New Gaming Rig - RAM Amount?

[corfe83]

If you were building a new gaming rig (Ivy Bridge, GeForce GTX 680), how much RAM would you buy for it?

I generally only upgrade every 4 or 5 years, so.. I'm trying to be somewhat future proof. I'm not doing any virtual machines, this is literally *only* for gaming (and/or web browsing, etc).

RAM is so cheap these days, that I'm going to get at *least* 16GB to be safe. The question is, should I up it and get 32GB. Is there any reason to get 32GB for gaming today (and/or in the next few years?)

Even Skyrim & Battlefield 3 require 2GB, and "recommend" only 4GB. Of course, I'm sure games coming out in the following years will start recommending more, but will 32GB really be a worthwhile investment for gaming within the next 5 years, or is it just plain overkill?

 

[ShreddedWheat]

I'm using 8 and it is plenty. 16 is overkill in my opinion but should keep you in the clear for the next 4 to 5 years. 32 gigs is crazy unless you have money to burn.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I went with 16, mainly because the MiniITX only got 2 slots. And its cheap for that matter. So 4-5 years, I would go 16.

I went with 8 last time, and its not uncommon my system passes above 4GB. Long way to 8 tho.

 

[corfe83]

Definitely don't have money to burn , but when the total PC is costing slightly over $1K, seeing that it only costs an extra ~$100 to up from 16GB to 32GB was making me wonder if there was any real benefit from a gaming perspective.

I'll take that as two votes for "not worth it", but I do appreciate any other votes.

 

[thelastjuju]

Being that no games are even utilizing anywhere near a full 4 gigs.. 4 gigs is technically enough, although if you're building today might as well insist on 8.

But trying to future-proof for the next 5 years by going with today's RAM technology in the highest quantity you can, is just absurd.. RAM is cheap, but that doesn't mean you load up on unless you are a video editor..

5 years from now, you'll be able to buy cheaper and faster RAM than what will then be 5 year old, obsolete RAM .. possible even be phased out, compatibility-wise with future motherboards.

If your system is utilizing more than 4gb while gaming, you have a lot of other gunk on top of the game itself, that's clogging your system. I play GTA4 multiplayer all the time, utilizes between 2 and 2.5 gigs.. never higher.. but virtually no other services running what-so-ever.

Save the $100 on unnecessary RAM and spend it on something that counts, like an SSD drive or a comfier PC chair if you can.. :thumbsup:

 

[Fallengod]

As the other guy stated, 4GB is actually plenty for most things. 8GB is the best "bang 4 buck" since its only like $40 were talking about, thats all I spent on mine. There really is no reason to get under 8GB these days. I also consider 16GB+ to be overkill. The chances of the majority of people utilizing 16GB or more of memory is very slim. The other reason I didnt want 16GB was the memory slot closest to CPU would conflict with my Hyper 212+ heatsink but thats the secondary issue...

32GB is definitely overkill and as any experienced person will tell you, trying to "future proof" in the computer world is fairly pointless and fail logic.

 

[corfe83]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I guess I'm still going to go with 16GB since it really only costs like $40-50 more, but I'm definitely NOT going to get 32GB.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

spend that saved money on SSD

 

[corfe83]

Yeah, planning to get a smallish SSD as a system drive and maybe fitting just a few games that really benefit from it.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

delete...

 

[Skott]

Unless you are doing some rendering, animation, or photo editing, etc., going over 8GB ram really isn't worth it IMO. Besides, in 5 years you will be wanting and needing a better cpu and video card for gaming. Then you have to restart and build all over again. The current ram probably won't work well, if at all, on the new mobo 5 years from now.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Year ago when I built my 2nd generation Intel® Core™ system I went with 16GB but this year I focused on building it as a gaming system I choose only to go with 8GB. Really for a gaming system 8GB is more than enough for a gaming system.

 

[thelastjuju]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I guess I'm still going to go with 16GB since it really only costs like $40-50 more, but I'm definitely NOT going to get 32GB.

Even $50 is too much to spend on something that will yield a 0.0% performance increase.D:

 

[Geofram]

Even $50 is too much to spend on something that will yield a 0.0% performance increase.D:

Performance increase is relative to what you want to do. I have 16GB, mainly because I want to game/play music/convert a movie in the background/keep a browser up with 20 tabs/etc without running out of memory and slowing down.

Does it add more FPS? No, not really. But it does give you the ability to multitask like crazy without any problems.

I don't consider my computer to be used for "gaming only" though, so I guess it just depends on what your average use case is. Mine uses more than 8GB of ram fairly commonly.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Just get quality 16 gig RAM for about $100. Save the rest. Upgrade to 32 gig about 2 years down, your saved $100 will help you more that time than it will today

For most games 4 gb is okayish and for pretty much any game 8 gb is enough. Only for some future games like MP3 16 gb will be required (acc to system requirements) but only for insane settings I guess. Very few games in 2012 will require > 8 gb RAM. >8gb RAM will help often in 2013 and be a compulsion only in 2014. So with 16gig RAM you will do okay till 2014 or even 2015. In fact your system and RAM speed will get outdated before 16 gb actually becomes less for a number of games at okay settings

 

[thelastjuju]

First of all, playing music in the background is not even worth measuring its so microscopically small .. and leaving firefox opened with 20+ tabs only utilizes a quarter of a gig. This is minimal ram usage, and will never add up to warranting anywhere near 16 gigs of ram.

Converting a movie in the background might benefit from more RAM, but this is not something most people do while gaming. Especially since that sort of activity is going to tax your CPU's power while gaming anyway, reducing FPS regardless of how much RAM you have.

Last generation, you could run every game with just 1 gig of ram on Windows XP.. This gen, games are only utilizing between 2-3 gigs of ram.. and for some reason, we have people thinking we will make some outrageous leap to 32 gigs within the same generation? .. .. we won't know what next gens requirements will look like, until we see what the next generation of consoles looks like.. but we will never need that type of ram for this current gen..

Max Payne 3 will absolutely not require 16gb of ram.. their minimum recommendations call for TWO gigs of ram. :whiste:

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Last generation, you could run every game with just 1 gig of ram on Windows XP.. This gen, games are only utilizing between 2-3 gigs of ram.. and for some reason, we have people thinking we will make some outrageous leap to 32 gigs within the same generation? .. ..

ePeen of course.

OP doesn't need more than 8GB until he builds his next computer.

 

[Geofram]

First of all, playing music in the background is not even worth measuring its so microscopically small .. and leaving firefox opened with 20+ tabs only utilizes a quarter of a gig. This is minimal ram usage, and will never add up to warranting anywhere near 16 gigs of ram.

Converting a movie in the background might benefit from more RAM, but this is not something most people do while gaming. Especially since that sort of activity is going to tax your CPU's power while gaming anyway, reducing FPS regardless of how much RAM you have.

Last generation, you could run every game with just 1 gig of ram on Windows XP.. This gen, games are only utilizing between 2-3 gigs of ram.. and for some reason, we have people thinking we will make some outrageous leap to 32 gigs within the same generation? .. .. we won't know what next gens requirements will look like, until we see what the next generation of consoles looks like.. but we will never need that type of ram for this current gen..

Max Payne 3 will absolutely not require 16gb of ram.. their minimum recommendations call for TWO gigs of ram. :whiste:

I'm not arguing that if you just play games you need 8+ GB of RAM. World of Warcraft (which I play most commonly) eats between 1-2 GB of RAM while I play it. Other games are worse or better, but I'd be extremely surprised to see any single game eat 4GB or more.

My point, was mostly that your use-case is what dictates how much RAM is enough. Some people *do* other things while converting a movie - because it can take a while to re-encode, and you might not want to have your computer unavailable while it's going. You might want to play a game, even if your FPS are lower than it normally would be.

If you only game, and all you do basically is game, stop at 8GB. I just suggest that you measure your actual computer use-case, and get enough RAM to handle that. Windows is pretty good at telling you how much RAM is in use.

 

[corfe83]

I guess I exaggerated a little - while I admit that the PC is intended for gaming, I can't say I have never ever done anything heavy before - it is true that I might in the future try out a VM occasionally for fun, or encode/convert some video, or something like that.

I agree it won't benefit my general frame rate at all, I know it would only benefit me on those rare occasions where I do several RAM-heavy tasks at the same time, but for $40 it feels like a good choice to me

 

[icanhascpu2]

4 min 8-16 recommended..

 

[exdeath]

I'd max out the motherboard just for fun. I mean seriously 32 GB RAM is like $200 right now.

 

[Mars999]

I would do 16GB for sure. IMO run a RAM Disk and use the other 8GB for the system.

So 8GB system and 8GB RAM DISK, you think SSD's are fast LOL try a RAM Disk.

If you get addicted to the RAM disk you can always upgrade to 32GB later as long as you get 2x8GB sticks for your 16GB config.

 

[nenforcer]

Windows 7 Home Premium actually has a physical limit of 16GB, if you plan on running that version.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_7

Ultimate and Professional accept up to 192GB!

 

[PowerYoga]

Get 16 so you can run VMs without any impact.

 

[Jacky60]

Get 16gb its cheap-more is definitely better.