More RAM for 3D gaming?

[Artas1984]

My friend is planing on buying a 120 Hz LCD and NVIDIA 3D visors. He has been told that his 8 Gb of RAM will not be enough for 3D games. I thought that this is BS, but could never be sure...

Is there an expert opinion on this?

 

[BiggieShady]

The real expert would say "When you write Gb it means giga bits not giga bytes" but I will say "8 gigabytes is going to be enough"

 

[BraveSoul]

would agree here too, 8gbs would be more then enouph, i was actually running my main gaming rig on 4gbs year ago and it was doing fine, am not sure how 3D influences video card memory usage so that might be an issue

 

[leeb2013]

8GB is still enough for all games. BF4 takes 6.5GB max (incl win7) on 3 monitors, max settings.

 

[markaflias]

Like we say in spain if with 8GB it´s not enough , we can shutdown and go home .

 

[Dent1]

8GB is still enough for all games. BF4 takes 6.5GB max (incl win7) on 3 monitors, max settings.

If you turn off virtual memory it will use about that with only one monitor @ 1440x900. Talking from experience.


But to answer the OPs question, under normal circumstances 8GB should be enough. But if he is gaming @ 1920x1080 he needs to worry if his video card is up to the job too.

 

[satindemon4u]

8GB should be plenty, as many others have said. Can only go up from there!

 

[Blue-Knight]

If you turn off virtual memory it will use about that with only one monitor @ 1440x900. Talking from experience.

Turning virtual memory off is my recommendation if you have much ram.

I have it disabled in both Windows and Linux and performance is just better (it may eat more physical memory but it is better, especially if you have slow hard disk like me).

Just to list some benefits:
1.No slow down when an application uses too much memory. It may crash if it tries to use more memory than available but no slow down.
2.Recovery from memory intensive programs is simply immediate (not even 1 second). No slow down again.
3.Your hard disk thanks you for the work you saved it.

 

[Arjai]

3.Your hard disk thanks you for the work you saved it.

Um, EXACTLY, how does YOUR HDD Thank You?

Does it spin faster downloading porn?

 

[markaflias]

#9 Ram is faster than an hdd like memory cache is faster than ram .

 

[satindemon4u]

Turning virtual memory off is my recommendation if you have much ram.

I have it disabled in both Windows and Linux and performance is just better (it may eat more physical memory but it is better, especially if you have slow hard disk like me).

Just to list some benefits:
1.No slow down when an application uses too much memory. It may crash if it tries to use more memory than available but no slow down.
2.Recovery from memory intensive programs is simply immediate (not even 1 second). No slow down again.
3.Your hard disk thanks you for the work you saved it.

After reading this I quickly did a Google search to see how to disable virtual memory. For one, you can't, technically. Secondly, this was only recommended back in the days of windows 95/98 because it was a way to gain a small boost over spending a huge amount of money on new memory. Nowadays however, it does hardly anything. :/

 

[Blue-Knight]

Nowadays however, it does hardly anything. :/

Test yourself then and load a program to eat 90%+ of your memory (it even doesn't need that much). If you say it is the same or you are lying, eluding yourself or your HDD is accessed as fast as your memory.

And the use of virtual memory (HDD as RAM) can be disabled on Windows. The same for Linux.

 

[Solaris17]

Actually when you run out of ram regardless of the setting windows will begin to page. It is temporary but windows will page until memory is available.

 

[Dent1]

Um, EXACTLY, how does YOUR HDD Thank You?

Does it spin faster downloading porn?

Less HDD activity = less clicking and whining noises.

After reading this I quickly did a Google search to see how to disable virtual memory. For one, you can't, technically. Secondly, this was only recommended back in the days of windows 95/98 because it was a way to gain a small boost over spending a huge amount of money on new memory. Nowadays however, it does hardly anything. :/

Actually back in the days of 95/98 it was recommended not to disable virtual memory because physical memory was so small back then 16MB, 32MB, 64MB etc. So disabling it would almost guarantee a blue screen of death. Disabling VM on toady's more robust operating systems, Vista, 7 or 8 does a lot because Microsoft changed their algorithm to cache more into the unused RAM by default, this was Microsoft's main selling point for Windows Vista with their SuperFetch technology.

Actually when you run out of ram regardless of the setting windows will begin to page. It is temporary but windows will page until memory is available.

Only temporarily to prevent a crash, but it will most likely clear the unused applications in the memory to make room and continue without page filing.

 

[red_stapler]

8GB is plenty for gaming, at least until we start seeing x64 game applications.

Some applications require a pagefile so turning it off won't work in every situation.

 

[markaflias]

#15 My curiosity is which games need the page file ?

 

[Blue-Knight]

Actually when you run out of ram regardless of the setting windows will begin to page. It is temporary but windows will page until memory is available

Can you prove this? Because in my tests I was unable to run any programs when the memory was almost all in use, I experienced many crashes.

Some applications require a pagefile so turning it off won't work in every situation.

This is true. But most games will run without problem.

 

[Dent1]

#15 My curiosity is which games need the page file ?

I want to know this too, because I've been running without a page file since 2006 and played many games, run many applications and none had any issues or requirements for a page file.

This is true. But most games will run without problem.

I haven't encountered one that hasn't run my experience is all games run without problem. Providing there is enough ram and you're running a modern OS.

 

[Jetster]

Shutting your page file off will not speed your system up. ( this may have been true 10 years ago) If a program or game doesn't use or need a page file then its benign. But if you run multiple program and one needs it. Guess what. Everything waits for the memory to dump and catch up. But this is rare. There is a reason I have 16 Gb. But i leave the page file and make it smaller and keep it on the SSD.

Now if your hurting for space with an SSD then making it smaller makes sense

To the OP. 8 Gb is plenty for any current game regardless of number of monitors. Providing you don't have other large programs running at the same time.

 

[Dent1]

Shutting your page file off will not speed your system up. ( this may have been true 10 years ago) If a program or game doesn't use or need a page file then its benign. But if you run multiple program and one needs it. Guess what. Everything waits for the memory to dump and catch up. So saying you've never used a page file. Well then you may have slowed your system down.

Now if your hurting for space with an SSD then making it smaller makes sense

To the OP. 8 Gb is plenty for any current game regardless of number of monitors

In that one off isolated situation you mentioned the system would have slowed down anyways even if page file was on to begin with. I would rather wait for the fast memory to dump than to wait on a slow HDD all the time.

 

[Blue-Knight]

So saying you've never used a page file. Well then you may have slowed your system down.

The problem is when a program uses too much memory you will start seeing your HDD very active because of the high virtual memory usage and killing the performance of everything, including the application. In some cases it takes a minute to just open an explorer window. With virtual memory disable everything will run as it should nearly the same speed. Actually, you will not even notice a program is using too much memory. With SSDs you may not feel the same drastic decrease in performance but I'm sure it decreased a lot.

And there's also the problem that Windows will use virtual memory for all applications running, even if you have GBs available.

 

[Solaris17]

Can you prove this? Because in my tests I was unable to run any programs when the memory was almost all in use, I experienced many crashes.


This is true. But most games will run without problem.

sure the next time COD:ghosts memory leaks ill take a picture for you.