I agree. Although benchmark should be isolated, but real world practice is different. Given that many people do many stuff with multiple monitors nowadays, there's just so many apps that I open to work on. Then when I want to game, it isn't practical to close everything just to run a game. My current old system idles at 20GB out of 32GB, Though not optimized, I could probably reduce down to about 14-16GB if i wanted. So 32GB is just nice at the moment if I were to start a game and it should have a healthy 16GB for any games. 1 Chrome Tab is really not a realistic comparison, putting work aside, at least throw in some commonly used websites and leave it open to simulate a buffer of ram usage...
All in all, this is one of the best and closest video to even talk about background apps for amount and ram and gaming usage. Most video purely talks about benchmark or simply grabs data from a "purely dedicated gaming machine" with no practical usage. Given that I only upgrade my computer only after many years, the extra $90 for the peace of mind and no worry about bottlenecking is insignificant. The only headache would be the graphic card.