16GB RAM?. Worth it?.

Been discussing this on the quantum brake gamespot page news about having 16GB ram. I currently have 2 4GB corsair 8gb ddr3 vengeance low profile ram. Would I benefit in other games if I upgraded to 16GB and why is quantum brake use so much ram?.

Also slightly off topic. If I did get more ram then would that make my windows 10 pro upgrade activation what is already activated be de activated due to hardware change?.

Thanks.

Went from 8 to 16gb for free,didn't notice any difference.

Really? Quantom Break uses so much RAM? jeez, console gamers must now flip - they don't, consoles own about 3-4.5Gb of RAM for games - we got 8, Quantom Break won't use more than 8 or else it won't run on consoles at all.

Unless you're getting a killer deal, I don't think it is worth it. My experiences and what I've read indicate that 8GB is enough for everything, and 16GB rarely shows any noticeable improvement.

Memory was my last upgrade (after processor, vid card), and I saw no improvement. I think it's more about future proofing than seeing a huge improvement, tbh.

Star Citizen is the only game I've seen use 16gb of ram

Is it worth it to upgrade to 16GB? No. Is it worth it to just buy 16Gb when building a new pc? Yes.

no 8gb ram is ok

no. your activation will be ok if you installed more ram.

Definitely worth it if you're a "power user" IMO. I don't think any game directly uses above 8Gb RAM at the moment but many newer games use 8Gb or over when combined with background Windows processes. The other night my PC booted with only 8Gb accessible and surprisingly I experienced multiple crashes because of low memory errors when playing Rainbow Six Siege because I had Chrome in the background. If you don't mind closing things in the background every time you play a game taxing game, 8Gb should be fine. If you play modern games and like to have things running the background (Chrome, for example) without slowdowns or head-aches...16Gb might be a necessity (as I learned ago). Or if you want to play upcoming games at high settings (because 12Gb-16Gb RAM will soon be the standard).

So yea...just depends if you feel compromised by your RAM usage. For me I could absolutely not get by with 8Gb - at least for the last year or so. Frankly I'm surpised nobody else here hasn't hit the limitations of their 8Gb. If you never see yourself hindered by RAM and don't care about maxing new games the second they come out, I don't see why you would need to upgrade.

Think I will wait for a new PC next year sometime then be for upping the memory. No in me I will get 16GB RAM and then it will say 32GB minimum lol j/k. Sure i seen that you need pro version of windows if you want 16 GB ram or more is this true?.

Like others have said, 8gb is more than fine for most games. You might need more if you want to play Star Citizen or something with good graphics, but I personally wouldn't buy more if I didn't really need it. And Quantum Break does not use 16gb RAM. If it does, the devs are really bad at their job. The "recommended hardware" they put out is almost always more than you need, don't take those lists seriously. I use them only as a vague guide to what a game needs.

no its not true. here is a performance breakdowdown of 4 vs 8 vs 16 ram

The current gen consoles use 5.5-6.5 GB of RAM. They have 8GB, but only use about 6GB.

I'd say no. 8GB and 16GB hardly make a difference, even in Quantum Break.

Quantum Break is far from out, why would you make that assumption? Think game requirements are never going to go up for any good reason? 8gb has been the standard for quite awhile now...we're past due games taking advantage of the RAM gamers have available.

@skipper847: Although I wouldn't suggest more than 8GB at the moment, this is very dependable on your budget.

So if you have $600-800 for a PC, I would recommend to spend even the $50 in CPU/GPU.

But if your budget is hundreds over $1000 and diminishing returns hits CPU and GPU badly, then adding more RAM isn't bad.

Now, why would you need more than 8GB RAM?

Today some games (along with OS) easily reach 6-7 GB RAM and some of them reach 8,5GB-9GB RAM.

You don't have to use all the 16GB RAM in order to benefit from the jump 8GB to 16GB.

Even reaching 9GB is still more than 8GB RAM can handle.

So in the end, if you have 8GB is fine, but going for 16GB just for $50, isn't bad either.

gta 5 forced me to switch to 16 gb. especially with chrome running

Arkham Knight also benefits from more than 8Gb (as it uses almost 8Gb by itself), without anything running in the background.

Really, if you have less than 16Gb and everything else is high-end in your PC, you're bottlenecked unless you avoid some newer titles (and certainly many upcoming ones). There's plenty of benefit to having 16Gb, of course if you choose to avoid newer RAM heavy titles. you probably won't see it. My motherboard is finicky about recognizing memory so I often find myself facing problems (slowdowns and crashes) whenever my 16Gb isn't memorized.

What settings?

GTA V at 1080 maxed out with 2 chrome windows, discord, and teamspeak open, only take up about 7.2GB of my ram (I have 16GB anyway).

Right now? No.

@KHAndAnime: That's true, I'm just saying that 16GB isn't really needed. I would rather recommend putting that money you'd spend upgrading to 16GB to games.

You cant run a computer fluidly with only 800mb of ram left. its a slideshow. Take out 8gb and try the same exact thing

Yeah, I agree with this. If you are buying a new PC anyways, you might as well spend the extra $50 if you have it to "future proof" your build.

I'm with you on that. I've been PC gaming for so long it's actually difficult for me to put myself in shoes of someone else and imagine saving money for games. Been buying PC releases consistently for many years, so now I'm at the point where I'm waiting many months in between my game purchases because new eye-catching games don't drop that often. So dropping $40 on a game once every 3-5 months isn't really something I have to worry about because it's not a purchase I make too often. So my pool of money I save for gaming always end up in my hardware :p

Only 2 Chrome windows? I must be crazy because when I use Chrome I always have 15+ tabs going :p With that many, it's preferable to leave them open instead of closing and opening Chrome between gaming sessions.

Yeah, the sales that the PC gets are ridiculous. PSN has its fair share of great deals, but man, the PC just trumps everything when it comes to the price of games. Very alluring to me as a console gamer, although I still never pay $60 for games.

@KHAndAnime:

What does this even mean? The computer is running just fine. GTA isnt using 7.2GB of ram, my entire computer is using 7.2GB of ram.

And KH, I just meant two windows, one of the windows did have multiple tabs open (not 15, I close all mine lol).

so when you have only 8gb of ram installed, your saying you computer runs smooth and fast while 7.2 gb is being used? That is what im saying

@KHAndAnime Im not kidding. after I disable net framework and a bunch of other windows 7 things that i wasnt using i went down to 5gb.

And no your not crazy. different hardware behaves differently

If you don't use software like Autodesk Maya, ZBrush 4R7, Nuke, Unreal Engine 4, etc. then you don't need 16GB for now. But if you do then you should right now.

Yes, it does, that is how memory works. If the computer is using 7.2GB of memory, it only needs 7.2GB of memory at that time. If you start another process that requires more memory, then it could slow down as you do not have enough memory. The computer will run just fine until it needs more memory. I'm not quite sure how you think memory works.

Looks like you don't know how the Windows OS works.

Windows will allocate more RAM as you open and close programs as it stores some of the data in RAM so when you reopen the program it will start up faster.

So the longer you keep your computer on and switch between programs the more bloated the RAM usage will be.

If Windows finds that you are near max RAM usage it will dump out some data from system RAM to make room for other stuff that needs it.

This will only lead to a program taking longer to load up again.

This type of memory allocation makes it so people with 2GB of RAM can still run Windows 7 without issue while people with 8GB of RAM will show more RAM usage because they have more for Windows to allocate.

I am using all 8GB of my RAM when running Assassin's Creed Syndicate and it still runs smooth.

I am very aware of how windows allocates ram, it just wasn't relevant for what I was trying to prove. Your argument is basically the exact same as mine but with more detail.

Just because you are reaching max usage in RAM on Windows does not mean it will slow down if most of the RAM is just cached data for opening programs faster.

Also Windows 8GB is plenty except for some very special circumstances like heavy 3d rendering.

Basically any regular person will be fine with 8GB even in games currently.

Ram is relatively cheap. I would consider 16gb a minimum for a new computer nowadays.

All that work for that? That video doesn't really serve to prove a point. A bottleneck doesn't necessarily mean it's going to not run smooth - just means it might be not as smooth as it would if you had more RAM available. For all we know that video could've performed marginally better had you more RAM. I'm not necessarily saying that's the case- but what I am saying is that without any comparison your video doesn't prove that it's not the case.

No gamer really needs more than 8Gb right now. I'd say for 99% of people it would serve no benefit. But if you want your system completely free of any memory restrictions with some particular new titles - I think you might see some benefit to having over 8Gb of RAM. Being in the position where my system often switches between 8Gb, 12Gb, and 16Gb without me knowing - it's pretty obvious to me when I don't have all my RAM when playing games like Siege and Arkham Knight. Siege will seriously crash, with "low memory errors", with only 8Gb of RAM and I start alt-tabbing. My Samsung SSD can also 25% of my RAM to speed up my SSD's operation, which I also like to take advantage of because I have that RAM available.

RAM's not that expensive so it's not a big deal either way. All I'll say is that it's easier to buy all your RAM at once for your initial purchase because most RAM is sold in kits or bundles, but it won't hurt if you want to use that money for something else.

this, but not even Star Citizen uses that much at this point. it will likely be able to utilize more than 8GB when it's released.

you don't really benefit anything from 16GB when it comes to gaming. at this point i mean. if you use heavy graphics/3d/video/audio editing software, you would benefit from 16GB ram.

I dont thank it is all you need right now is 8gb of ram ..

i've not max'd 16gbs on 1 game so far. But often i have a few running at the same time i can max it. mostly mmos if im multiboxing them i can hit 16gb ram usage really easily. Next pc i put together will have 32gb of ram for sure.

Also max'd my ram usuage when doing video compression and having a few different compressions going on at once.

It depends on how you use your computer. When I game, I game. So 8GB is enough for me (though I do have 16).

But my brother is a tab monster. It's normal for him to run close to 6.5-7GB in RAM usage from having 20 tabs open in Chrome (many of which are paused Youtube videos and other things he'll get back to later) and then running a game on top of that. For him 8GB simply isn't enough for games because of the way he multitasks.

be for I start a game up first thing I do is restart pc. Make sure everything is cleared. It only takes about 8 seconds any way and another 10 seconds to make sure everything is loaded. Then I start up client and start game.

Recently upgraded to 16GB, my friend sold me an 8GB kit he couldn't use for $20, so why not. It's only 1600MHz tho. I noticed XCOM2 could use up to 95% of my RAM when I had 8GB, probably a memory leak.

That's crazy. You know restarting your PC doesn't really help anything, right?

I'd gladly pay $40 to not have to worry about restarting my PC to play games if I was that concerned about memory. We're not talking big bucks here.

@MonsieurX: I was watching a video on YouTube and 16GB RAM adds about 3-4 fps to Grand Theft Auto V, which personally makes it not worth it to me.