does 32gb of ram provide better performance in games over 16gb

Sweeds · Mar 31, 2017

my friend went out and spent $100 extra for 32gb ram because she claimed it actually did improce performace. based off of this video https://youtu.be/0ql5b39A9DY and ya.. as you can see it does provide a bit better fps.. but not enough for it to matter. Is there any gaming scenario where a game would perform better with 32gb ram vs 16 or was it a dumb purchase.

edit: im totally aware and on the side that 32gb dosnt really provide better fps then 16gb but I want to see what everyone else says and maybe even why they say that because my friend seems to be pretty confident in saying 32gb provides more fps then 16gb

offroadguy56 · Mar 31, 2017

Short answer, no. Even 8gb is good enough most of the time.

If you are a power user and like running multiple games at once or running a VM or server while you game the extra ram is helpful. I'm seriously thinking about upgrading my 16gb to 32gb as I run a minecraft server and a computation VM to help with google's deep dream.

mcnumpty23 · Mar 31, 2017

i dont think theres any major advantage in gaming

but for normal workflow possibly yes

the longer you have the pc on and the more stuff you do during the day the more ram windows seems to use up

currently using 16gb out of 32gb here

though to be fair i have 7 browsers open with multiple tabs in all of them

so for gaming my opinion 16gb is enough

but since most people spend more time doing other stuff on pcs than they do gaming would be unfair to call it a dumb purchase

better to have more ram than you need than not enough as adding ram later isnt guaranteed to play nice with the ram you already have

for most people 16gb is plenty

but for some people like me who do an awful lot of things at once i dont think i was wrong getting 32gb

scout_03 · Mar 31, 2017

i play game with 16 gig of ram at max settings .

Sweeds · Mar 31, 2017

offroadguy56 :

not really what i was asking. I was asking if 32gb increases fps in any games and then i showed that video for proof that it does. or at least in dirt rally. the only games it showed was that and gta 5

scout_03 · Mar 31, 2017

ask your friend to do the test on game you play with 16 then 32 gig of ram in is system and you wont much more fps .

mcnumpty23 · Mar 31, 2017

how about games with a load of mods?

something like skyrim with a ton of mods running

the extra ram may be needed then

Sweeds · Mar 31, 2017

i think maybe im gona try to snag my brothers 16gb and throw it in my system and run some tests for 16 vs 32 gb to put this debate down lol. my friend is confident in saying 32gb provides more fps

scout_03 · Mar 31, 2017

he will also need a good gpu and others system parts that it did not list .

Sweeds · Mar 31, 2017

mcnumpty23 :

old skyrim only uses 4gb cuz its a 32bit app but special edition will use more. I actually have a heavily modded special edition skyrim but its only ever used about 8gb. if i can borrow my brothers ram though i can test and see if it makes a difference

Finstar · Mar 31, 2017

I think in the video you linked he ran the 16gb in single channel and the 32gb in dual channel. That would increase the performance by a bit as shown on the video. 8+8 vs 16+16 at same speeds with same timings, i doubt that there will be any difference.

JBURNS489 · Mar 31, 2017

VRAM is a lot more important than RAM in gaming, which is your graphics card. Keep in mind that having more RAM that you can use is sort of a waste...It isn't like a SSD where performance degrades the fuller it is. If you aren't utilizing all of your RAM currently, an upgrade to your RAM will net you basically 0 benefit. You can monitor your RAM usage in your task manager. I would personally turn off my pagefile, or make it very small, and then proceed to use my pc normally. If it doesn't crash, it means you never used more RAM than you currently have. If it does crash, it means your PC needed more RAM than what you currently have installed, and an upgrade will help your performance (whatever it is)
Besides more RAM, you need to keep in mind the RAM speed, latency, and your RAM's mode (dual channel vs single). For example, if you are currently using 16GB RAM @ 1333, and you put in a dual channel 32gb @ 1600, you will most likely notice a performance increase. You would also likely notice a speed upgrade if you stayed at 16GB, but got lower latency ,higher speed RAM, and two sticks instead of one. TLDR; More RAM doesn't equal better performance all of the time

bloodroses · Mar 31, 2017

Assuming there isn't anything going on like single-channel vs dual-channel, the extra 16GB of RAM will not make a difference since most games out there will only use about 8GB at worst. If you have a bunch of services or programs running in the background, then yes it will make a difference; but for a completely unrelated reason. At some point, games may breach into needing more than 16GB to run without a performance hit, but we haven't reached that point yet (outside poorly optimized games that have much larger issues such as memory leaks).

One situation where the extra RAM comes in handy (and performance can be improved) is if you're trying to speed up a slow hard drive by using a RAM disk. I was running this for a while myself before I upgraded to a SSD as I had 8GB out of 16 reserved for the RAM drive.

In my opinion, it never hurts to have excess RAM since you never know what you may end up using it for; and it's relatively cheap. But if you plan on it for strictly improving FPS in a game, there are better options. That is, unless you have a low amount in the first place.

As for a reference, here is an older article (over 1 yr old) about it (with benchmarks):
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/does-more-ram-improve-gaming-performance/

EdellReynes · Apr 1, 2017

When there is free memory, most operating systems use this “idle” memory as a data cache, keeping a copy of the last data read from the storage memory. Because of this, when we open the same program for a second time, it will load way faster than the first time: there is no need to read the data from the disk again, because they are already in the unused RAM.

Because of those two features, the amount of RAM can affect the general performance of the computer; low memory amount can let the computer slow because of the virtual memory usage; a large amount of RAM can speed up the storage performance by using drive cache.

The Paladin · Apr 1, 2017

simple answer , run a benchmark of the same computer with 16gb and 32gb and see if the system score increases.
the answer... yes..

why less virtual hdd memory used, as stated before, it uses the idle memory like a ram drive if you like for a lack of better expression.
and that means less swapfile.sys being usd, which mean faster response time

I have identical system at home one with 32 one with 16 and I can clearly state. yes.

TJ Hooker · Apr 1, 2017

@The Paladin can you provide a link to one of those benchmarks showing increased gaming performance with 16+ GB RAM?

Even with 16 GB of RAM you should have easily enough physical memory to not have to access the swap file while gaming.

The Paladin · Apr 4, 2017

sure make me do the work

so here we are first one is a capture of the 32GB ram, and then I pulled 1677GB from the system (to keep things fair) and re-ran the test with 16GB in the system.

results show performance is lower with 16GB... glad to confirm what I already told you

32GB 1866 i7-4790k Z87

16GB 1866 i7-4790K Z87

TJ Hooker · Apr 4, 2017

What I asked about (and what this thread is about) is gaming performance. Running a synthetic memory benchmark doesn't prove that real world performance is increased, and even then your memory score went up less than 5% with double the RAM. CPU score went up like 2.5%, which is probably within the margin of error of the benchmark. 3D graphics score actually went down a bit.

madmatt30 · Apr 4, 2017

^ what old TJ hooker said - most of those scores are actually slightly higher on the 16gb build which I would attributes to being the same really.

In short no , absolutely no difference whatsoever with 16gb dual channel vs 32gb dual channel in a gaming environment.

There is not a singular title out there that comes even close to using 16gb ram

mcnumpty23 · Apr 4, 2017

just out of curiosity

the paladin

whys your disk score so low?

looks out of place compared to the rest of your results

The Paladin · Apr 4, 2017

ide ssd q300 from Toshiba... not the best speed, but was cheap a year ago.. I probably should change it to a Samsung evo 850

does 32gb of ram provide better performance in games over 16gb

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