When can 16gb of RAM become a bottleneck?

[Carsomyr]

I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?

 

[natr0n]

No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.

But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.

 

[tabascosauz]

I run a 3440x1440 monitor (rtx 2080 ti + i7 9700k)
I'm wondering if 16gb is enough for most gaming situations? Or is there some scenario where 16gb could be a bottleneck?

16GB is enough for all gaming situations. Feel free to get 32GB if you just feel like it, but if you're just gaming, it's not necessary.

I have a friend who never closes his Chrome tabs and thus, sometimes 16GB doesn't feel like enough. But by that logic, no amount of RAM will ever be enough for a lazy man.

 

[Solaris17]

But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.

Hell yeah brother, eat that ram.

 

[windwhirl]

16 GB should be enough for nearly every single game available right now and for the next year or so.

Beyond that, I can't really tell.

 

[biffzinker]

No game I know of will eat 16 gb of ram.

But a lazy person with a browser open with millions of tabs and then plays a game will have problems eventually.

Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.

 

[Toothless]

I'll have 30 Chrome tabs open, two games, two chat apps, and music and still won't hit 16GB on a 3440x1440. You're fine.

 

[anachron]

With Anno 1800 maxed out, playing on 2560x1440 and discord/chrome and a few others open on a second screen, I sometimes go very close to the 16GB used. Screen taken on an early game, it got worse as the game advance...

 

[londiste]

Display resolution is almost always irrelevant in this context.

I see games often enough using 10-12GB right now. With a bunch of memory-eating things in the background - A browser or two, Steam, Origin, UPlay, Skype and some other stuff plus Windows itself can take 4-6GB - I see 20+GB of used RAM in my machine quite regularly.

 

[Voluman]

Probably in a 1-3 years, in a way as recommended amount to future games.
In practice probably you are good to go for a few years. But you can never have enough of it

(I have a browser with 3k opened tabs and a downloader prog, those can max out my 8 gb on laptop)

 

[silkstone]

Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.

I get close to 16gb at times with Chrome, though that is due to inefficient web code on some of the pages I often have open. Ram being as cheap as it is, I upgraded to 32Gb so I wouldn't have to worry about RAM for a few years

 

[bonehead123]

As someone once said: "nobody will never need more than 128k of ram" (yea I know who said it ) hahahaha

I run lots of apps of all kinds, but no games, with 32GB, and have occasionally noticed my system using upwards of 18GB.....

My feeling is "Better to have it & not need it, than need it & not have it".

Computing history has shown that ram requirements have steadily increased over the past 20 years and will only get worse as time goes on, at least until programmers learn how to make their code more memory-efficient and/or leak-proof

But, if you're gonna buy more ram, do it soon, as the prices are set to go way up later this year/early 2020 due to price manipulations of the mfgr's.......

 

[las]

Many games already started recommending 16GB.
Next gen consoles should get 24-32GB (shared, tho). I'd take 32GB for a new rig, considering the prices now.

 

[xtreemchaos]

I game in VR and the most ive seen being used is 9gb and that's with fallout 4 vr with about 50mods running.

 

[Durvelle27]

I’m one of those people who keeps a lot of programs open while gaming so I’ve seen as much as 27GB of RAM usage

 

[Sithaer]

I think the highest I had while gaming was around 11 gigs,most of the games I've played stayed under 8-9.

That being said I don't keep my browser open while gaming but even if I would it doesn't matter cause I don't keep tabs open.
Not running memory hungry softwares in the background either.

On the other hand my bro can easily use up 16+ gigs with nothing but browsing cause he has more tabs open than I want to know.

 

[Kapone33]

16GB of RAM can be used up in some 4K games at Ultra settings like TWWH2 but only for a short time. There is currently no need to worry about that though.

 

[Bones]

If you want 32GB's that's OK and may even help extend the useful time of the system if you'd really need to do that.

For other things it may help, perhaps not today but we all know as time passes requirements for system resources do increase and that would include the amount of RAM in a system. If planning for what's expected within the next year or so it's not anything to worry over and 16GB's will be fine.

Note that typically most would have upgraded by the time any such requirements will begin to become mandatory for whatever but if having to run it for the long haul then 32GB's wouldn't be such a bad idea to think about.

 

[eidairaman1]

Doesn't necessarily need to be browser with a million tabs open. The extra junk/bloat running in the system tray can eat into your available RAM.

Anything in services.msc/msconfig too.

 

[hzy4]

if you needed to ask the question, you need more ram.
if you play some early access non AAA games they might come with a memory leak issue, like Escape from Tarkov

 

[king of swag187]

When you use more than 16GB of RAM

 

[Carsomyr]

Do you guys have a good guide recommendation for optimizing windows 10 to be more efficient?

I remember finding one in the past which listed the services which were safe to turn off and other tweaks as well

 

[eidairaman1]

Www.blackviper.com

 

[Vario]

I have never used up more than 10 GB of 16GB. Been running 16GB since December 2012. For gaming, its a matter of 8GB not being quite enough for all circumstances, and 16 being more than enough for all circumstances.

 

[Calmmo]

When i bought my last PC in 2013 people were swearing by 8gb. I went with 16 and I've had more than enough scenarios where I needed/used over 8gb used over the years. So I don't regret it. Feel like we're in a similar situation atm.
Not right now, but if you end up keeping a new PC built now for 5-6 years like I have with my x79 one you probably will end up wanting that extra bit of ram and it's not gonna be as easy finding good DDR4 ram in a few years when the market shifts to DDR5 to be able to properly upgrade.