Difference In Gaming Between 4GB and 8GB RAM.

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stevezul_89

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Jul 19, 2013
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Ok guys, this might be a cliche and simple question but i need answers and views from you.

My pc is intel core i5 4430, gpu is sapphire hd7870 2gb Ghz overclocked edition. the mobo is gigabyte B85M. the RAM is 4gb ddr3 1600.

The question is, if I upgrade my ram to 8GB, will there be difference in terms of gaming experience like improved FPS and smoother gameplay? Or is my 4gb already provided the max amount needed for max gaming performance for my pc? Thanks in advance.
 
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burdenbound
I have to disagree with the previous posters, if you monitor your RAM usage while gaming with 4GB is will report that you are not using all 4GB. This is because the OS is reserving some RAM for just in case situations. Now if you upgrade to 8GB or RAM and monitor the usage you will notice it actually uses more than 4GB of RAM. This is because now the OS has plenty to work with and can give the game all the resources it's asking for. I consistently use more than 4GB of RAM while gaming and in some game it can go up to around 6GB usage.

I recommend getting the extra 4GB, for the price of RAM it's always a good buy. You will not need more than 8 though, right now that is overkill for gaming purposes.
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RaisingTheBarHD

RaisingTheBarHD

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May 8, 2013
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4gb will provide enough ram to run current games like crysis, bf3 and etc: reason most people us the 4x2 (8GB) ram is if later they want to upgrade to 16GB (4x4) then it will allow them to have some better performance in multitasking. while if you run 4GB (2x2) or (1x1) you could only reach a maximum of 8GB for the (2x2) setup but can still get 16GB with the (1x1) module.

Easy answer is that with 4gb you are ok but if you did choose to upgrade you would see some speed improvements but not likely a huge fps difference in fps.
 
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burdenbound

burdenbound

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I have to disagree with the previous posters, if you monitor your RAM usage while gaming with 4GB is will report that you are not using all 4GB. This is because the OS is reserving some RAM for just in case situations. Now if you upgrade to 8GB or RAM and monitor the usage you will notice it actually uses more than 4GB of RAM. This is because now the OS has plenty to work with and can give the game all the resources it's asking for. I consistently use more than 4GB of RAM while gaming and in some game it can go up to around 6GB usage.

I recommend getting the extra 4GB, for the price of RAM it's always a good buy. You will not need more than 8 though, right now that is overkill for gaming purposes.
 
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Maxime506

Maxime506

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I agree with burdenbound's view. By upgrading your RAM to 8GB, u could even disable Page File (Virtual Memory) so u would notice improvement of performance. (In this way Windows doesn't need to frequently write data from RAM to HDD which will decrease the performance and shorten the HDD's life)
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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To the op don't forget do to intel pci bridge and ram set up your cant use the full amount of a four gig stick. Most new pc will show 3.2g of usable ram. Then the os has to reserved some of the ram for itself. The big hit is in game cut shots....they can lock up mor crash or the audio can spaz out when gaming rig starts running out of free ram.
 
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stevezul_89

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oh that would be fine since my OS is windows 8 64bit.

 
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stevezul_89

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could you please explain about the page file (virtual memory)? i had heard bout it but i don't really understand how it works and it's importance.

 
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stevezul_89

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in other forums I found that everyone agree on the point that 8gb is the max ram needed for gaming performance. however, the answer given for 4gb vs 8gb is split amongst gamers. i think i will go for another 4gb since the price is quite okay.

 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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It's a section of harddrive that's reserved for virtual memory....as your DRAM get full (say you have a number of Windows open) and you open more things, as Space in DRAM runs low it writes data from some of the windows to the hard drive so it can retrieve it faster than having to resend over the net to get it, then as it needs it, it pulls from the drive and writes other data there, all while keeping all your windows and apps running
 
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Maxime506

Maxime506

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Page File is a kind of Windows Virtual Memory. When your rig has 4 GB RAM, it's not sufficient if Windows uses only the RAM itself, so in order to satisfy the need, Windows needs to write some of the data from RAM to the Virtual Memory/Page File on HDD to keep enough RAM for further use. That's what the PF works.

To disable it, go to Control Panel ->System->Advanced System Settings (On the left of the dialog box)->Choose Settings button in "Performance" ->Click "Advanced" tab->

U should see the amount of virtual memory (Assuming yours is 4096MB), click "Change" button ->Unselect/Untick "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" ->Choose Drive C:, select "no paging file" (Make sure Drive C: is highlighted by clicking it) and click set -> Do the same step if there is any page file in other drives. ->Restart the computer. (Hard to describe how to perform this operation ;))
 
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stevezul_89

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oh i see...that means, if i want to disable it i need to have extra physical memory (which is ram). more physical memory=less work cpu need to do=faster performance.

so in my case, if i do want to turn off the page file and gaining gaming improvement, will 8gb be enough? what's your thought on this.
 
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Maxime506

Maxime506

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I think 8GB is quite enough though. Usually it will use 18-20% when start up (Windows 8), and generally it won't exceed more than 60% when playing games or browsing a lot of Internet pages (Internet browsers are one of the RAM eaters, sometimes even worse than large games.)
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Just monitor DRAM usage if any doubts, DRAM usage can very greatly from any one time to another, may have programs running in background, apps may be updating them selves, all kinds of things can be going on, for one person 60% max usage may be 80% to someone else
 
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Jez B

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I recently pulled my 2x4GB sticks to test 2x1GB modules I wanted to sell on Ebay. I was pretty surprised to find that Bioshock Infinite, Dead Space 3 and even Crysis ran pretty much the same on max settings. I am using a 2GB 7850 GPU.
If the next gen consoles are maxing out at 8GB shared memory, then It seems logical to suggest that PC's are unlikely to need more than 8GB system memory in the next 8 years. GPU memory will be where it counts.
Just my opinion.
 
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zawlwin

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Fred Ghaffari

Fred Ghaffari

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As far as I know, all the answers r wrong…

Re Win 7, if Commit (MB) ≥ Total, u need more RAM firstly to extend the life of ur storage then to improve performance. XP still shines, as it shows the ‘Commit Charge (K) Peak’.

By using a virtual machine, u can easily suck 16GB+

Disabling page file results in no ‘memory dumping’, I’ve heard. Also some programmes crash.
 
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Jak_Sparra

Jak_Sparra

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Why on a platter drive rather then SSD? would that not slow things down, surely the SSD would be the better option?
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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A page file area is basically for what can be almost non-stop reads and writes - writes are the bane of SSDs, which are much better than the earlier ones, but if you want to prolong the life of them you still want as few writes to a SSD as possible - also a good idea to move cache and temp directories to a platter drive
 
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yuzgen

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Oct 21, 2014
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This article explains in detail that more than 4GB means nothing for gaming, if you are not running other applications in the background, like all gamers do for optimum performance, because those apps will also eat up CPU cycles: http://www.techbuyersguru.com/RAMgaming.php
Games run in 32 bit. Please see the benchmarks. Note that 4GB tests was run using only single channel, others dual...

Sorry for bumping this thread, but I just ended up optimising my system and the last possible upgrade was going up from 4GB. Been reading for a few hours, including many threads like this on Tom's Hardware and found the article above. That article convinced me to stop upgrading, and start enjoying my computer.
 
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ffejster25

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well now its 8gb vs 16gb 3 games that I have played now exceed my 8gb of RAM. gta 5, dying light and cod aw all 3 have exceeded my 8gb of RAM. it just doesn't exceed it when I first start the game. after about 4 hours of gta 5 gameplay I put in cheats and started mayhem. bodies cars and debris everywhere. then the game started to glitch non stop. I exited and my RAM usage maxed out at 8015mb. and that's when it started to glitch. dying light just uses more than 8gb from the start. if the texture is on high then it will use nearly 4gb vram and over 8gb of RAM. cod aw only exceeds it if I max the setting and play forever .

I also have the gtx 970. and I think that there is nomemory issue with. cause I use more than 3.5gb vram all the time and it never skips or anything until the RAM exceeds 8gb.
 
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