When can 16gb of RAM become a bottleneck?

[er557]

I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

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.

I know a couple games that do, when using mods. One game ate 37gb ram...

 

[biffzinker]

I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.
snip

I think your reading that wrong. Then again I couldn't make out the foreign language.

 

[er557]

The 19.2GB number in my photo on the bottom right side is "IN USE(compressed)", and 75.9GB available, so yeah- 20GB (out of 96.0GB) easily right off the bat, just launched the game.
What I recommend is always MORE ram, as opposed to faster ram(after a certain reasonable speed)

 

[biffzinker]

The 19.2GB number in my photo on the bottom right side is "IN USE(compressed)", and 75.9GB available, so yeah- 20GB (out of 96.0GB) easily right off the bat, just launched the game.

Don't mind me then. So how is it taking 20 GB of RAM? That seems unusually high for a game.

 

[EarthDog]

I just ran middle earth shadow of war, albeit @4k resolution, ultra settings, the system easily used 20GB of ram, and I'm sure that in future games or more demanding scenarios it might be worse.
View attachment 130040

Interesting ME:SOM doesnt remotely use that much ram for me at 4k...

...that said, some titles scale and will use more ram if it is available, and it doesnt improve game play.

 

[EntropyZ]

I'm running BattleTech w/ RogueTech, and sometimes I cap out at around 12GB+ just for the game + another 1.9GB for Steam/Windows, when I'm in the menus after loading a save. It gets worse as you get more equipment and AI turns can drag on longer as I run the game normally, until eventually after going into a mission at some point I will get an infinite load screen, which is normal.

I thought Skyrim and Fallout 4 were bad... but at least there are script extender plugins to mitigate all of that, unlike BattleTech.

PS: Loading a save shouldn't take more than 7-8 seconds for ANY game IMO, it's ridiculous how some game engines are made to be inefficient or include oversights, like including/using deprecated read/write code so the RAM and SSD just chill for no real reason. #rant

 

[er557]

That's what more ram is for, to increase speed between multiple game loads /saves, as most portions remain in ram.

 

[EarthDog]

Save games are loaded from the hdd.

 

[er557]

Of course they are, you mean the 2~mb data file of the save itself, but all the heavy game assets and level data need to be re-loaded into ram, and if they are already there, that's what speeds up the load. That's what essentialy happens when you have enough ram and just quited your game to desktop, then re-launch the game- it will be super fast.

 

[GoldenX]

Some emulators and Nvidia drivers can eat up 16GB in seconds.

 

[DLGenesis]

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[anachron]

You're fine. 16GB of system ram will be good for at least the next 3 years.

I find it quite strange that people keep responding that when it has been proven to be wrong multiple time on this thread.

Some games definitly need more than 16GB. As you can see in the attached screen, i got an insufficiant virtual memory warning while playing Anno 1800 (with 16GB of ram and ~10GB Virtual memory allocated by windows). The screen indicate that Anno was using almost 20GB at the time, and it's the game alone. So 16GB will definitly not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.

 

[Toothless]

16GB is good unless you play big games. /Thread

 

[spectatorx]

I find it quite strange that people keep responding that when it has been proven to be wrong multiple time on this thread.

Some games definitly need more than 16GB. As you can see in the attached screen, i got an insufficiant virtual memory warning while playing Anno 1800 (with 16GB of ram and ~10GB Virtual memory allocated by windows). The screen indicate that Anno was using almost 20GB at the time, and it's the game alone. So 16GB will definitly not be good for at least the next 3 years depending on what OP intends to do with is computer.

I'm curious what stands behind such high memory usage in anno 1800. What technical aspects make this particular game utilize such amounts of ram. We have many other city builders, economical and strategy games which even with mods do not go that high. If it is not caused by some unique technological features of this game then i would consider this as memory leak which should be fixed by ubisoft.

 

[anachron]

To be honest i don't know of it's a memory leak or not. It was working fine with 16GB for me until the last expansion which added a third map with a very big island. Manually setting more virtual memory did fix the issue, but some people with less memory or low virtual memory setting have this issue since release (april). The game is very much more gpu intensive than the city builder/economical games i usually play though.

 

[Mussels]

16GB is good unless you play big games. /Thread

16GB is enough unless you use things with memory leaks /thread

 

[Toothless]

16GB is enough unless you use things with memory leaks /thread

Or play multiple games. I've hit 20GB+ easily with just two games and some chrome tabs.

 

[EarthDog]

Or play multiple games. I've hit 20GB+ easily with just two games and some chrome tabs.

?

Mine drops game ram from previous games when exiting....if I'm at 9GB playing PUBG, I'll drop back to almost 3GB immediately.

 

[er557]

I dont consider a game that has been launched just now "a memory leak", it is valid use of ram as any use. Some games scale and use more ram, and it DOES improve their experience, because everything is smoother being in ram, less stutter and less micro-loading. This strange carrying on that 16gb is enough for anything is puzzling, and seems more like a justification for those who only have 16gb.
Screenshots dont lie, and as many users here reported that SOME mods and games do eat 37gb or more, I just cant agree to 2014 era misconseptions about 16gb. Now that ram is cheaper, 32gb or even 64 will only improve quality of computing.

 

[EarthDog]

This strange carrying on that 16gb is enough for anything is puzzling, and seems more like a justification for those who only have 16gb.

This strange carrying on about RAM use when having 96GB is puzzling... seems like justifying 96GB of RAM in a system...

2014 era was 8GB is plenty for the majority...

32-64GB will improve computing if you are actually using more than you have... otherwise, modded games which eat extraordinary amounts of memory, while real, isn't a majority of users. IF that is something they do, then by all means, 32GB....

 

[Toothless]

?

Mine drops game ram from previous games when exiting....if I'm at 9GB playing PUBG, I'll drop back to almost 3GB immediately.

I mean I'll have multiple games at once. Banished, Cities Skylines, and maybe something else with Chrome open and a movie up. Depending on the day I'll easily pass that 16GB mark.

 

[EarthDog]

Multiple games at once....that's, novel.

 

[spectatorx]

Multiple games at once....that's, novel.

Not that much. One of uses for that is to farm steam cards. At least that's one of ways to do it. Currently exist dedicated farming programs which do not require game to actually run rather they bypass steam client to think the game is running.

I would love to say running multiple games at the same time is helpful in case of ac games unbearably long credits (up to over 40 minutes) but whenever ac's window is out of focus credits pause until window is back in focus.

 

[Toothless]

Sometimes ya gotta let your virtual kids destroy themselves.