Is 8GB enough RAM for a gaming PC?

That Computer is alot of money.... you could build your own for half that. You dont need 8GB of RAM for gaming. You only need 4GB for the latest games (BF3, Skyrim etc...) My Gaming Rig has one Radeon HD 6870 and runs everything great.

It's enough... more than enough. I have 8GB of RAM and I can run WOW, Left4Dead2, Sims3, Call of Duty 2, etc simultaneously.

P.S. I thought you were just showing off. Anyway you're good with 8GB for gaming.

The 8gb of ram is more than sufficient for gaming and very few games will even come close to useing even 6gb. You may have saved some money by building it yourself but then you would have to build it yourself and be your own tech support and warrenty where now you have all that from Dell/Alienware and if anything goes wrong you can just call them up and have them take care of it and like you said you were able to finance it through them , so the extra money that you spent by going with them is paying for all that.

4GB is enough for most users 99% of the time.

Alienware PC's are actually a pretty good introduction into gaming PC's for those who either don't care about pc hardware or just don't know much about putting together a PC themselves. You'll get quality US based tech support and a no worry free repair period of a couple years. That alone makes the extra expense worth while. I think you'd be hard pressed to put together a PC as nice as those for much less than $1500 by yourself which means the warranty and tech support is pretty cheap.

Make sure you check around online for discount coupon codes, Dell always has programs running that will save you a couple of bucks.

I think you should just get a gaming computer that will also be built but you can get it for cheaper and better than alienware. Try looking at www.cyberpowerpc.com they seem to make quality pcs and their prices are reasonable. In fact, I have a computer from them and it runs fine  

Cyberpower is too confusing and a lot of their crap don't work together. Try www.beastrig.com they are about the same price but with nice parts.

Building one is fun tho.

It's too bad that you had to pay so much for that computer but I guess thats the price you have to pay for financing since you couldn't buy it outright. Have you ever built your own computer or thought about doing it?

hah, i got 4gb dd2 with amd 955 OC to 3.8ghz
and i can play bf3 cod3 and skyrim at max settings.
But i do have 2x 6970 cards in xfire.

8 gb is more than enough and thats a lot of money for that pc, the parts inside is worth about $900.

Dual 6970's has to be a Beast !!!
I'm looking for a card that I can do Eyefinity with. Would I be better off doing crossfire on a lower end card or just getting a more expensive card like this 6970?

8gb is perfect, definitely not "more than enough" though. I've used up over 6gb in several games, including Crysis 2, BF3, and STALKER CoP.

I'd say you could save some cash on that rig, most hardware stores (Memory Express is great in Canada) will be able to build the PC for you once you buy all the parts. I know they only charge $70 here.

I've been playing BF3 at 5760x1080 the last 3 days and get 40-60 fps on medium settings (high textures) running CF 5850s which are roughly the same as 6870s (probably a bit faster since I have them pretty well OCed)

8GB is best imo. If you have 4 GB then alt tabbing/changing resolution in games like battlefield/crysis is slow whereas 8 GB handles it super fast. 4 GB gets recommended too often and the difference between 4 GB/8 GB for gaming is significant... RAM is so cheap 8 GB is well worth it if you are using i7/latest graphics cards.

Well, I didn't actually answer your thread title, rather I just addressed an issue which is frustrating me (4 GB does the job, but not as well as 8 GB so stop recommending 4 GB!) I think you know full well that 8 GB is enough for gaming and you posted to brag about your system, right?  

I actually think he was just new to gaming and didn't realize that 8GB was good.

to be honest, i think getting 1x 6990 is better than 2x 6970.
Why do you ask?
Thats because it seems not all games (majority) are designed for xfire. for example when i was playing skyrim in xfire mode the screen camera feels like its tearing, it doesnt move around smooth. I switch back to 1gpu mode and the game runs perfect in same settings.

I think bf3 might be the same thing, but i only seen in happen on a 64player map so this could just be a bottleneck on my cpu i aint too sure on that part. Actually bf3 i get a different issue i get a mega drop in FPS sometimes. But when i reboot the PC the game runs smooth again. Kinda wierd as i only saw the drop in FPS once hasnt yet to happen again tho.

But i kinda get the feeling xfire isnt worth it if we need to rely on drivers/patches for it to work 100%

Fun fact: A 6990 is still crossfire.

Also, 12.1 drivers added custom profiles for games, so now you can set CF to work before an official CAP is released. It's not really tested yet since all current games have a CAP, but we'll see if it holds up.

awesome, didnt know this driver was out, dling it now

must buy bf3 for my rig....

Try and assemble one yourself it will be cheaper and for $1700 you can just make a ultimate Gaming Rig.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey