Solved Size - Does it Matter?

elbmek · May 9, 2022

I have 2 x 8GB mem chips. When I suggested maybe up to 32GB my pc shop said don't bother, not much difference. Yea or Nay?

Berton · May 9, 2022

It depends upon what you want to do, it may be good if doing such things as video editing, large database files or spreadsheets, multiple programs open, etc. Maybe if being a hardcore gamer which usually like lots of RAM and video RAM. My Win10 with Home and Pro and Win11 Pro are using 16GB, Notebooks are maxed at 8GB.

elbmek · May 9, 2022

I play some online games, single user, Darkstar One, etc, on Steam. No probs at all. (See spec) But I would have thought 32GB over 16GB was a no brainer, but apparently NO!

Berton · May 9, 2022

elbmek said:
I play some online games, single user, on Steam. No probs at all. But I would have thought 32GB over 16GB was a no brainer, but apparently NO!

Actually it's up to the user as to how much RAM versus how much money one wants to spend, it's never wrong to get as much as one can.

elbmek · May 9, 2022

Thanks. Nothing concrete then, just 'do I want it' or not???

cereberus · May 9, 2022

Berton said:
Actually it's up to the user as to how much RAM versus how much money one wants to spend, it's never wrong to get as much as one can.

True but it may be rather wasted money.

I have 16 GB, and only time I come close to using that is when I run 2 or 3 virtual machines simultaneously.

On the otherhand one of my work pcs has 64GB RAM for heavyweight engineering computional fluid dynamics emulation.

By monitoring the memory commit section in Task Manager, one can make a judgement if the extra RAM will be beneficial. Everybody's mileage will vary.

Berton · May 9, 2022

My first experience with RAM upgrade was back in '92, MS-DOS 6 and Win3.1 with WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows installed. It was an 80386/40MHz AMD with 120MB HDD and 4MB RAM. Running out of memory was experienced at 8 pages of data in WP, went to 8MB, next upgrade was to a 210MB HDD.

bobkn · May 9, 2022

An old bit of conventional wisdom: if you never invoke virtual memory, you probably have enough RAM.

That dates back to when VM ran on HDDs. I suppose that SSDs may have changed the effect of that quite a bit, but VM on an SSD must still be slow compared to RAM.

elbmek · May 9, 2022

Thats sense - thanks Bobkn

ShamrockRig · May 9, 2022

From a gaming standpoint, Most games i've ever played are below 16gb, Usually the median avg i see anyway is between 8-12/13gb, 4K res will push it higher a bit, I dont play much at 4k due to my 2070super not being up to it in triple a titles etc, I usually go for 1600p and 1440p is the lowest i'll go. 4k there will be a bunch that will maybe take you over by a couple of gb's but otherwise you're fine,. It certainly hasn't ever been an issue for me other than maybe total war warhammer 3 but i got by just by dropping to 1440p and it was fine, high 14's/low 15's. This is also my entire system usage at this time, Not just the games.

TLDR : 16gb will be fine 99% of the time below 4k res at higher settings( All of mine are based on max fidelity whilst achieving a balance between highest res i can get without dropping too many settings down whilst maintaing a min and max of 60fps).
: Get 32gb if it isn't too much of a hassle for you between the two sizes. If not 16gb will be fine based on above ^
: If you ain't much of a gamer or an occasional and don't really play high end titles/Care much about max res/graphics/fps but still want something decent or do any productive work with regards to rendering video etc etc then 16gb will be fine.

elbmek · May 9, 2022

Dev: my games are on max res as I can get it considering monitor (see spec) I suppose I was one of those who thought 'size does matter' when, in fact, its quality not size!!!

ShamrockRig · May 9, 2022

elbmek said:
Dev: my games are on max res as I can get it considering monitor (see spec) I suppose I was one of those who thought 'size does matter' when, in fact, its quality not size!!!

Quality is my first thing too but you can get good 32gb kits for not breaking the bank money but only if you're gonna need it.
Ah yeah i got lazy and didn't look sorry just took it as a general lol, At 1080p you're gonna be fine with 16gb, Preferably a fast solid kit but it doesn't need to break the bank, Unless you're rendering or running big workloads on photoshop/things of that type you'll be good with 16gb.
As i say, I play at 1440p min, Mostly 1600p and occasionally 4k and i think i've only ran it close was one or two times, and those times were also when my gpu couldn't keep up anyway, i knew that but i love the turn it to 4k max everything and laugh at it crumble and then start dialling it in

elbmek · May 9, 2022

ref Photoshop, I use it a lot on my web stuff - no problems

pparks1 · May 9, 2022

elbmek said:
I have 2 x 8GB mem chips. When I suggested maybe up to 32GB my pc shop said don't bother, not much difference. Yea or Nay?

Unless you have a specific need for more than 16GB of RAM, I completely agree with your PC shop. As others have mentioned, if you are working on some heavy video editing, or music production, or running a few virtual machines at the same time, you may be able to take advantage of more RAM. But I would say that you would KNOW if you needed more RAM, and if you are getting it just in hopes of seeing a performance bump....you don't need it.

Berton said:
Actually it's up to the user as to how much RAM versus how much money one wants to spend, it's never wrong to get as much as one can.

I disagree that it's never wrong to overbuy. I could have shoved 128GB into my Rog Strix X570-E, but i have absolutely 0 need for it, and won't see any performance benefit from having it. On the flip side, I could use the money saved to buy additional storage space, or a better CPU, or a better GPU and would be able to quantify an improvement. Overbuying won't hurt, other than your wallet. But overbuying won't necessarily provide a single lick of improvement.

bobkn · May 9, 2022

elbmek said:
I have 2 x 8GB mem chips. When I suggested maybe up to 32GB my pc shop said don't bother, not much difference. Yea or Nay?

Congratulations on having a shop that isn't always trying to upsell you.

glasskuter · May 10, 2022

Check your ram usage the most obvious way. When running your game open task manager-performance tab. With only this one tab open +task manager open I use 25% of my 32 gb ram.

jimbo45 · May 10, 2022

As in all these things --it's what you DO with it -- running a server with a whole slew of VM's then you can't have too much RAM !!!, although I'd suspect for ordinary home users who aren't running complex calculations like heat flow across a large donut shaped object or even working out the equations of motion of a bog standard supermarket trolley where the problem is -( assuming the trolley isn't damaged) you have 4 wheels with independent motion. !!

Any Maths grds here like to post the solution "!!!!!

Video bufferring also needs a decent memory size -- especially now we have 4K and even 8K coming into the specs.

On the other hand given a decent cpu I find for 99% of the stuff I use Windows for these days a 4GB W11 VM is more than adequate even when running from an 8GB laptop, and even photoshop runs decently for making up to decent A3 size prints of pro quality. (Obviously more RAM is better if you need loads of layers and effects though - I can run that on another machine which has 32GB RAM.

I think those brits say it "Horses for Courses".

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus · May 10, 2022

Use Task Manager to tell usage

This shows in normal use, I am only using 5GB of my 16 G before I need to do any paging.

Now I run a 6 GB virtual machine, and I still have just under 5 GB available.

I now run 2 vms (second 5 GB)

Windows still has some spare ram, but it has offloaded some memory to page file. I know I am beyond an optimum RAM point here, and I need more memory. (Actually I do not as I am not using dynamic ram in vms).

Of course, everybody is different, but in simple terms, run items you know that will consume memory, and see what headroom you have and make a judgement.

Bree · May 10, 2022

cereberus said:
I have 16 GB, and only time I come close to using that is when I run 2 or 3 virtual machines simultaneously.

I ran my VMs on a 16GB machine with no issues, except that it was not a supported machine for W11. I replaced it with a compatible machine that came with 32GB then migrated all my VMs across to it. I could get 10 VMs running simultaneously before it ran out of RAM.

cereberus · May 10, 2022

Bree said:
I ran my VMs on a 16GB machine with no issues, except that it was not a supported machine for W11. I replaced it with a compatible machine that came with 32GB then migrated all my VMs across to it. I could get 10 VMs running simultaneously before it ran out of RAM.

I presume all vms were set up with dynamic RAM as that is much more efficient when lots of devices. I was using static ram for my illustration as a quick way of using my 16 GB.

Solved Size - Does it Matter?

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