Is 4GB RAM enough for today's PC games.

[helloWorld]

I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?

 

[Shihab]

I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?

It is enough. As long as you don't run many background processes while you game, you won't run into any problems . And unless you're going for a laptop, it won't be a problem to add a coupla gigs in the future, so no worries there.

Edit: IIRC there were some games that ran smoother with extra RAM. It wasn't much of an improvement but it still is. Well, to be safe get 6GB or even 8GB of RAM. Sticks are cheap these days, so why not ?

 

[JrRacinFan]

I've always been a firm beleiver of faster ram over capacity unless you do a ton of multitasking and photoshoping.

4GB is enough but more always helps.

 

[helloWorld]

The thing is, and call me stupid all you want, I have an 8 GB kit, but two of the sticks are broken, and I don't know if I want to deal with the hassle of returning it when 4 of the 8 GB works.

 

[Black Panther]

From my experience 4GB are enough even @ 2560x1440.

However, if you're sure they're broken I'd rma the kit. You paid for 8GB, why settle for less?

 

[helloWorld]

Yeah. I will order another 8 GB pair from a different manufacturer and try those when I get it. If they work, then I will RMA the broken set.

 

[Kreij]

I agree with BP. If they have a lifetime warranty get them replaced.
Win7 x64 will happily use it even if you don't need it.

 

[Over_Lord]

I like to play games maxed out at 1080p and I was wondering if 4GB RAM was enough and how future proof is it?

4GB better be, considering the "best graphics ever" games on PS3 come with 1080p 30/60fps and it has 256MB ram(system)

 

[BrooksyX]

4gb is enough for now but I run with 12gb of ram and I can tell the difference. Plus ddr3 ram is so cheap nowadays that why not go with at least 8gb.

 

[t_ski]

IIRC, part of it depends on how much ram you have on your GPU's. Your system will copy the GPU ram to memory, so if you have 4GB of GPU ram, you might run low on system resourses or start swapping ram out to the swapfile.

 

[Shihab]

IIRC, part of it depends on how much ram you have on your GPU's. Your system will copy the GPU ram to memory, so if you have 4GB of GPU ram, you might run low on system resourses or start swapping ram out to the swapfile.

Only in games based on DirectX versions prior to 10. DX10, 10.1 & 11 don't.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I used to have a laptop that maxed out at 2Gb ram for 5 years. then my desktops all used 4Gb ram but i recently jumped to 8Gb not long ago.

TBH. going from 4Gb to 8Gb, i cant really tell the difference unless im heavily multitasking. and im talking about Running a Spyware & Virus scan, listening to music, zipping up files and installing software off a mounted image all at the same time with a little video encoding on the side.

Most of the time my RAM usage sits around 2-2.2Gb while just surfin the net and listening to music with VLC player

 

[Jstn7477]

4GB is enough for now, but as of this year, I have begun to prefer 8GB in my machines. Take advantage of the oversupply of DDR3 that is occurring at this time, because it usually only happens once every few years. 8GB kits that used to cost ~$80+ literally 3 months ago are $40-50. Get as much as you want, you won't be sorry. Just beware that Win7 Home Premium x64 is limited to addressing 16GB of total RAM, including GPU (because Microsoft decided that home users don't need that much RAM I guess).

 

[theeldest]

Agree w/ Jstn.

A couple companies announced they're getting out of the DRAM business so as of the beginning of the year, prices should start going up and not coming back this low for quite a long time.

Load up while you can. I'm goin 16GB!

 

[Mussels]

4GB is enough with some room to spare.


In my case i can use an extra 2GB for all the other apps i leave running while gaming, so its not enough for my apps AND the games at the same time - but either one is just fine.

 

[overclocker]

8GB helped my laptop a lot and I will never go back to 4GB.

 

[n-ster]

4GB is enough, but at today's prices, it is much more worth it to buy 8GB, especially when it is on sale

 

[digibucc]

Win7 x64 will happily use it even if you don't need it.

i thought that was funny

 

[t_ski]

Hell, just looked at my 3x4GB kit and saw it's down to $80 shipped. I might have to get another for fun

 

[Robert-The-Rambler]

I would upgrade now

I just doubled my memory on my 2nd I7 PC to 12gb. The 6 gb was only $40. My memory usage listening to music and surfing the web is about 3 gb right now in Vista 64 bit Ultimate. I would be interested if somebody could test out memory usage in a variety of games in this buyers market. Why even take the chance of having a bottleneck?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

since i had 6gb with my X58 rig, 4 just seems to small now. 8gb is definitely worth it or even more ram prices are so low now

 

[Mathragh]

4Gb is enough, but the gains in responsiveness with 8GB are quite high imho. Especially when you use a couple of different programs regulary and dont totally shut down your pc, but instead let it stay on standby.

With 8GB in my laptop, I notice theres almost never 'free space'(task manager shows there is lots of RAM 'available' but practically never alot of it is 'free'). Most of the 8GB is always being used as prefetch buffer which in turn decreases loading time for the various programs I use.

Especially when you dont have an SSD or very fast hard drive, more ram usually means quicker loading of random things that are getting prefetched.

So yeah, 4GB ram is enough, but more is better!

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I would say no. More and more games are benefiting (as in not crashing) from large address aware and the best way to get the most out of large address aware is to have >4 GiB of RAM. That way, any given 32-bit application has access to the maximum amount of RAM without being recompiled. I think 6 GiB is ideal. Operating systems these days consume ~1 GiB, a single game can consume up to 4 GiB, and that leaves ~1 GiB for background tasks. I wouldn't recommend a "gaming" computer with less than 6 GiB of RAM.

As the next generation of consoles come out, it is very, very likely PC games are going to have to trend towards 64-bit.

 

[de.das.dude]

4GB is more than enough if you arent multitasking when playing games.

 

[MilkyWay]

I think most games use 2gb of ram and then the OS uses at least 1gb so 4gb is still usable. With the price of ram these days it makes sense to get a 8gb kit, 1600mhz kits with low voltage are common but spend a little more and get tighter or faster ram.

Ive got 8gb of ram and its fine id say it was worth the £65 i paid but that ram is now worth about £40.