16 or 32 GB Ram

[ritualclarity]

You only need enough ram to fullfill the needs of your programs and work style that you use. It sounds like 8 is enough. You do have slower ram and if your motherboard accepts higher speed by all means upgrade. Keep in mind that newer computers will be coming out with faster DDR 4 ram so your upgrade likely will be only useful for the current machine. I would go for the SSD first and put more money into that for a larger drive instead of memory (except for the speed boost.) I have 16 gigs and do lots of work and rarely if ever go above 8 gigs. The only reason I have 16 is because of those few rare times when I do go above 8gb and I wanted to do some virtualization as well. haven't done that yet much.

 

The reason for the better endourance for SSD I suspect is the lack of need of paging the info for the larger amounts of Ram. If you arne't using that much ram.. you aren't at risk of paging and no endurance loss. Performance is going to go up.. however only so much as the programs have a requirement.. ( ram useage again) and considering the SSD is quick there is less of a bottleneck so the ram can be more effective along with the processor. Again.. boost the speed of the ram to at least match the buss speed of your system if not a bit higher ( minimum) More might be a waste since you won't be overclocking however many rigs depending on your set up will "boost' which is a fancy way of factory approved overclocking..

[Mewwt]

you will not notice difference unless you do heavy application work.

 

Games are hardly even out of x32 bit yet for some reason (scardy cat developers) - but heck - if you're a nerd like me then RAM is rather cheap and numbers are important, so 32 GB for me when the motherboard can support it. (Just check if your OS can use it).

 

 

As far i know.

16Gb is more than enough for most current and upcoming games.

GPU's is where its at.

This *9000. Unless you have a shit ton of programs opened at the same time, or do some big things with photoshop or 3-D editing software, you'll be more than fine with 16GB. If you want it just for playing, you'll be fine with 8GB, for the same reasons Alva gave. Don't forget you need a processor that can handle the RAM you have, a motherboard which can quad-channel (if you're going to have +8GB, you might want 4x4GB quad channel) and a graphic card to handle the games.

 

Even though lokomootje says GPU is where is at for playing (which is true), you might want a CPU that can handle all the ram you're going to put. To make it short: wasting resources and bottlenecking. With 32GB of ram, you're going to waste a lot of it, and even though you should get a really powerful GPU for upcoming games (which will probably make watchdogs's requirements look like counter strike), you shouldn't forget you'll need a CPU able to handle it, or you'll end up bottlenecking your GPU.

[pinky6225]

 

you will not notice difference unless you do heavy application work.

 

Games are hardly even out of x32 bit yet for some reason (scardy cat developers) - but heck - if you're a nerd like me then RAM is rather cheap and numbers are important, so 32 GB for me when the motherboard can support it. (Just check if your OS can use it).

 

 

As far i know.

16Gb is more than enough for most current and upcoming games.

GPU's is where its at.

This *9000. Unless you have a shit ton of programs opened at the same time, or do some big things with photoshop or 3-D editing software, you'll be more than fine with 16GB. If you want it just for playing, you'll be fine with 8GB, for the same reasons Alva gave. Don't forget you need a processor that can handle the RAM you have, a motherboard which can quad-channel (if you're going to have +8GB, you might want 4x4GB quad channel) and a graphic card to handle the games.

 

Even though lokomootje says GPU is where is at for playing (which is true), you might want a CPU that can handle all the ram you're going to put. To make it short: wasting resources and bottlenecking. With 32GB of ram, you're going to waste a lot of it, and even though you should get a really powerful GPU for upcoming games (which will probably make watchdogs's requirements look like counter strike), you shouldn't forget you'll need a CPU able to handle it, or you'll end up bottlenecking your GPU.

 

 

 

ME 6 posts up

I was looking at the new shadow of mordor http://store.steampo...com/app/311670/

 

Recommended:

• OS: 64-bit: Win 7, Win 8
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 | AMD Radeon HD 7950
• DirectX: Version 11

so it seems stuff wanting 8 GB is already here.

When i can already find a game now that says 8GB saying 8GB will be sufficient doesn't seem right (plus i've already brought and fitted 16GB ).

 

Also I've already done the CPU (i7 @ 4ghz) and motherboard and my GPU is a Sapphire R9 270 4 GB

 

[Mygoodness777]

You all must be kidding, right? I can have Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 (64bit) running at the same time, with both Firefox and Chrome open with a half dozen tabs, and all the background apps like Origin and Skype and such. I don't use 8GB of RAM. If I recall, I hit about 6.1GB with all that running. That means technically I could run a third large game at the same time and still not quite run out of RAM. 16GB if you're not rendering or animating is totally overkill. It's like having a shirt that's XXL when you're just L. Nobody reasonable is running two big games like that at the same time. We've got at least 3 or 4 years before we should even consider the move to 16GB as gamers. That's my two cents...

 

Note: I have 16GB of RAM and that's because I do rendering and animation.

[Sunja44]

16 GB RAM is future-proof. I guess 8 GB might be already enough for 90% of all users. I guess even a heavily modded Skyrim displayed on a 1440p screen and some background applications running should not need more than 8 GB RAM. I have 16 GB RAM just to be on the safe side for uncertain future changes of my application usage behaviour and because of the fact that RAM is overall relative cheap. Even for some good RAM you won't pay that much.

 

More than 16 GB RAM is only useful for people, who heavily use applications like photoshop, Corel Draw, 3DSmax etc. and this on a multitasking level and not just for Skyrim, but on a professional base where you need to handle huge amounts of data. In addition you will want to have a 6-core or even a 8-core CPU for this sort of jobs, because just more RAM won't do the trick. 

[Mewwt]

 

More than 16 GB RAM is only useful for people, who heavily use applications like photoshop, Corel Draw, 3DSmax etc. and this on a multitasking level and not just for Skyrim, but on a professional base where you need to handle huge amounts of data. In addition you will want to have a 6-core or even a 8-core CPU for this sort of jobs, because just more RAM won't do the trick. 

And even then, that people often have two computers, one for working and the other for rendering.

[bjornk]

16 GB RAM is future-proof.

When games start to demand 16 GB RAM as "recommended" or "minimum", you will have to upgrade other parts of your computer as well, quite possibly including your processor and motherboard. I'd recommend buying only what you need now.

[pinky6225]

You only need enough ram to fullfill the needs of your programs and work style that you use. It sounds like 8 is enough. You do have slower ram and if your motherboard accepts higher speed by all means upgrade. Keep in mind that newer computers will be coming out with faster DDR 4 ram so your upgrade likely will be only useful for the current machine. I would go for the SSD first and put more money into that for a larger drive instead of memory (except for the speed boost.) I have 16 gigs and do lots of work and rarely if ever go above 8 gigs. The only reason I have 16 is because of those few rare times when I do go above 8gb and I wanted to do some virtualization as well. haven't done that yet much.

 

The reason for the better endourance for SSD I suspect is the lack of need of paging the info for the larger amounts of Ram. If you arne't using that much ram.. you aren't at risk of paging and no endurance loss. Performance is going to go up.. however only so much as the programs have a requirement.. ( ram useage again) and considering the SSD is quick there is less of a bottleneck so the ram can be more effective along with the processor. Again.. boost the speed of the ram to at least match the buss speed of your system if not a bit higher ( minimum) More might be a waste since you won't be overclocking however many rigs depending on your set up will "boost' which is a fancy way of factory approved overclocking..

 

Installed  a 512 GB Crucial SSD today and cloned my old HDD and then removed.

 

Windows boots a lot faster and it seems applications load a bit faster

 

Ran 3DMark demo version that you can download off  steam and the scores diidn't actually change so i don't think its going to make much difference in gaming

 

[asbator]

Windows is not unloading stuff from memory immediately - it keeps it there just in case programs/games will need something from it again. I have 12 GB and when Skyrim is run i have 0 memory free, because all free memory is on hold. I played with 8GB before and this new 4GB helped a lot. I even regret i don't have 16+ GB.

[windpl]

There is no game that use more than 8gb of ram.

Game that works, not that have fucking memory leak.

[ritualclarity]

There is no game that use more than 8gb of ram.

Game that works, not that have fucking memory leak.

Even with memory leaks the game will only use up what is available and then start swaping out the old un necessary files. 8 gigs is good, 16 is very nice, 32 is more for developers, maybe those running texture and animation programs (create animations and such) and those using virtual OS's . Basically those with professional / semi- professional work to use with their computer. I rarely ever go above 8 gb in memory.

[aabirin]

8GB is more than enough. Looking at your system, I'd rather upgrade the GPU before I go for the RAM. 

 

But if you are dead-set on the RAM, i'd say 16GB is more than enough, 32GB is just overkill to the max since nothing even uses that much RAM for the average power user.

[pinky6225]

Considering the price difference between 16 GB and 8 GB and then the price of say a 512 GB SSD the extra life span on a SSD that you get from having large amounts of RAM seems very cost effective to me

 

8GB is more than enough. Looking at your system, I'd rather upgrade the GPU before I go for the RAM. 

 

But if you are dead-set on the RAM, i'd say 16GB is more than enough, 32GB is just overkill to the max since nothing even uses that much RAM for the average power user.

 

Here's the article that Vortec posted that showed the benefit of having large amounts of RAM when using SSD

 

 Here is a good article about 16gb of Ram along with SSD storage.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-ram-endurance,3475.html

 

Also as their are games that are already recommending 8GB (i.e Shadow of Mordor - which my PC runs sweet with the HD addon) having more than that seems a good idea when upgrading as i would have had to upgrade anyway to get the best out of my GPU due to the difference in the clock speeds