16Gb vs 32Gb

[DrMrLordX]

When I got my current motherboard + RAM back in Nov 2014, 16 GB was a semi-luxury, though buying that amount of RAM did make a lot of sense at the time. I have been quite satisfied up to this point with having such a large amount of RAM in my system.

Today, for a lot of gamers (at least), 16 GB seems to be the minimum. 8 GB setups are starting to struggle.

How long do you think 16 GB will last in the enthusiast desktop/gamer scene? Will we get to the point where 32GB will be the minimum for maintaining comfort (read: minimal swapping) level?

 

[UsandThem]

16 GB will keep gamers happy for many more years. The last I read, and admittedly I don't keep up on it on a regular basis anymore, there were only currently 3 games out that used more than 8 GB of RAM.

A good chuck of enthusiasts have already jumped ship to 32GB+. Many enthusiasts don't go by 'need', they go by 'want'.

EDIT:

Here's the last article I actually read on the subject:

http://www.howtogeek.com/245245/how-much-ram-does-your-computer-need-for-pc-games/

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm. Arkham Knight actually chews up 12GB. Looks like the 16GB limit may be coming in a year or two.

The only problem I have with the 2x16GB kits right now is that the higher-density DDR4 has less clockspeed/timing potential than the 2x8GB kits. And you can't get a 2x16GB kit above DDR4-3333 (aww, shucks).

But the price/GB is much better on the 32GB kits, I must admit.

 

[UsandThem]

From what I understand, Arkham Knight only used that much because it was a horrible port.

I am looking in my crystal ball I keep here at home (I can't show it to anyone because it is magical and shy ), and my prediction is there won't be a true need for more than 16GB of RAM for almost all games until at least 2020.

I think what will eventually drive that need is by then 4k monitors should be more reasonable in price, and a lot more mainstream. VR (if it actually takes off and doesn't end up like VR in the past) will also help drive the need for more RAM. Gamers will of course want to run the game on "uber' settings, and the need will be born. By that point, I could see more and more people installing 32GB+ and rocking mainstream video cards with 12GB - 16GB of VRAM.

But I agree, right now if you want to buy 2 x 16GB kits, the timings are definitely looser.

Of course these are only my gut feelings, and if I truly new the future, I would be loading up on company stock (or precious metals if things go south).

 

[bigboxes]

my prediction is there won't be a true need for more than 16GB of RAM for almost all games until at least 2020.

You shut your mouth. There's a NEED for 32GB of RAM when I launch 420 minesweeper games at once. So there!

 

[Elixer]

When I got my current motherboard + RAM back in Nov 2014, 16 GB was a semi-luxury, though buying that amount of RAM did make a lot of sense at the time. I have been quite satisfied up to this point with having such a large amount of RAM in my system.

Today, for a lot of gamers (at least), 16 GB seems to be the minimum. 8 GB setups are starting to struggle.

How long do you think 16 GB will last in the enthusiast desktop/gamer scene? Will we get to the point where 32GB will be the minimum for maintaining comfort (read: minimal swapping) level?

For gaming, I have yet to see any game offer any real advantage with 16GB vs 8GB.
Yes, there are some really crappy ports, but, that has to do with how crappy the port is.

I am betting that 16GB won't be needed until maybe 2018-2019, but that is still pushing it.
VRAM will play a bigger issue for gamers, but, sadly, I see 4 or 8GB being the norm for most all games until 2018/19 as well, unless of course we are talking about 4K gaming. Then, all bets are off.

 

[biostud]

Faster pcie ssd drives and 3D Xpoint drives will also start to become a part of an enthusiast setup. I doubt tha 32gb will show any advantage for at least 3-4 years.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This is one of those "decision points" burning a hole in the enthusiast back pocket.

At first, I felt better off with 20GB of DDR3 RAM in my 2700K system -- DDR3-1866. The new Skylake is fitted with 16GB. The reason I wanted to try 20GB in the former system was a sense that I could use all the 4GB of extra RAM for a PrimoCache RAM cache. And I could.

What I discover about the faster 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM is that you need half as much RAM to get the same benchies, which means to me that I don't need more than 16GB total. Wait 'til I cache my SATA SSDs and HDDs to a 100GB 960 EVO M.2 caching volume . . . . . I might as well not use any RAM for cache!

The problem with a 32GB RAM configuration either 2x16 or 4x8 is the hibernation file requirement. You could limit the hiberfile.sys file to 50%. I would think if you bought a second 2x8 kit to match the one you had already, you'd be able to run the 4-slot configuration at XMP spec, with a command-rate limited to 2. I wouldn't expect to squeeze any more blood out of the overclocked memory stone, though.

 

[rchunter]

I can think of one exception for gaming would be fritz chess. Fritz loves cores and ram.

 

[ninaholic37]

I mostly just browse, so 2GB or 4GB ram is all I'd ever need. I have 1GB, and made a 3GB swap file (which hardly ever gets used, but it did come in handy when compiling firefox with the --enable-release option). Most games I play require less than 8MB RAM.

 

[DrMrLordX]

8 MB heh. Which games are those? I think even Nethack takes more than that (er, well in modern binary format).

And for me, 4 DIMM configs are a non-starter on anything but a quad-channel rig, so I would not consider 4x8GB anyway.

 

[FFFF]

Anything above 16 GB is redundant, and 8 GB is enough in most if not all games.

 

[HutchinsonJC]

I don't know why anyone would even ponder the idea of 32GBs of system RAM for gaming at this time. That's absurd.

16GBs is MORE than enough for the next few years, at least.

Keep in mind that the increasing size and speed of SSDs makes huge RAM capacities far less of a requirement in many contexts than when we had only Hard Disk Drives available to us.

 

[bigboxes]

I rarely ever game. I do a lot of photoshop and video editing. I also make videos from Blu-Ray/DVD and transcribe videos, but that usually doesn't take more than 8GB of ram.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I don't know why anyone would even ponder the idea of 32GBs of system RAM for gaming at this time. That's absurd.

For keeping other processes open in the background? I dunno. I had 1 GB of RAM on my s754 machine (Sempr0n 2800+), I had 2 GB of RAM on my AM2 machine (x2-3600), I had 4 GB of RAM on my AM3 machine (various procs), I have 16 GB of RAM on my FM2+ machine (7700k, 7870k).

2x16GB kits have gotten very cheap in the price/GB department. The only reason I am not 100% sold on it for my next daily driver is that the timings/speeds on those kits are not so great. They're okay though.

 

[UsandThem]

I know there are some power users who really do use a lot of RAM, but I think a fair amount of people overestimate how much they actually use and need.

Here's a screen shot of my system with 16GB of RAM. In it I have 10 tabs open each in Edge, Firefox, and Chrome. I'm playing music in Windows Media Player, and I have Steam, Norton Security, MSI Gaming App, and Samsung Magician running in the background.

I had already manually changed my paging file on my SSD to minimum 200 MB with a max of 2024 MB (although I have yet to see it increase in size from the minimum I set).

Yes, in Task Manager it does say 6.8 GB of RAM is cached. But if you go over into Resource Monitor, that amount is in standby if needed. However, rarely does it get moves over to in-use (1 - 2 GB depending if I am doing a lot more tasks at one time. Granted these are not gaming loads, but it gives you an idea how litttle RAM is actually used. I was even helping a person in general hardware the other day who wanted to build a PC to play simple Flash games, and he is convinced he should buy 32 GB of RAM for that.

 

[DrMrLordX]

32GB seems like a bit much for running browser games.

 

[UsandThem]

32GB seems like a bit much for running browser games.

That's what I tried telling them, but sometimes it just falls on deaf ears. Of course it won't hurt anything, but it will simply just be a waste of money that could be used on something else of use.

 

[jhansman]

16GB seems to be the sweet spot for most users these days. I run Photoshop, Lightroom, and FF 50.1 together frequently, and have yet to max out my RAM. 32GB seems like overkill to me, but then I'm not a gamer.