Discussion: How much Ram do you need for gaming on Skylake? Only 4GBs.

[James Mason]

According to a recent Techspot article, average FPS in "ram heavy" games like GTA 5 and Batman: Arkham Knight, showed only negligible FPS differences between DDR4 2666 ram between 4, 8 and 16GB variations, even while having 65 Chrome tabs opened.

For a while now I've been trying to help people with limited budgets build systems to meet their needs, and when it comes down to it, having only 4GBs is generally enough. I even have my own good results from using a 4GB system: http://pcpartpicker.com/b/wxccCJ
Now of course this was a more budgeted system, but my limited amount of Ram rarely seemed to hold me back in games.

Having a faster CPU and GPU would take more of the load off the RAM, so maybe you don't have to go quite so overboard with it for your newer Skylake systems, saving you some cash and maybe making the switch to Skylake and DDR4 a possibility.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/article/1043-8gb-vs-16gb-ram/page3.html

 

[jsgrant31]

Interesting read. My first thought is how much faster does the CPU/GPU have to be (relative to the game requirements I guess)? Does it matter; is there a line? What would the results be for lower 900/700 series cards rather than the 980 used in the test system?

 

[James Mason]

Interesting read. My first thought is how much faster does the CPU/GPU have to be (relative to the game requirements I guess)? Does it matter; is there a line? What would the results be for lower 900/700 series cards rather than the 980 used in the test system?

I was thinking the same thing as well. It'd be nice if game developers / game engine developers just explained how their engines utilized system resources.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

But wouldn't Windows 10 stifle the need for less RAM, though, considering it's already a memory hog?

 

[James Mason]

The more memory you give it, the more memory it reserves, so it's more like windows 10 takes a % of your total memory and says "mine", but can free it up if need be.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

But Windows 10 uses about 1.5 times as much RAM as Windows 8.1. I verified this on my recently-upgraded 16 GB RAM upgrade. With the same programs installed on both, I get around 22% RAM usage on idle on Windows 10 (without Samsung Rapid Mode), then when I booted to Windows 8.1, I get only 15% RAM usage.

 

[James Mason]

But Windows 10 uses about 1.5 times as much RAM as Windows 8.1. I verified this on my recently-upgraded 16 GB RAM upgrade. With the same programs installed on both, I get around 22% RAM usage on idle on Windows 10 (without Samsung Rapid Mode), then when I booted to Windows 8.1, I get only 15% RAM usage.

Well, how are you measuring exactly how much ram "Windows 10" is using?

Do you have any software that could even benchmark whether that affects performance or not?

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

I look at RAM usage in the task manager.

 

[James Mason]

I look at RAM usage in the task manager.

That's not.... necessarily accurate. And doesn't really show measurable performance differences.

It's also kind of pointless because, Windows 7 uses 1000x more ram than DOS does, so doesn't that mean DOS is the superior operating system?

Windows 10 is doing a little more, but it's not necessarily "hogging" the ram, when it can likely free it up.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Well, during the last few days since the last restart and during all those sleep / wake episodes, the RAM usage keeps constantly creeping up and not going back down. So no, Windows 10 is not going to free up any memory unless I restart Windows. And as for Skylake CPUs only needing 4 GB RAM for gaming, I just don't see that being possible.

 

[geofelt]

Task manager can give you misleading views of ram needs.
Windows tries to keep things in ram that it anticipates it might need.
That does not necessarily mean that it is actually in use.
I think the true measure of ram shortage will be found in the hard page fault numbers.
That is when data is needed in ram and the app waits until it is fetched from the page file.
(A SSD helps a bunch if you are short on ram)
Windows 10 has a capability of compressing lesser used ram contents to conserve ram space.
It costs less time to decompress than to fetch from the page file.

How does this relate to gaming?
Most games are developed to be able to run in a 32 bit environment. That permits 2gb for the game, and 2gb for windows and other things.
Special coding can up the game limit from 2gb to 3gb.

The main problem will come if there is other concurrent demand for ram while gaming.

 

[James Mason]

Task manager can give you misleading views of ram needs.
Windows tries to keep things in ram that it anticipates it might need.
That does not necessarily mean that it is actually in use.
I think the true measure of ram shortage will be found in the hard page fault numbers.
That is when data is needed in ram and the app waits until it is fetched from the page file.
(A SSD helps a bunch if you are short on ram)
Windows 10 has a capability of compressing lesser used ram contents to conserve ram space.
It costs less time to decompress than to fetch from the page file.

How does this relate to gaming?
Most games are developed to be able to run in a 32 bit environment. That permits 2gb for the game, and 2gb for windows and other things.
Special coding can up the game limit from 2gb to 3gb.

The main problem will come if there is other concurrent demand for ram while gaming.

Exactly but if you want to build a "console killer" PC, you may only need 4GBs to do it.

 

[BulkZerker]

"Crucial MX200 1TB"

And here is where I see an issue. The swap file, is on an ssd. Not a mechanical drive. Swap it out for a mechanical drive and I am certain you will begin to see a very large difference between the amounts of ram available and system performance.