How much RAM is too much? 32gb? 64gb?

[Jeff7181]

Heh, maybe most people should be on P4 systems b/c that is what they do. But technology moves on and we continue to get increases in performance/efficiency/cost in CPUs on a regular, roughly predictable basis.

Most people continue to buy CPUs (as part of retail-sold computers) because their computers will eventually die and they buy a replacement or because someone in their family now wants their own computer.

BTW, there was a noticable difference even in browsing between the Core 2 processors and the P4. There is less difference between the Core 2 and the SNB/IVB processors for basic tasks.

The same is true of RAM. Going up to 4 GB will improve the computing experience. Going up to 8, not so much. More than that is currently unnoticable.

Depends on what you're doing.

 

[Revolution 11]

There are plenty of applications/use cases that require tons of RAM. Most people don't use these apps and usually don't even know about them. Browsing, email, casual games, watching 1080p video maybe don't require more than 8 GB as a worst case scenario, I hope.

Of course, for the Anandtech community, 8 GB is easily the new standard from which to build up on.

Which is why I stressed earlier that the point of too much RAM is when you have more than you can use (plus a healthy margin for memory leaks). If you are encoding/Photoshop/VMs, you need more RAM than if you are playing Minesweeper.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yeah, I'm also planning 512gb of ssd (probably 2x256 in RAID 0).

Looks like fancycache is what I'm wanting.

Crucial M4 512GB is $399 on Amazon. No need for RAID0.

 

[Jacky60]

4096 GB is too much!

 

[mv2devnull]

4096 GB is too much!

Ok, I'll bite. An HP DL580 G7 application server can only take 2 TB. What setups (a) can take 4 TB and (b) still find it too much?

 

[taltamir]

Ok, I'll bite. An HP DL580 G7 application server can only take 2 TB. What setups (a) can take 4 TB and (b) still find it too much?

If something finds 4TB of ram too much ram, that means that 4TB is more then what it needs. This means that to answer B we will need to list every single application in existence that does NOT make use of over 4TB (not GB, TB) of RAM.

I think you meant to ask "still finds it too little"

 

[bryanW1995]

Crucial M4 512GB is $399 on Amazon. No need for RAID0.

Check out the date I posted that, it was 2.5 months ago. Back then, it was ~ $525 for a 512gb ssd and $430 for 2 x 256gb ssd's. Plus, I'm quite impressed with the performance bump from going to RAID 0.

 

[exilio]

Okay..so I'm still not clear.

I'm building a new Ivy Bridge system..purely for PC gaming (I use my Mac for everything else).

I'm getting a mobo that supports 32GB with four RAM slots. Should I get 8GB(2x4) or 16GB in either 4x4 or 2x8 to allow room for expansion later?

And if it matters, I just bought a 2560x1440 rez monitor.

Thanks guys, you are truly wise and powerful nerds.

 

[Kusnierek]

Only as much as you think you will conceivably need until your next computer build. There's no reason in having so much memory that by the time conventional use actually needs it, your hardware is so out of date you'd want to upgrade anyway. If you have 32GB or 64GB of DDR3, but by the time that much RAM is ever utilized, people will be building DDR5 machines with processors with better memory controllers, etc. Your RAM may not be fast or up-to-date enough to take advantage of the RAM you have.

I recently upgraded from 8GB to 16GB in my desktop PC, and I feel even that may have been unnecessary. I'd say, for the average email-checker, Facebook-browser, music-listener, 4GB is currently enough for them. For all but the most enthusiastic of power-users, 8GB is probably enough. For people needing top-of-the-line everything, even 12GB will probably do.

 

[thelastjuju]

The amount of RAM people think they need nowadays is just absolutely outrageous.

You could probably take one of these "enthusiasts" who go with 32gb of RAM and remove 28gb of that RAM in the middle of the night, and they'd probably never even know it was gone unless they checked.. because unless they edit tons of HD quality video or hi-res photos, nobody is coming close to benefiting from RAM amounts in the double digits.

Even modern games are still only utilizing between 1.5 and 2.5 GB of RAM ..

Its all good for the RAM manufacturers though, those dudes probably laugh their asses off all the way to the bank. :biggrin:

 

[taltamir]

The amount of RAM people think they need nowadays is just absolutely outrageous.

You could probably take one of these "enthusiasts" who go with 32gb of RAM and remove 28gb of that RAM in the middle of the night, and they'd probably never even know it was gone unless they checked.. because unless they edit tons of HD quality video or hi-res photos, nobody is coming close to benefiting from RAM amounts in the double digits.

Nice qualifier there... "they don't need it, unless they need it".

Even modern games are still only utilizing between 1.5 and 2.5 GB of RAM ..

If by modern you mean crappy console ports then yes. Modern cell phones come with 2GB of ram, latest gen consoles have 512MB (xbox360) and 256MBx2 (playstation3)

There are games out there that take over 4GB of ram for the game alone (not include OS stuff). I have personally used up 6GB of browser tabs (not including other stuff). The extra ram acts as a cache reducing HDD activity and massively improving performance (I tried some file copy benchmarks and they kept getting screws up by the ram caching due to having a nice juicy 16GB).
And while its been years since I edited video I did some serious photo editing just 1 week ago.

Yes you can GET BY with 4GB... but its not useless.

 

[exilio]

The amount of RAM people think they need nowadays is just absolutely outrageous.

You could probably take one of these "enthusiasts" who go with 32gb of RAM and remove 28gb of that RAM in the middle of the night, and they'd probably never even know it was gone unless they checked.. because unless they edit tons of HD quality video or hi-res photos, nobody is coming close to benefiting from RAM amounts in the double digits.

Even modern games are still only utilizing between 1.5 and 2.5 GB of RAM ..

Its all good for the RAM manufacturers though, those dudes probably laugh their asses off all the way to the bank. :biggrin:

So you're saying get a mobo that can handle 64GB and fill that bad boy up?!



Seriously though...makes sense to me. Sounding like I should just get 2x4GB and leave the slots open for the just-in-case factor.

 

[tweakboy]

Nice offensive post there. You have absolutely no idea what Gillbot uses his computer for and I doubt very much he wants 48GB of RAM so he can marvel at it in task manager.

Im sorry, take it lightly and all in fun. thx

Armen

 

[Sunny129]

As to the question about the amount of RAM: before you must log out, check your peak commit in Task Manager. The number after the slash is the most MBs used since it started keeping track last (either boot up or login, can't recall which). That's the real total amount of used address space. So, FI, if the highest you see after fairly stressful uses is around 6000, then 8GB is more than enough for you.

i'm not sure this is entirely correct. my peak commit value was 15GB previously, and its still at 15GB after having logged off and restarted.

 

[thelastjuju]

Nice qualifier there... "they don't need it, unless they need it".


If by modern you mean crappy console ports then yes. Modern cell phones come with 2GB of ram, latest gen consoles have 512MB (xbox360) and 256MBx2 (playstation3)

There are games out there that take over 4GB of ram for the game alone (not include OS stuff). I have personally used up 6GB of browser tabs (not including other stuff). The extra ram acts as a cache reducing HDD activity and massively improving performance (I tried some file copy benchmarks and they kept getting screws up by the ram caching due to having a nice juicy 16GB).
And while its been years since I edited video I did some serious photo editing just 1 week ago.

Yes you can GET BY with 4GB... but its not useless.

These crap console ports are what PC gaming has been reduced to, last time I checked.

Even the rare developers like Blizzard who DO design games specifically for PC are not making them very demanding on hardware at all. Diablo III hovers around 2.0 - 2.5 GB for me.

I've also never ran into or heard of a game utilizing more than 4gb.. if you could share it with me, its news to me. But I'm talking without factoring in any viruses or malware, or inordinate amounts of browser tabs in the background.

There was someone here just a few months back (in a similar argument over how much RAM we all really need) who insisted that Max Payne 3 was going to require 16gb of RAM to run maxed out. .. So I do wonder how many people are reaching these types of conclusion backwards, because they need to justify why they overspeculated on so much RAM.

 

[hal2kilo]

One ton with duallies.

 

[taltamir]

These crap console ports are what PC gaming has been reduced to, last time I checked.

Even the rare developers like Blizzard who DO design games specifically for PC are not making them very demanding on hardware at all. Diablo III hovers around 2.0 - 2.5 GB for me.

1. Just because all the games this year are worthless console ports doesn't mean the games from 2-3 years ago suddenly evaporate
2. Blizzard no longer exists, it merged with activision, CEO was fired and replaced by a guy who sold himself to the board of directors with, and I quote, "I will exploit the customers for every last cent" (cue the real money auction house D3 turd)
3. As profitable as WoW is, blizzard games are few and far between. There are many other games. Not as rich, but they are there.
4. I listed many other uses for ram over 4GB besides games.

 

[kingkung]

193gb

:thumbup:

 

[Concillian]

Okay..so I'm still not clear.

I'm building a new Ivy Bridge system..purely for PC gaming (I use my Mac for everything else).

I'm getting a mobo that supports 32GB with four RAM slots. Should I get 8GB(2x4) or 16GB in either 4x4 or 2x8 to allow room for expansion later?

And if it matters, I just bought a 2560x1440 rez monitor.

Thanks guys, you are truly wise and powerful nerds.

IMO, for a pure gaming machine, 8GB is the point at which you're building some future capacity in place. 4GB is workable for current games. 8GB gives you room to grow and more than 8GB is excessive and wasting money.

Things can change for a machine that does other things or someone intending to install a game to a huge RAMdrive or something off the wall like that, but a pure gaming rig... 8GB gives plenty of grow room in case future games actually start being 64 bit and gain capability of utilizing more than 4GB RAM.

 

[BFG10K]

i'm not sure this is entirely correct. my peak commit value was 15GB previously, and its still at 15GB after having logged off and restarted.

I think he meant to say before the slash. The number after the slash shouldn't change unless you change RAM and/or swapfile sizes.

 

[Emulex]

bit-flip going to get you.

 

[Gillbot]

Im sorry, take it lightly and all in fun. thx

Armen

If I could reasonably put more than 48gb in mine, I'd do it in a second. I noticed a huge jump in performance from 24 to 48gb. I would expect when crunching data for work, I would see a similar gain if I could double that again to 96gb. I ALMOST had my boss talked into an enterprise system but the cost of the IT department buying it vs. me building it on my own scared them off.

 

[mtnd3vil]

8GB may be all a system needs but what if I want to virtualize seven adequate ram systems? Then I am both only using the amount of RAM deemed necessary AND justifying 64GB at the same time.

 

[ky54]

With RAM prices so low I put in as much as I can afford or the board max.

 

[JAG87]

To answer the OP... I follow a simple rule: keep doubling the amount of RAM and stop when the price more than doubles.

i.e. today:
4 to 8GB: less than double the price
8 to 16GB: less than double the price
16 to 32GB: more than double the price

Four years ago it happened between 4GB and 8GB, two years ago between 8 and 16GB, and in two years it will most likely happen between 32 and 64GB.

Of course if need it, you need it, but this is a good rule of thumb for generic use and ROI.