Saw a few deals lately for fast 16 gig ram that I was tempted to pull the trigger on..
I currently have 8 gig of ddr4 ram at 2133, I was wondering if getting 16 gig of ddr4 ram at 3200 would make much difference in today's newer gaming titles??
Is 8 gig still good enough, and does the frequency difference matter much??
(My resolution is 1080p btw if that makes a difference)
^This.
Found Fossils: 1-core CPU, upto 1GB RAM, 0GB vRAM, and Graphics Card: not found.
Missing Link: 1-core CPU, 2GB DDR1-400, Lol, 256MB vRAM and Graphics Card: any potato.
Ancient PC: 2-core CPU, 4GB DDR2-1000Mhz, 1GB vRAM, and Graphics Card: 8800GT, 9800 GT, GTX 280.
Previous: 4-core CPU, 8GB DDR3-2000Mhz, 4GB vRAM, and Graphics Card: HD7870, R9 380, GTX 760, GTX 960.
Current: 6-core CPU, 16GB DDR4-3000Mhz, 8GB vRAM, and Graphics Card: GTX 1070, RTX2060, Vega56, RX 5700.
Soon: 8-core CPU, 32GB DDR4X-4000Mhz, 12GB vRAM, and Graphics Card: RTX 2080Ti (or better).
…if only we could predict what happens next :D
16 gb is the standard these days.
16GB is the recommended for many.
16 gb is the standard these days
As someone who's had 16GB of RAM in their laptop since 2012, this.
It's not just about gaming as well; if you open a lot of tabs like me (181 last time checked), you'll want as much RAM as you can get.
Yeah, I need a similar amount of browser tabs open so I can have a week's worth of jv's comments on hand.
The more ram you have, the more ozbargain pages you can load in Chrome, and the more you could save?
So maybe Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was right after all, the more you buy, the more you save. It just works.
181 tabs wow… i get up to around 30 max personally
if you open a lot of tabs like me
No one else is opening that amount of browser tabs.
I know someone who was experiencing issues with only 8GB. Between Windows and the game, it gobbled up everything and the game started to suffer.
Upgrading to 16GB fixed the issue. If you're maxing or out (or near to) you should definitely upgrade.
thanks, very informative. It appears that for the latest AAA titles 16 gig is certainly better, although for the majority of games 16 gig will only make a small impact at 1080p
Cheers, this guy was much more pleasant on the ears than 90% of the other ‘hosts’ on YouTube.
If you use Chrome it's the minimum
Ahh Chrome, where it has 20 processes running for just 1 tab open.
thats why i use opera or firefox, chrome is horrible
I usually use Chrome and its downloader extension to download videos normally not downloadble. I am not familiar with Firefox, is there a similar extension with it? Thanks if you'll find the time to answer
@Laziofogna: I mostly use Opera and there is an extension that does this for me: Flash Video Downloader (FVD)
I only occasionally use firefox, its on my other computer, but I have something on firefox that can do this too, I just do not recall the name of it.
Personally I suggest Opera unless you have a very old PC (i think firefox is slightly faster but you will not notice the difference with a new PC). It has a free VPN built in that you can choose to use and its a well designed browser, and has an excellent dark mode!
@Laziofogna: Firefox is much better for security and no track purposes. Much more customisable and of course many add ons for downloading any videos that you can stream. I've even started using Bing as a search engine a little now instead of Google. Such different results and not filtered to advertising stories or big conglomerates as first results. Google's results always turn up the most bought and paid for companies
@andylch: Look, my computer has been broken in my last month so I can't be sure about the name but it'easy to find in the extension section, it's flash downloader or something like that.
I had 8GB and added another 8GB and noticed no difference in startup, general tasks or in gaming.
So from my sample size of one, I think it’s a fairly minimal gain if at all. Having said that if I was building a new system today I’d get 16GB.
what graphics card do you use and what resolution do you run at?
GTX 1070 at 2560x1440
Most definitely. 16gb is starting to struggle when multitasking with new applications.
Is 16 gig much better for gaming than 8 gig in 2019?
(My resolution is 1080p btw if that makes a difference)
No. You won't notice the difference, if i blind test you with 2 systems (8gb 2133mhz VS 16gb 3600mhz)
If building new system, i'd say yes just go for it.
If upgrading parts, that $120 is better put towards higher-tier graphics card any day.
yep im upgrading parts, and i could put that $120 into a better graphics card instead…
I'm running on 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz with a GTX1070 pushing one 1440p monitor gaming and a second monitor running 1080p and tabs open. Similar to Skramit. Haven't had issues and won't upgrade the RAM (because it's DDR3) until I get rid of the CPU and Mobo and do a new build.
phunkydude is right, $120 is better spent on your GPU if it means you can go up a tier.
Definitely go the better GPU then. No brainer.
If you're thinking of running anything else in the background other than the game then 16gb is a must.
8gb is on the edge of the cliff in being enough for gaming and only gaming meaning you better close EVERYTHING else that's open before you start gaming. you really should think about upgrading to something 16gb 3200mhz which will last you a while.
"does the frequency difference matter much??"
depends on the game and CPU but generally yes you would see a noticeable difference, I noticed when i went from 2133 to 3200
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m692eBH2Jw&t=1s
have a look for yourself.
Depending on the game the larger amount of ram may not show any improvement but the faster ram will definitely show higher fps.
There is barely any difference between 2400 and 3200 in fps, you might get 5-10% increases. You are probably better off putting the price difference in the ram into a better video card.
I was wondering about the term gig rather than the usual Gb
Thought it might be a typo but see the op uses it throughout the post?
Doing a quick google search doesn’t throw up much.
Anyone enlighten me on the use of this term, instead of gb
Gigabyte…. gig….GB.
Same thing.
It’s a forum.
Not a report to the expert committee.
…which is most likely the same reason YOU sometimes don’t use fullstops.
Here I was contemplating if I should go from 16GB to 32GB, I do a lot of design work with Photoshop and like to have Minecraft and lots of tabs open in the background but the cost, wow.
8GB is the minimum for a office worker. 16GB minimum for gamers but I'd recommend 32GB if you can afford it.
If you are multitasking different hardware and software it will give you much better speed and performance. If gaming at 1080P and GPU is still average then there's no not much point if that's what you're after. Heavier programs like photoshop, editing, movies, will all render and perform better with more RAM. Depending on other parts in your system you might not see a big difference though with the upgrade.
Thanks for all your comments, in the end i decided to pull the trigger and get 16 gig for $113.. a day after the price went back up to $130 so i guess i timed it well. For that price i just it seemed right.
Probably do not strictly need it, but I will in future, and until then i should see small improvements in some games and general productivity. Eventually I want to try Battlefield V and Cyberpunk 2077 and i am told they will benefit greatly from it for instance.
For just running most games the difference probably wont be too much for most games, BUT!
If you want to run anything else at the same time you'll want more.
I've seen 1 facebook tab take up 1.6GB of RAM on it's own. Browsers are RAM devourers.
Press (SHIFT + ESC) in Chrome to see your ram usage per tab.
I have 16GB and struggle to survive, just bought a set 2x16 GB sticks.
48GB here I come!
chrome is the worst for this, try another browser as above i recommend Opera or if you do not want to try the little guy, Firefox.
Chrome is still the most popular browser out there, I'm a web developer so I sorta need to stick to it. I may just be too used to it and it's tools, I don't really wanna break my development routine.
Not to mention the plugins I use and have written. I'd have to re-write them for the new browser.
It would be nice if the browsers could get their act together and fix these things.
ahh i understand, i was a web developer for 10 years. I am not anymore.. so freedom of browsers is mine! muahahahah
@Misha Bakunin: Got my 2 new sticks, now using 26.1 / 47.9 GB
No more freezing, well worth it. Don't not how I ever survived with 16 GB
8GB is the bare minimum nowadays. 16GB is the recommended for many.
If you rewound time a while back and RAM became stupidly expensive, like $230 dollars for 16GB kits, then I'd argue there may be a point being tightass and sticking to 8GB, but nowadays a 3000mhz kit with decent latencies (CAS 15 or CAS 16) is something like $115 including postage.
Example Deals
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/tag/ram
DRAM frequency and it's impacts will depend on the CPU architecture, just google DRAM speed scaling on Ryzen/Intel and you'll see loads of tests done on different systems and different kits, then pick one that looks cheap enough.