Is Buying More RAM a WASTE for Gamers? (2022)

Thanks to Crucial for sponsoring this video!
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Still gaming in 2022 on 8GB of RAM (hopefully) in dual channel? We tested some newer games to find out whether or not you'll benefit from an upgrade, or if you're good to go for a little while yet.
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CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
0:47 Why RAM is important
1:36 How we tested
2:30 CS:GO
3:14 How DDR5 is different from DDR4
4:01 Far Cry 6
5:46 Tiny Tina's Wonderland
6:53 Why is DDR5 better now?
7:34 Warhammer 3
8:15 AC: Valhalla
8:28 So what should I buy?
9:16 Outro

[@LinusTechTips]

Hey folks, we hear you. We're sorry that we didn't include tests with background processes on and off; that is a super relevant use case that is sorely missed in this video. Unfortunately, we do need to manage the scope of our videos, and this one already had high number of tests we HAD to do. If you want us to make a video dedicated to the interaction of typical gamer background processes, system memory, and game performance, give this comment a like. In the meantime, here's a link to a recent related video that doesn't quite answer the question but does provide more info: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4exnICEi9tnj5Y

[@auxcord0]

Try it with 80 tabs of Chrome open again

[@nathanholmes2886]

I hear what you are saying but regardless it doesn't actually provide any helpful info unless you are in the audience that only has a game open and that is it. I'd recommend scrapping it or making a disclaimer of some sort.

[@thomasfox0]

a test suite with programs like MSI Afterburner, X1 Precision, Razer Synapse, Icue, and other tuning or RGB software would be a game changer as well as game platforms like Steam, Epic, Origin, etc.

[@viperjason777]

Why was the testing capped out at 16GB?

[@TemporalOnline]

Like 👍

[@theresalwaysanotherway3996]

huge missed opportunity to test game performance with other applications open, like spotify/discord/chrome/launchers/ect... This feels like a common, real world use case for that extra RAM, even in the titles where it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

[@edbigdogdoherty]

Yeah that was always my motivation for having more than 8gb since about 2012

[@blackpearle4334]

Exactly, personally i game while having chrome with youtube open on my second monitor. When I had only 16 gig and i was playing games that required a lot of ram i really could feel the performance drop. They really should’ve added a segment about having extra applications open.

[@Xfade81]

@@blackpearle4334 Yeah it's not the game that required alot of ram causing it, it was Chrome hogging all the ram... Having steam open, discord and a proper browser and you will be fine with 16GB.

[@WarrenGarabrandt]

I'd also have liked to see an older generation video card used, like a 1660 or even 1070. Having more onboard VRAM on the higher end video card might make it less necessary to have more system memory, but the older card with less VRAM might perform very differently than the latest and greatest high end card. I'd be willing to bet somebody trying to decide if they really need 16 GB of ram is going to be working with an older GPU. Who in their right mind dumps $800+ on a 3080 then worries about $60 for some ram?

[@theviralusername]

Thisssss. Why wasn't this tested Linus!

[@dsilvermane_]

You could also have included Elden Ring in the lineup - I've seen first-hand what a massive difference 8GB vs 16GB makes there. I'm pretty sure most new games going forward will benefit from having 16GB+.

[@LowboTheWolf]

true that also I find that chrome and Windows and other background processes use eight gig on their ownnever mind having enough to play game afterwards 16 minimum 32 ideally

[@joemarais7683]

They only did games that use no ram so they can sell people on their sponsor's lower capacity dimms that are actually in people's price range, partly because in reality it's extremely insufficient for a new pc once inevitable background processes eat up ram.

[@MsHojat]

I don't disagree, however I will add that I played Cyberpunk 2077 quite fine on 4 GB of RAM. Performance was a bit lacking, but that's because my CPU was from 2010 and video card was just a GTX 1060.

[@wertyuiopasd6281]

@@MsHojat you were bottleneck on the GPU and CPU regardless of RAM though For most systems nowadays, RAM could be the bottleneck in their system and they don't even realize it

[@DaroriDerEinzige]

tbh, most people also don't "optimize" their Systems or rather install alot of crap/bloatware. And then of course you need more RAM - Myself, I'm the guy which has always at least 20 Tabs open. Sure, I hadn't a System with less than 16GB Ram since the times of Bulldozer. Yet, I've to admit that until recently, for gaming it wasn't really needed if you would use your PC somewhat reasonable.

[@ShapdCrusadr]

Here's a tip to check how much ram you could actually benefit from. Open the task manager during your most intensive workload / most demanding part of the day with as much programs opened as you would realistically use. Now switch to the performance tab if it already isn't, click on the Memory section and check the "Committed Ram". This is the required memory for your current workload. If the usage is higher than the total capacity of your installed rams, you could benefit from a ram upgrade. Currently your PC is making use of a virtual memory to make up for the lack of the additional ram capacity required. The usage of virtual memory can also cause unwanted read and write for your storage. If that's an SSD, then it's slowly contributing to the TBW which means it's placing unnecessary wear on the SSD that can be avoided by having extra ram.

[@gcburns4]

Ya, you basically can't run a PC on 8 gb. Edge/chrome regularly eats up half that.

[@haykeelili8108]

my laptop has 4gb ram, would it be better if i add 16 gb ram in the empty slot?

[@philipptrebus]

@@haykeelili8108 If you have 2 Slots, go for 2x8GB and forget about your current 4 GB Stick, check what speed your mainboard/cpu can handle and buy a KIT with that speed :)

[@haykeelili8108]

@@philipptrebus thank you for your reply, i really appreciate it

[@philipptrebus]

@@haykeelili8108 You are welcome, if you need more detailed help or have any other problems with your pc, just let me know - i can help

[@StarPortable]

You buy more ram for faster games. I buy more ram to have more RGB on my computer. We are not the same

[@caseyddr]

I run 8x4 for the rgb.

[@lonelyPorterCH]

Well, more rgb means more frames, so we aren't that different after all ;P

[@Senseesmo]

@@lonelyPorterCH Stop.

[@colbyinman0]

Exactly what I did with the trident rgb ram😂

[@ketuanjones267]

😆

[@digi_dream]

Dont know if someone at LMG will read this but when comparing single dims of ddr4 and 5, it was really hard to compare the performance at a glance since there was little contrast with the other graphs. I recommend to highlight the graphs you are comparing while graying out the other ones for reference. It will guide the viewers eye and make it a bit more intuitive. Great video though!

[@SirkyNL]

True been wanting to say this

[@flyinmonkeydud]

This needs more attention. Every Linus video ever needs this and now that someone else had the idea I won't be happy till it's a thing.

[@waltermh111]

Yeah, I did notice that I had to do double takes and focus harder to compare specifics. It is a lazy graph. Hopefully they improve on usability and they do keep hiring new people, so have somebody that can be given stuff and think in terms of viewability I guess.

[@nathanieljames7462]

Solid suggestion

[@esatd34]

Gmars Nexus style beby!

[@MihaiDurus]

The new games + apps in the background require up to 16 or even more RAM. I had issues with some new titles or maxed out graphics games where they were crashing while having Chrome/Discord/Steam/Ubisoft/Epic etc in the background. After upgrading to 32gb, I've seen why and I do not regret. It's a little bit overkill considering that the most usage I've seen was 20gb, but it's a good investment for the future. I know this video is 5 months old, but I can't even imagine playing with only 8gb.

[@revleckbendon2745]

Any advice on some DDR4 32Gb sticks?

[@noahmerkley398]

I was beginning to wonder why a game like Fortnite was making my system struggle and stutter. I'm just waiting for another 8gb to arrive in the mail in hopes of correcting some of these problems.

[@Hyogasaint]

You can play with 8gb just fine. You just dont run other apps while you play, like a normal person. Yo dont drive your car while you cook, or shower while you moaling the lawn. People this days want to multitask while playing games or watching tv shows or movies...Do one thing at the time, but do it good, instead of struggle or do things in a mediocre way by multitasking. Or just keep spending money you dont need to if you want/can. Video is on point you dont need more than 8gb to actually play a game. Its the other things you want to do at the same time the ones requiring more RAM.

[@noahmerkley398]

@@Hyogasaint You're actually pretty wrong about the 8GB thing. I know this from first hand experience because I literally upgraded my RAM to 16GB a few days ago because my 8GB couldn't handle simple games like GTA 5 or Fortnite on recommended settings. Load times were getting extremely slow, and the frames were reduced heavily. As soon as I upgraded, these problems were fixed instantly. Most games recommend 16GB of RAM anyway.

[@Hyogasaint]

@@noahmerkley398 I know Im not wrong because I actually play on a budget PC with 8gb and so far I havent had ANY problem playing games, all settings in high, such as MW2 or Warzone 2 that makes the PC struggle for a lot of people. I run a i5 10400f and a GTX 1660 Super and my fps dont go below 60...wich is pretty much all you need to play a game smoothly. Been playing games on PC for 28 years...I know what Im talking about and so the dude in the video. So excuse me if I dont agree with your opinion ON my opinion.😉

[@flipdry]

I had 8GB of ram till 2019 and could never figure why I got stutters or low minimum fps. I then got 16GB and haven't experienced any massive stutters or low frame rates since.

[@Tan42069]

Going from 8gb to 16 helped me go from 140 fps to 250 on overwatch 2, 8gb was really bottlenecking my 3050

[@Alexutzzu]

ive had a sistem with 8gb since 2016 and till recently and now i have 16gb it worked nice but then my disk usage was 99-100% i was using a hdd now ive bought an 1 ssd too and its amazing. and funny thing the hdd was the most noisy part from my sistem the gpu and cpu are very quiet 😂

[@coloneljpgaming]

@@Alexutzzu don’t use HDD its too slow use m.2 ssd

[@ValBoon997]

@@Alexutzzu HDD are already obsolette. It only works with casual players but if you're heavy user/gamer, its best with SSD since modern games recommended SSD and its even less fragile than HDD. The disadvantage of SSD is only if you delete and download files too often. And yes, I had first pc built back in 2019 with only 8gb of RAM with gtx 1060 it does stutters a lot in GTA V and DBD. After I got my 2nd stick of 8GB the stutters were gone.

[@Alexutzzu]

@@ValBoon997 i now have 12gb and its fine for the games i play and i have my newest games on ssd and older games on hdd :)

[@rikschaaf]

The only problem I have with this testing is how "sterile" the tests are run. I never just run the game. I also run discord, a browser with tons of tabs open, steam/epic/uplay (depending on what game is being played) and maybe a terminal with the multiplayer server for the game (like for minecraft, valheim or other headless game servers). The ram usage of all of those really adds up quickly. I'd love to see a followup that takes this into account.

[@urzaserra256]

Yep add to all of that possible streaming/video recording or both and you probably start wanting more then the 8 gigabytes quickly

[@Memorywipe]

PuTTy/terminals basically use nothing, the biggest hogs are browsers

[@matthewtompkins4338]

I guess the only question I’d have to ask about that is…why?

[@PaveMentman]

--- @@urzaserra256 Not to even forget about the system-processes like the "RuntimeBroker" and "Memory Compression" and "MsMpEng" being my current-curent top-3 examples Windows 10-processes reserving largest amount of physical/"working set"-RAM. ---

[@TT-pf3sv]

@D yeah I feel this. Literally would shut my pc fully off to close anything I opened before playing to make sure I was using as little as possible outside the game.

[@0080ff]

I've always love when you guys do stuff like b-rated cinema style intro/video just like how you guys did with undercover pre built gaming pc thing.

[@YossiRafelson]

This is the date he asked Linus out on last video

[@Liguehunters]

I needed to upgrade to 32 GB because games and some multimedia programs ran close to 16 GBs

[@DeMooniC]

Yeah 32 gb is definitely the max worth getting, 64GB is ridiculous and 16gb can cause a tiny bit of problems if you multitask a lot or simply multitask a bit while playing a game that uses a lot of ram.

[@Liguehunters]

@@DeMooniC Yeah my KSP insatll for example with a lot of mods uses 14-18 GB of Ram. so 32 gb is a necessity

[@DeMooniC]

@@Liguehunters Oh I see, yeah modded games usually use a good amount more ram when they are modded. It happens with MC too

[@andrewb9595]

It would have been nice to see a 1x16GB stick in this test for a more fair comparison when going from single channel to dual channel.

[@Wolfie_96]

We're already way past the 'is 8gb enough' question to be honest, I'd have liked to see a deeper dive into 8 and 16gb with programs open or 16 vs 32gb.

[@sleepingwarrior4618]

Why? Don't you understand the point of diminishing returns? Essentially, your argument is.....my Ford Taurus has 4 cylinders and runs just fine with 4......but if I keep the displacement the same (the CPU), then I can have 6 smaller cylinders and the car will still drive the same....and 8, 10 and 12 cylinders.....but without increasing the displacement, the extra cylinders are not making it any better as the displacement has not changed. It's still a 2.0ltr displacement no matter how many cylinders you have. Same with ram.

[@Dellphox]

I agree, the first game to use more than 8GB of allocation on my system was Just Cause 3, at around 10-12gb, and that game came out back in 2015.

[@ericchandler90]

@@sleepingwarrior4618 I see what you're saying, but it's a little more complicated than that. An interesting topic really. Half a liter per cylinder is actually best for fuel mileage in gas powered engines. A 2 litter 5 or 6 cylinder would rev higher and have slightly more power. A 2 liter 2 cylinder would have more torque. Diesel becomes more efficient with fewer, larger cylinders.

[@ericchandler90]

I don't even game, but I've said no way to fewer than 16gb since 2017.

[@yuuji_]

@@sleepingwarrior4618 except ram isn't engines, but still to proove you wrong : why did honda made a 6 cylinders 125cc race bike (rc149) ? Because it made more power. Why is my 91' Suzuki Katana 250 a 4 cylinder too ? Because it makes more power than a twin or mono ( over 40 hp vs 30ish hp for a cb250r 30 years later). And also, to prove the point in IT this time : i have an i7 3700, with 32gb of ram (4*8gb 2133 ddr3), and when gaming, i always have : 1 or 2 browsers open (not just tabs, browsers), discord & spotify (kinda like a browser since it's chromium based), corsair icue, my graphic tablet software, a torrent client, Microsoft power toys, steam, radeon settings, msi afterburner + rtss, and Kaspersky. All of that made me upgrade from 16gb to 32gb because the PC was always doing some memory compression when gaming, hitting the cpu, thus slowing down my games. Since my 32gb upgrade, it gained average framerates and most importantly, 1% lows greatly improved (ram usage is around 25gb when running fh5). Edit : typo

[@TehFreek]

Factorio is a game that you *have* to test with these variables. It is incredibly sensitive to memory bandwidth once the base gets large enough.

[@Ramune5525]

Anno 1800 as well.

[@DieRareJongen]

Cities skylines is another in fact most big simulation games.

[@KingBowserLP]

dwarf fortress is a better test case - around hitting the 150 dwarf mark most gaming systems start to drop. It also has the advantage of plenty of savegames already being shared around.

[@alias_not_needed]

normally they are only testing shooter games or action games like GTA etc. There are plenty of simulation style games or RPGs that behave differentlyi guess. Same goes for GPU-RAM. When i was younger, i always looked athe the ratings of comuputer magazines for avg FPS and bought slightly faster GPUs with less RAM. Evrytime there was a new RPG i had to lower texture quality to get decent FPS. Nowadays i rather buy GPUs with less performance but higher memory capacity. I don't notice texture quality in fast action games as much as in slower RPG games. And most shooters will run decent enough with 70 FPS instead of 75 ;D

[@jarrettvoogd8774]

Moded rim world is also very demanding and many moded Minecraft packs will not launch without 6-8 gb of allocated ram

[@pmackni]

I'm a fan of just going with 32GB of memory and calling it a day. Less hassle and no worry, and you can rest assured that your machine is capable of handling anything you through at it (at least in terms of RAM). ***HOWEVER*** I am not exclusively a gamer; I also built my machine to be capable of productivity tasks using the Adobe CC applications as well as BIM/CAD software for modelling in addition to multi-tasking, so I benefit exceeding 16GB of memory already and can easily justify the cost even before considering gaming performance. If I were to make a gaming/media exclusive PC, akin to a console, I would definitely take cost and performance into account and would target in the 8-16GB range once I address what kind of games I would play on such a device.

[@PhillipJermakian]

It would have been nice to see 32GB tests here.

[@PatsyIsDrunk]

I did the same with 64GB of memory, why not, I had the space. lol

[@terrencesauve]

Quick note for 7 Days to Die who run the Undead Legacy mod watching your videos, having more than 16 GB is a thing. One of the options is to load all objects (or assets, forget...) in RAM, rather than to page them. Obviously, this reduces one of the issues when opening containers in-game, where you may notice a .5 - 1 second lag. Once this option is turned on in the mod config, this lag disappears. Yep, 7Days to Die with UL mod takes 22.5 GB ...

[@KnifeEdge]

Upgrading from 8GB to 16GB removed all stutters in Apex legends for me. I was still getting the same FPS but the game definitely felt more responsive and smooth. Also the game started to use more memory too(2500MB to 3000+)

[@nicolaspaglione]

Good to hear I’ve recently ordered a new ram kit

[@club4ghz]

I remember when I was upgrading from 128mb to 256mb in my first PC. The Colin McRae ran smoother.

[@startedtech]

Did you go from single channel to dual channel, or was it already dual channel?

[@BOBANDVEG]

@@club4ghz beep-boo-bop-boo-do

[@iansavage6560]

@@club4ghz LOL

[@basher515a]

32GB nowadays isn't double as expensive as 16GB, you'd even see them sometimes on sale at 16GB prices. With peripherals requiring at least their own software suite to be running in the background, plus other programs that one may have, it's nice to have a big buffer of RAM to keep all the programs running before you even start to game.

[@thenonexistinghero]

Which still makes it a complete waste of money to the 99% that doesn't have 3 dozen apps running in the background.

[@angrysocialjusticewarrior]

@@thenonexistinghero I agree. These people also seem to forgot that running more apps, also uses more of the CPU. So it is sort of pointless to run a game with many apps running in the background because you have 32GB, but your CPU is only a quad core.

[@ZacDonald]

Also since the switch to DDR5 is happening, it's the best time to buy DDR4.

[@blowtorchhonor]

This is also a reason why Intel "E" cores can also make a decent difference in performance as well (to some extent anyway)!

[@g7lethal]

Plus rgb just looks better on 4 sticks

[@Mystikalrush]

Wow, the best childhood game ever played. I'm floored to see a Tribes 2 disk in Linus hands in 2022, this is so nostalgic and heart breaking to see this game again, which I cherish very much, even today.

[@dmitri8117]

Lookup tribes next. Its admittedly not super populated, but there are legitimately real people consistently playing still if you ever wanna take a trip down memory lane and hear "shazbot" like 20 times in a row.

[@Mystikalrush]

@@dmitri8117 Yes I've known of this and have played it, but I'm not as devoted to it as i once was and the lobbies are far few and abandoned. I played my last 'hoorah' with Ascend competitively and that died too, so in the end its all very discouraging ever returning.

[@clutch7366]

I only upgraded from 16gb to 32gb after I installed Minecraft Eternal. That modpack demands over 10gb and I was dipping into the page file during gameplay.

[@zRunes]

I'd already recommend above 8GB for anyone doing more on their Windows machine than just web-browsing. I would be more interested in a video about where and when going above 16GB would be worth the price increase.

[@HerbaMachina]

Working on high resolution projects in Photoshop with a crap ton of layers pretty much. I had issues on some of my projects because Photoshop ran out of ram with my 16GB when I had about 100 layers on a 4500x2000ish pixel composite. (I couldn't add all the layers at once until I removed the pixel information from around what I was cutting out on said layers before I could load more in).

[@_BASCo]

agree, i have a laptop that came with 8GB and the first weeks that didnt bother much until i started playing FH5, so i added another 8GB module and the game pretty much stopped complaining after that for general use i wouldnt mind 8 GB but 16 GB come really handy, beyond that its questionable if worth it or not

[@samvimes9510]

Yeah, 8 gigs is about the bare minimum these days.

[@lukelegg9915]

yea, just playing cod with Spotify open uses 13gb of my 16gb, if i open discord too it pushes the limit

[@megamanx1291]

@@samvimes9510 16

[@micheldonais7476]

As a former(ish) game dev, I can give you some insights on the minimum. Some companies will often eyeball a minimum configuation from the current bins of specials in a big non-computer retail chain, where it's targeted for "gamers". Once purchased, they will keep the computer as-is, without removing all the clutter and crapware that comes from it, nor upgrading it. Then, they will ghost the drive image for the clean slate once the first few reboots are done. That will become the baseline for the minimum requirements. Then, the poor QA soul that will be assigned to that station will have to figure out empirically whether the producer's minimum playability rules are kept (no dips below 20fps, avg 45fps, less than 1min start time, ...) And if it goes below that threshold, a bug will be added in the list. That minimal machine might be upgraded if the game is unplayable, or the prod might say "No we stick to it, make it work!". Not all companies do it like that, but I've seen many have that particular process.

[@mattymerr701]

That's a better way way than I would have guessed they bothered doing. I just assumed they took a wild stab about crap hardware.

[@Hamster1022]

Cool insight. Thanks.

[@JohnPaulBuce]

Thank you.

[@MarioGoatse]

Great comment. Thanks for sharing!

[@micheldonais7476]

@@mattymerr701 Well, it obviously depends on the company. There's no set rules or laws for any of this. Some small companies cannot even bother since they don't have the muscle for such extensive testing (but they at least try to run it on a producer's laptop somewhere). That said, bigger companies I know do have a process, they have a clear re-evaluation process of what should be considered a minimal environment, and a minimal quality for the experience. That minimal environment is dependent on telemetry, percentage of players with a particular setup in every markets for a game. The better companies with proper QA do check this up, and the process I've given are used in 3 big game creators I know, so I assume others do have equivalent process too.

[@daniyalmubasher4345]

This video helps alot in making me anxious for the results and also taking that away once i realize my 8GB RAM is enough on my alienware, which has its ram baked on motherboard. Although time to time i realise its either 8 or 32 for me IF i ever look forward to an upgrade

[@suna173.6jm]

i didnt expect dual channel to make such a difference omg.. thank u this video is really helpful in my search for a budget gaming laptop! id probs be fine with 2x4 8gb but if its on sale ill go for the 16gb :D

[@georgeu6994]

I use 32GB, and it really helps in RAM-intensive games (and applications) (think Cities Skylines with workshop assets, the more of them, the more RAM you need). It also helps if you just like having a lot of tabs open, and want to play games at the same time. It also helps a bit with loading stuff, as the pagefile use has dropped. I would say that this, or higher, in terms of RAM amount, is not really needed, except for specific purposes/games/applications. It also may help with future compatibility.

[@Henk14789]

Also, do not underestimate the occasional memory leak taking way longer to crash the game

[@TheFibie007]

@@Henk14789 Happened to me in Dying Light 2 with 16 GiB of DDR4.

[@AykaGames]

Came here to say "Laughs in Cities Skylines", you beat me to it.

[@ValdVincent]

@@Henk14789 Occasional is a bit of an understatement, now and days even Windows OS has a memory leak. I know it does because over weeks it slowly uses more and more ram till it is updated or properly shut down.

[@Graylord88]

Pretty much the same usercase as me, modded games and keeping my browser open on a seconds screen. Going from 16 to 32 actually made a big difference for me. While it's cool to focus in on the factual benchmarks of single, specific games; A lot of us like to multitask, and then you probably want more.

[@limecheesecake1832]

I would have like to have seen a total of 32GB (2x16GB) included in the testing also, and a few more games, to see if it would have made much of a difference in newer and larger titles.

[@muamercormehic4843]

4x8 too

[@angrysocialjusticewarrior]

32GB won't matter since 16GB already did not give additional benefits in the tests conducted in this video. However, the 32GB would of course be superior if you are running games while having other apps open (Steam, Epic Store, Web browser, Anti virus, a download, etc). Even if you are not having other apps open, there are still a few rare games where having 32GB gives an additional benefit over 16Gb or 8GB, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator.

[@davidhanousek9874]

@@angrysocialjusticewarrior that would be fking point to show people if they need it or not....

[@noalear]

I had 16GB of RAM and noticed I was using all of it when running Star Citizen (from an NVMe and pagefile on NVMe) so I upgraded to 32GB (2x16) and the performance increased dramatically. I'm using almost all of the 32GB with the game running and I regret not getting 64GB. It completely depends on the games you play. If you notice you're filling your RAM and performance could be better, get more RAM. If not, you're fine.

[@benni922]

star citizen goes up to 22gb + windows 11 and firefox ram is full.

[@prpmbaekds]

is there possible to run DDR5 only with single channel? because the DDR5 comes with dual channel per stick, right?

[@CreativityNull]

I got a 32GB kit for my desktop put about 18GB as a ram disk cache for primo cache since I found I wasn't using as much as I thought I would. Wierdly I was running into ram issues with 16GB but some web browser updates and me no longer needing a ton of research tabs lowered my usage by a lot.

[@lordcarnorjax8599]

I'd love to seen these tests also include 32GB RAM in 2 x 16GB or 4 x 8GB module configurations. I don't know anyone who builds a new PC let alone a gaming rig with just 8GB of RAM anymore.

[@Waddywoos360]

This! I have 2x16GB DDR5 and would love to know if there's really any noticeable gain to be made going to 4x16GB

[@IanMcc1000]

@@Waddywoos360 I reckon my 2x16 gave zero benefit for me over 2x8

[@Joe-zg9eq]

Also why was ddr5 usually slower than ddr4?

[@arkhunter_643]

@@Joe-zg9eq It's not that it's slower in and of itself, it just isn't optimized by most developers

[@4450krank]

yeah my laptop has 8GB and its using 6.9GB on nothing, granted most of that is random windows memory leakage, but still

[@LabelsAreMeaningless]

8 isn't enough. It's extremely limiting unless you turn off all other background programs while you game. I'd say currently 16 is the sweet spot currently.

[@slavikcrusader96]

i agree, 16gb is a sweet spot, as i was playing gta 5 with 8gb it wasn't running smoothly, but when i got more ram, it run much more smoothly definitely get 16gb whenever you can if you want a decent PC

[@CrobinHood8BitGuy]

Yes, I predict 16gb will be good for about one more year until most entry level pcs are built with 32gb

[@trevormurdok7666]

IN 2022 yes 16 GB at least

[@DragonKingGaav]

Correct! We don't even use 8GB in the computers at my work. Everyone at my work has at least 16GB. The graphics designers have 32GB

[@ArniesTech]

With 8GB i get all my daily work done. That includes video editing/rendering while running several FF tabs alongside background services.

[@whatdadogdoin7531]

Is 16gb still the sweet spot for amount of ram or 32 gb?? I already switched to 32 gb as I'll be gaming on a VM.

[@sigma682]

To reduce e-waste I always max out each RAM slot’s memory capacity so I’m not tossing out smaller RAM sticks.

[@HazewinDog]

you really should sell them.... better yet, you should get a motherboard with 4 slots so you can simply double your memory.

[@sigma682]

@@HazewinDog You’re assuming I don’t. I have 4 slots, and only occupying 2 at the moment…I only do a build every 5+ years or so and they’re not worth selling by the time it’s retired. I give the PCs away to less fortunate families.

[@RK-lq2ud]

@@sigma682 donating is two birds with single stone, you're a good person

[@MajesticKade]

@@sigma682 Love a wholesome ending.

[@tropik5724]

@@sigma682 I do exactly the same thing every 5 year.

[@MannyMulattoPlays]

"You wont need more than 16gb of ram for the foreseeable future." *Cities Skylines players chewing through 64gb* I need mooooooooore!!

[@nogrammer]

@qopoy dnon yeah idk why he made this video. Windows will eat 3-4gb sometimes if you have 8, not including any applications you have open. Leaving 4-5gb for any games. When I had 16gb windows used 6gb so I had 8-10gb free for games and most new AAA games used exactly that amount, 8-10gb. Having 16gb is minimum in 2022, I'd even argue 32gb should be recommended for headroom and future proofing. By 2025 games could be using a full 16gb.

[@gbwillson]

When playing in a MP game with friends, we have Discord, and often times a browser open if the game is being streamed live. With 16gb of DDR4, my memory was often max out. I added another 16gb of memory for $50, and the results were impressive. Games load SO much faster, and the game runs smoother overall. Also, I noticed that Task Manager was showing a baseline well into the 20+ GB of memory usage all the time while playing with 32GB of memory. So it would appear the extra memory allowed the system to "breath" better. Worth the $50 for sure!

[@8lec_R]

Damn. I just upgraded and haven't used more 15gb even while I have a lot of things running in the background. When did you last clean-install windows?

[@domzaeWoW]

Agreed, RAM is very cheap and well worth the switch from 16 -> 32. If you're in the position where you're buy/build/upgrad-ing a gaming PC but the cost of the extra 16gb is going to break the bank you probably should reassess your priorities!

[@Hopgop1]

Windows will always try and fill unused memory though, ever added up all your memory usage in task manager and found it doesn't add up to what the graph/utilisation says? Windows will fill it up with frequently used files etc. via superfetch, which will speed things up as Windows can load more with more RAM, but that doesn't necessarily justify your extra RAM.

[@angrysocialjusticewarrior]

@@Hopgop1 I was going to comment exactly this. You also forgot to mention however, that if a user runs a demanding program or game that requires a lot of ram, Windows will remove non opened apps reserved in ram until you have enough ram to run your program smoothly. So people should never be worried when they see windows using even up to 90% of their ram when idle. Windows can make itself run on as little as 600mb of ram if you are running a program that requires most of your total ram.

[@holdendeaner5283]

@@domzaeWoW There's nothing wrong with sticking to a budget. People with less income are allowed to save up and build PCs too.

[@AlbedoAtoned]

I can tell you from experience, that while 8GB worked for me for a long time, more and I found it to be heavily limiting. For a lot of newer games I would have to practically reboot the computer and make sure to close as many things as I could. Even then I would not have great performance due to needing the page file. It also meant that I couldn't have pretty much anything but the game running. And yeah the reboot was absolutely necessary due to windows own bloat. 8GB might be on paper fine if you are using a fresh install of windows with nothing installed. But many are going to have things installed, and they will likely have more things running in the background, even if they curate what is running, especially if they disable things from running at startup. I could see it being much more bearable on Linux though, due to less bloat, but I would bet it is still quite limiting. I eventually upgraded the ram in it a couple years ago to 16 and even with that i saw a night and day difference. In many of the games I had to previously close programs and even reboot, it is no longer a requirement. Everything else got much better framerates. But the bigger benefit is that the computer just ran much faster with it, because it was not hitting the page file so often. I bet there are plenty of people that find plenty of use out of even more ram, so this isn't to say that 16 is all you need, but rather I would say it is the lowest I would recommend since even most web browsers use ridiculous amounts of ram at times. A fresh install of Chrome and Firefox both used around 2-3GB for just a few tabs and I've seen both use up to 10GB on my machine. To be fair, I've seen a lot of devs assume that unused ram is wasted ram, so they find ways to use as much as they can, which on paper should make things run better, but in practice if they are using all of that ram it tends to mean more page file uses which is significantly slower. And so while more ram might lead to those programs actually using more ram, imo the pros outweigh the cons since it gives more wiggle room.

[@benbro1518]

Im doing fine with 8 gb ram

[@hanalala3164]

​@@benbro1518with newer games for real?

[@zbear404]

I just noticed at 5:09 there is a data visualization trick done by having different axis values for FPS.

[@ElladanKenet]

8gb used to be the minimum. Now, I'd argue its 16gb. I wouldn't get less. That said, and as pointed out, there's already stuff today that will use more and benefit from having access to it. As time goes on, more and more games and programs will be eating even more ram, and 32gb will become the new standard.

[@saricubra2867]

@Transistor Jump 8GB is rough in Minecraft which is +10 years old at this point.

[@benedani9580]

@@saricubra2867 You can run Minecraft on 2GB.

[@benedani9580]

@@saricubra2867 You can run Minecraft on 2GB.

[@johnsalamii]

@@saricubra2867 well i get around 120-140 fps with 8 gigs of ram in dual channel, which is astronomical imo

[@johnsalamii]

especially after upgrading from a laptop that had 4 gigs of ram and a 5400rpm hard drive

[@michiganbasemaniac]

I love the link to the "Reacting to the most profitable videos" with the starting skit. You mentioned taking James on a date. and you followed through. Great job!

[@ZacharyHawkshaw]

Sometimes not even 16GB is enough. While playing certain games with not that much running in the background (iCUE, Antivirus, Wallpaper Engine, MSI afterburner, RTSS and NVIDIA control panel being the only notable ones), total system memory usage in real time was over 18GB in Rust and over 16GB in a heavily modded Fallout 4.

[@Koeras16]

i filled my 32 GB with anno 1800...yes it might happen.

[@5353Jumper]

Depends on the game type. First person shooters do not need a lot of RAM, except preloading audio and textures to avoid hitching when going to different game zones. But try this in a builder game. Something like "Satisfactory" is totally RAM dependant particularly late game. Basically unplayable with 8gb, 16gb you gotta limit yourself late game or live in Lag City. 32gb is cool but at that point faster RAM helps too because there is a harsh memory I/O bottleneck around 20gb RAM used for the game.

[@erickauffmann_official]

The intro had me laughing hard 😂😂😂😂😂

[@TonytheEE]

Is James wearing the same wig from the CSF video? Before Sarah chopped it?

[@TheSanpletext]

Wasn't it the yesterdays "Reacting to our Most PROFITABLE Videos!" were they agreed to go on a lunch date 🤔😂

[@TonytheEE]

@@TheSanpletext ha! I think you're right! The DEEEEP lore of James on a date is being written!

[@TonytheEE]

@D. Whitfield Shazbot, me too man.

[@ruckus1981]

Tribes 2... the best team based shooter ever made IMHO

[@riakata]

There is a big reason to have heatspreaders that I found that actually makes a lot of sense but isn't related to heat. Shipping damage, i've gotten many bare DIMM modules non-functional because they are small items so lots of shippers just dump them in bubble mailers and while they look fine on the outside the just don't work randomly sometimes with completely dead sticks of ram. I've never seen a heatspreader dimm do that probably because they are mechanically a lot stronger being surrounded by metal and squishy pads.

[@mikkelbreiler8916]

Excellent point, Sir.

[@DataDrifterOFC]

Good point, never thought of that before. Then again the finnish post is not notoriously well known about their packages being thrown out of a moving car, but I'll definitely keep that in mind and if the price difference isn't huge I might as well take the more robust option 👍

[@roowut]

bare sticks are easier to bend and probably damage the traces so they just end up dead

[@BHBalast]

@@roowutTraces flex fine, flexing the solder joints may cause micro-cracks and lead to later failure when thermal cycling the joints (aka turning on an off the computer). Also, ceramic capacitors don't like flexing to much, they just crack and fail short.

[@alias_not_needed]

same here. I normally spend the extra money for modules with a small heat spreader, just because it is way easier on my fingertips to push them into the slots.

[@OhItsThat]

I’d like to see a VR test as well as high resolution VR for something like sim racing. I have tons of software running in the background just to make my simulator work. I guess these are things I’ll never know.

[@codytk]

Elden Ring had a minimum requirement of 16gb ram on Steam, and I was worried that I would have to buy 8gb more ram (RAM was super overpriced when I built my comp) but I decided I would try with 8gb as Elden Ring worked on consoles with 8gb ram. Turns out it worked absolutely fine (130hrs into the game) but I think my cpu and gpu made up for lack of ram. That being said, I am going to get more RAM as games are nearing the minimum 16gb mark. though to be fair I am pretty sure I had 8gb of ddr3, very surprised it worked.

[@Kamishi845]

Elden Ring doesn't use that much RAM despite being open world. It's more GPU heavy.

[@AlecLeigh]

i've always had the impression that the "extra ram" required in game specs was to compensate for background apps that were loaded in like maybe steam, fan/rgb control, maybe a tab or two in chrome, etc etc etc

[@guillaumejoop6437]

it's not an impression. Devs aren't in a shady conspiracy with RAM manufacturer to make us buy more than we need, they just have enough information on how people use their computer to know better

[@arkblade_real]

Devs want you to be able to minimise ur game without crashing the game

[@AlecLeigh]

@@guillaumejoop6437 ". Devs aren't in a shady conspiracy with RAM manufacturer to make us buy more than we need" I never thought they were

[@guillaumejoop6437]

@@AlecLeigh sorry if I implied you did, not my intention

[@reappermen]

That might be it, though an important factor for RAM requirements is also DLC planning/safety margins. I've seen multiple devs of various games state in forums and/or interviews that they added 1-2 GB of RAM to their requirements internaly just to leave room for possible future changes and DLC's that might throw more stuff into the RAM than the base game alone.

[@Ziumlaut]

The sole intro is so hilarious that I don’t mind you didn’t include tests with background processes xd The cinematic feeling, the acting - some videos are just more about fun than methodology ;) Way to go guys!

[@acat6182]

Yeah that intro made the video

[@jimellis5604]

The acting at the beginning was excellent. Please do more

[@TheAnon03]

I used to max out 12GB back in 2010 with some games (cough "EVE" cough) but 2x8GB sticks is the DDR4 sweet spot for gaming right now as far as I can tell. Sure you may be able to handle most things with 8 but that little extra headroom is always just nice to have.

[@hicknopunk]

I use 16gb from 2 sticks, ddr4 and 5333 mhz. 16gb is the sweet spot imo.

[@JefferyBezos-vy9zo]

@@hicknopunk I used to run 32 but sometimes when I played star citizen I would use every bit of ram if I had just one or two things in the background(especially a browser) I run 64gb now and star citizen uses about 20gb at max it's crazy.

[@dreamliner8745]

i have 32gb and as a programmer my programs compile so much faster that it was worth upgrading from 16gb. for games 16gb is currently still ideal in my opinion.

[@BOBANDVEG]

I upgraded to 32 bc it was $45. I mean. It's one game I didn't get and actually spent the $ on the system. I dont really play taxing games . Rts, rpgs, metroidvania, rogues....etc... But ram is always where people start to bottle neck. Just get it out of the way

[@PumpiPie]

What are you programmering?

[@zeroturn7091]

@@BOBANDVEG which kit was this?

[@Finkelfunk]

The one super weird use case I never thought about before was when I tried to hash a large file on a Pi with 2GB. I used python and the open() function which made it not work due to it loading everything into RAM at once, so I had to code a way around that. Proof that more RAM is better for lazy developers.

[@BOBANDVEG]

@@zeroturn7091 it's just an aegis stick. I run ddr4 . 16gb cost like $45

[@paulhancock3791]

Is it possible that the results would be similar for VR? I'm currently speccing out a rig as cheaply as I can whilst including a 3080 GPU. I've no plan to play many pancake games - this will be a VR machine first and foremost, with the possibility of playing a few 1080p titles if I get bored. So, I was thinking, if I always push 4k (The sole reason for getting a 3080) out to my Quest 2, then 8Gb dual channel would be a good start (For now) As the CPU isn't going to be doing much at this resolution anyway...Is this correct? I'm planning on getting an R5 3600 (Again, for now). Would appreciate a few pointers :)

[@bananasandbass]

Love the intro, produce more of those!

[@ThePizzaDevourer]

Would love to see a follow-up looking at whether or not going above 16GB is worth it with background tasks running. Never had issues with Apex on my old computer with 32GB, but I only went with 16 in my new build and it seems to have occasional frame drops unless I kill every single background task.

[@itslegiTim]

Funny thing is, I had 16gb for years and it was always enough. But sometimes, I had like 90% of it used. So I Upgraded to 32gb to get a little more head room. After the upgrade, my usage exceeded 50% more often than not. As if programs used more ram when theres more of it unused.

[@anatolidanev1521]

My system uses around 10-12GB when i play Apex. Unless you have 100 things running in the background i think 16GB is enough.

[@Direwoof]

Ye it helps with teh stuttering for me in squad.

[@Elijah1573]

@@itslegiTim Same case here I upgraded to 32gb after games such as FH5 or MSFS were using too much memory which did help quite a bit But at idle i can use anywhere between 30% usage and 50% with things such as steam discord chrome ect in the background While with 16gb those same idle processes used less ram Maybe because of pagefile?

[@grumpywolfgaming]

I went to 32gb after playing microsoft flight simulator at 4k max settings, game almost maxes out my system ram with 32gb.

[@Codewow]

I recently bought 64 gigs and turned off swap files. It has helped get more fps out of games with large assets. Most noticeably for Star Citizen. Load speeds for the game dropped from minutes to a minute or less.

[@AMV12S]

I have it too, but I bought an Intel Optane to dedicate to swap because Cities Skylines needs 32gb of free ram while playing with my mods 😂😅

[@stuchly1]

@@AMV12S oof. 🤣

[@LuisC7]

How did you do that and what does it mean?

[@BlackJesus8463]

How much RAM does Star Citizen use?

[@dairypills7125]

@@BlackJesus8463 the minimum is 16gb on their requirements page

[@Guardian179]

Really depends on the game and use case. Flying DCS in VR, I saw a huge improvement going from 32gb to 64gb. So you need to figure out what is holding your system back. I upgraded from a 1080ti to a RTX 3080ti and barely got any performance increase. It was only when I went up to the 64gb of RAM

[@DeathDasein]

interesting.-

[@KillFrenzy96]

Yep. Find your bottleneck. It can be hard to diagnose. I usually tell others to follow a few steps in order that's relatively easy for inexperienced users and is mostly accurate. While playing your game, check these things in order: GPU: Is GPU over 95% usage? RAM Capacity: Is RAM usage over 85%? RAM Speed: Is your RAM not running at its rated frequency? Storage: Are you not using an SSD for both the OS and game? CPU: Did all the above checks fail? It's likely your CPU. Ignore your CPU usage numbers.

[@GodKitty677]

There are games that have different RAM requirements for map sizes. There is games that requires 32GB of memory for larger size maps (Galactic Civilizations 3 for example). Most games recmmend 16GB of RAM. Kingston "how much memory for gaming" states that performance increases for games with 32GB of system memory over 16GB. They only list 4 games, so a small sample size. The latest game releases are already starting to recommend minimum 16GB of RAM.

[@pfrancescutti]

I know they aren't as large a market, but I'd love to see some proper sims included in your benchmarks one day. DCS, IL2 or MSFS for example.

[@anujaya2317]

I would love that too! I play a lot of cities skylines and unlike most games, it uses every bit of memory and cpu I have and the gpu is just chilling. Would love to know how much better it’d run with more memory vs faster memory.

[@Maartwo]

32 GB is a must for those

[@berndkemmereit8252]

@@Maartwo agree, I hate that these games are totaly ignored, funny part is that Linus is a huge Anno 1800 Fan, I'm sure he has more than 16GB..;-)

[@velyse]

DCS, in VR, in a tomcat will routinely eat up 20-24 gigabytes of ram, with system resources eating up 5-8, it definitely caps out and hits the page file resulting in some awful frametimes.

[@pfrancescutti]

@@velyse hence why is love to see professionals do a comparison using those titles. They are optimized differently than your average run and gun AAA.

[@nolep28]

Glad to see the quick recognition of the missed opportunity, I can't help but feel that videos like this feel "samey" as it's basically a refresh and that might have been the scope of the video, but I'm sure everyone would love a video closer to reality, with apps like discord and Spotify + a few tabs of chrome , same scenario but with dual monitors, video playback on a browser at the same time etc .

[@foxglow6798]

Loved the little bit at the beginning

[@LateNightFire]

one thing people rarely take into account with ram and cpus is background tasks, If i wipe my drives and have a fresh windows install sure I could get away with 16GB or a weaker cpu. but those background tasks take up a lot of resources. I usually have at least 10 chrome tabs, photoshop, discord, plex and a bunch of other stuff running and while sitting at my desktop i can use anywhere between 10-15gb of ram. then try adding a game that uses 8gb of ram alone on top of that, it may not stutter or freeze but if you only have 16gb of ram then it's not going to be snappy, it won't perform as well and overall it's not going to be a great experience. although, I will say that everyone is different and you may not have as much stuff running in the background. but if your machine is sluggish or you're not getting amazing performance in games, making that upgrade to 32gb might be the move. I noticed windows was a lot snappier, programs started up a lot quicker. it's also worth it alone to not have to choose between flight simulator and those 22 youtube videos you got loaded in the background for later.

[@john39er]

A fresh windows install will sip on around 2GB of ram, depending on drivers installed. My rig after boot, will sit at 8 gb after loading all the apps at launch, and in some games would hit 15gb easy. So I have 32gb. It's not farfetched to see 32 as a new "recommended", but definitely not required.

[@TheJackiMonster]

I agree. The recommendation for games usually considers Windows and other installed software to take a lot of resources away already. If you find a game on Steam with native Linux support, their recommended amount of memory is usually half or even less of the memory which is recommended on Windows.

[@Cavi587]

Exactly. I have a laptop with Windows which eats up around 3GB on idle after bootup. Open up a browser and some pdf's and all 8GB are full. I also have a computer with Linux and a very lightweight window manager as my GUI. On idle it only eats up like 200mb, an even though this machine is on paper weaker than the Windows laptop, I swear to God everyday tasks, especially if you're a student (openng multiple PDFs, writing an assigment paper, watching videos in the bg for research, listening to music) are a lot smoother when your system doesn't eat half of your ram to just exist. I highly recommend trying it out if Windows programs compatibility is of no concern.

[@javierflores09]

@@Cavi587 I am sorry but I call bullshit, I have a 4gb laptop with Windows and another one with 8gb, Windows has never used more than 1gb at most I don't know what is wrong with your Windows installation but I have never ran out of RAM because of it

[@moth5799]

@@javierflores09 Windows will use up more RAM if you have more RAM installed, it's using it for caching, and also probably lets itself open more processes if you have more RAM. In fact windows (and linux, for that matter) are both using up all your ram, all the time, if RAM isn't being used for something currently running, then it's being used for caching. For example, if I look at memory usage right now on my system, I've got 5.5gb being actively used, and then 9.9gb used for caching. Someone with 32gb will see higher RAM usage even if you're using the same apps.

[@tonyjohansson8395]

@@javierflores09 Windows will use more RAM if you have more RAM in your system. Windows will cache frequently used files in RAM for software that you use alot. When you have a lower amount of RAM your system will cache less and read the files from storage instead. Files that are read from RAM is much faster than storage. This is why having more GB's of RAM for certain workloads results in better performance. There is also L1/L2/L3 cache on your CPU which is even faster than RAM. Some workloads performs really fast on the new AMD 5800X3D compared to other CPU's because the 5800X3D has a whopping 100MB L3-cache to store data. Cache hit(finds data in cache) vs cache miss(data not found in cache) is a big difference for how fast your cpu can process the data. Cache hit only requires a single or few CPU-cycles while cache miss can take hundreds of cycles depending on where the data is located. A larger CPU L3-cache is where the CPU industry is headed next.

[@james.telfer]

Will, I certainly noticed the difference when I went from 8 to 24 Megabytes back in '96!

[@minecakechase20]

One of the best ltt intros I’ve seen in a while

[@danielv6906]

Hilarious intro. Thank you for putting a smile on my face AND provide some interesting nerd-info.

[@rokku87]

I find that after you debloat the hell out of Windows 10, 8 GB can work as long as you have some page files set aside on your primary boot SSD. Still 16 GB is what I recommend to most people.

[@cybersteel8]

If you have to start using your pagefile and swapping with your boot SSD, you already need more RAM. The point of this video is to understand how much RAM is required to not use any swap space at all.

[@fakuri913]

I have 8gb ddr3, will it making a big difference if I upgrade it to 16gb ddr3 because I can't afford a new motherboard now?

[@rokku87]

@@cybersteel8 that's not necessarily true Windows should be putting background applications into the page file which shouldn't affect FPS. It'll prioritize your game for the dedicated memory. You're not entirely wrong though 8 GB is definitely borderline for gaming computer these days.

[@rokku87]

@@fakuri913 I'd say yes you probably see a tangible benefit and your frames won't dip as low. Don't get cheated on a used DDR3 stick though. Find a good deal and if possible find one that is the exact same speed as your current ram stick.

[@aoitamashii]

There's no reason not to with how cheap DDR4 is these days. You can get a decent 2x8gb 3200 kit for like $80.

[@MathiasCiliberto]

Thank you for adding the arrow in the plots. I know it's a little thing, but especially when you do multiple benchmarks (like in GPU tests), it was often difficult to follow your commentary and finding the corresponding data in the plots quickly. Hope you'll keep to visually underline some keys results 😉

[@linuxfabrication9074]

What about 4x4 Gb (16GB) would that offer any significant gains at 1080p gaming compared to 2x8 Gb

[@archy234]

Soooo, whats better? 4x4 Gb or 2x8Gb? Double dual or just dual? Ore dual is better right?

[@Raven_VG]

Kinda wished you guys covered 32GB effects vs 16GB but I guess that goes against the Crucial sales pitch

[@staceysmith-gd3zv]

I love that you have this wonderful ballance of quality visual as well as matching quality audio in every video so i can sit and watch directly reciving the same experience as i do while im multitasking chores while listing to the video along side the great ballance of really long videos than normal timed videos aswell as short videos consistintly uploaded in equally spread out release so no matter what i can enjoy catching up on your videos in a way that caters specificity to my current activity in just about any way i need them to at the time

[@williamsb3068]

The intro was sick...quick question though should i stick to my 2x4 or buy 2more 4gb to make it 4x4 or will i be wasting money

[@ricky_pigeon]

i wonder how RAM compression in windows is affecting this and if its better on or off?

[@Sirmellowman]

I havent even watched this video yet but I know for a fact that its a yes for some games. because I almost doubled my fps in star citizen by getting more ram from 16 to 32. other games nothing changed. its situational on how much you already have and what games you are talking about.

[@caphalor7252]

Jeah same sc is insane in ram usage usually above 20 gb and in orison (we all love it) sometimes even 27gb

[@Sirmellowman]

@@caphalor7252 yeah the whole entire solar system with no loading screens probably has something to do with it

[@clintonc108]

@@Sirmellowman Thanks for sharing as I was 100% thinking this was my problem with lower fps and stuttering in Star Citizen with 16Gb of ram. My ram usage when playing is always in the upper 15 gigs of usage. It's the only game I have noticed this on, even MSFS 2020 runs smooth.

[@berndkemmereit8252]

@@caphalor7252 Same in Anno 1800 and City Skylines, if you have other items open at teh same time 32GB is getting close to beeing fully used.

[@d2ricci]

Came here to say something similar. Take an upvote

[@st8kout961]

Last time I upgraded Newegg had a big ram sale where I could go with 32 GB for only a bit more money, (I had planned for only 16 GB). It was hard to say how much of a difference it made as I also bought a new cpu/motherboard, but I think it helps when running Cubase DAW (digital audio workstation). I can easily add multiple sound tracks trying out new sounds, without any noticeable lag.

[@justanothercuriouscat]

Nice intro skit. Hope to see more of these.

[@majjjk]

I kinda wish we could see DDR3 values as well to see if dual channel and/or triple channel has as much value in the older systems, most people watching are probably not running DDR5 that being said I appreciate the stats nonetheless. You'd obviously need a 2nd system so comparing FPS to DDR4/DDR5 systems wouldn't really work but at least it would show users if the same mentality could be applied or not regarding dual/triple chan is all I'm getting at

[@tomkoopmann5442]

If you end up revisiting this topic, I would love for that to include COD: Warzone. I experienced lots of crashes with that game when I only had 16 gb of RAM (with only Discord open in the background). Upgrading to 32 gb fixed that issue for me but I'm not sure if that was because of the new kit or because of the increased capacity. Either way, it's a really memory intensive game, I regularly have 20 gb of RAM used while playing.

[@mrclassyturtle843]

Yeah I have 16gb and can't enable the shadow caching options with discord and spotify in the background or else it stutters

[@EpicWolverine]

There’s a known issue with that game and Windows Scheduler. Are you running the thread at High priority? That fixed the frame rate for me (4690, 16GB, RX 580; GPU frame times were 16ms or less but CPU frame times were over 40ms).

[@Nachokinz]

Best thing about that upgrade is the additional headroom helps avoid potential issues with other memory intensive applications you may run in the future; speed is great but capacity is best.

[@mrclassyturtle843]

@@EpicWolverine haven't screwed around with that so probably just at normal will try running it at high

[@Black_Kakari]

If you have 16GB of DDR4 RAM and try to play Star Citizen, your RAM will run at 100% in Task Manager! I upgraded to 32GB of DDR4 RAM and I'm using on average 18-22GB! The game runs much smoother now with that bit of extra RAM.

[@TazzSmk]

hmm now it makes sense why my 7 years old X99 5820K platform still holds quite well, it's 4x 8GB DDR4 sticks running in actual Quad-Channel RAM config :)

[@brandontyler1754]

So 2 4gb R1x16 sticks is better than 1 8gb R1x8 stick cuz it's still 8 total gigs of RAM but my having two sticks in there makes it dual channel right? I am looking to upgrade the RAM in my laptop and I just want to make sure that I understand correctly

[@charlieagriogianis6140]

I feel like at least mentioning the multi tasking part of more ram could have been helpful. As a person that does a ton of gaming I still often am in a voice chat and/or watching a vido/doing a lot of stuff in my browser at the same time. And I think that is one of the main places an extra 2 to 4 gbs of ram is going to go for most people. Would have piked some testing on the multitasking benefit.

[@tOSdude]

Detroit: Become Human had major stuttering issues with 8GB of ram for me, which I was able to fix at the time with a dedicated 16GB swap file on an SSD, but adding a 16GB kit (24GB total DDR4, axed the swap file) made all problems go away. I run 32GB of 3600 right now, although when editing 1440p game captures it gets eaten up real quick.

[@lukasl3440]

I recoment looking at how Detroit was ported on PC. It's fascinating.

[@malikwhitten1884]

i used to use mem reduct for 8gb laptops and computers most titles ran fine, even with 16 gigs i still use mem reduct cus most games take up 10gb

[@CoffeeKadachi]

Detroit on PC as a whole is a performance KILLER. I could barely run it on my decent budget built and it kept maxing out my CPU

[@Wayhoo]

Thank you for this video!

[@simanova837]

some friends had huge improvements in min framerates when upgrading from 16 to 32 GB of RAM in Farming Simulator 22

[@rentaspoon219]

32gb is lovely in DCS and Star Citizen, less random hitching although I know it's a minor improvement

[@Moop747]

Star citizen would crash constantly for me till I went from 16 to 24, completely fixed my issues weirdly

[@gbreuil1]

Star Citizen have memory problems because of the rendering right now which means your pc load all the server datas in your pc, 25Go of RAM when i load it...HUGE. Maybe they will try to tune it down to like 10-12Go of RAM like any decent pc multiplayers game right now. Or not and enjoy 250€ memory kit like me :3 (dont do it)

[@Obi-Wan_Kenobi62]

COD Warzone is also one of those games that uses a lot more RAM than you'd think

[@KoruGo]

Playing cities skylines i need my 32gb of RAM to load my 3,000+ assets and mods- was even considering 64gb for some time (rn with only the game open, i get 99% ram usage on the loading screen, and 80% usage once the game is running)

[@mrljgibson]

With the right board 32GB is only 4x8GB memory cards, which is an easy enough upgrade from 2x8GB.

[@alexanderlee5180]

I upgraded to 32gb so I wouldn't have to worry about having a ton of programs open in the background, like chrome with a ton of tabs as I look up stuff for games and discord, along with other things as well. I noticed that my VR experience with an oculus quest 2 also benefited from an increase a little as well. My brother bought a pre-built PC awhile back that only had 8gb, and his computer was really suffering in games and with loading other apps if he had even just a couple programs open in the background, esp chrome and discord. So I bought him a 16gb kit, and his performance issues have since vanished. I think 16gb is really the minimum, esp if you use a Dual monitor set up with discord/chrome open in the background while gaming. You can get away with 8gb sure, but in my brother and I's experience, 8gb just doesn't cut it all the time and you can run into problems with to much stuff open. Just my personal experience and 2 cents

[@pauldanste]

I agree that VR is one of the places where going from 16GB to 32GB has made a difference for me. Even little stutters are a much bigger deal to me in VR since they can be really jarring. When I had 16 I had to make sure that I closed absolutely everything on my PC including background apps and processes in order to have a smooth VR experience. With 32 I don't have to worry as much. I have a Ryzen 9 3900X and 2070 Super for reference.

[@startedtech]

If it's a prebuilt with 8GB it was probably single channel, which can kneecap performance even more than not having enough RAM. So it was a double whammy.

[@octaviolopez9966]

that is why i still use IE, lol

[@viken3368]

So true, I once crashed due to memory in VRchat and thats when I decided 16 to 32gb would be a good investment

[@alexanderlee5180]

@@pauldanste Yeah, it was VR that prompted me to make the upgrade. I like to use discord while in VR to chat with my buds, and the hitching got really annoying. After upgrading to 32gb, that problem basically went away. Money well spent imo

[@hoffyc.h393]

I have 16gb ram and is a pure gamer at 2k ultra settings, And have so little as possible in the background during Gaming, And for some games i see total Ram usage between 13-15.5gb, So i might when I have more money just buy 2x16gb kit. Cuz nearly all my Ram is in use. And btw if i'm a pure Gamer and don't do much in background while Gaming and my ram usage can be up to 15.5gb in 2022-2023 we should just talk about 16gb and 32gb, the new minimum in todays mid range+ Gaming PCs is 16gb.

[@gutar5675]

I'm considering whether I should upgrade to 32 gigs because I don't like how I'm using 65% of my 16gb memory just browsing the internet. I haven't noticed it slowing me down yet, but I don't want to need to worry about whether I should close down tabs before I turn a game on. It was happening a lot on my old system with ddr3 to the point of crashing and I thought the upgrade to 3600mhz was going to fix that issue. It pretty much has, but those numbers still scare me. What is another 50 bucks for peace of mind?

[@nanolog522]

8 GB isn’t even enough for me on my laptop, and I don’t use that for gaming. 16 is fine, but when I upgraded to 32 in my PC, I noticed that I don’t fill that up. 24 would be the sweet spot for me.

[@jereg]

modern windows consumes too much ram on its own

[@aserta]

Yeah, but that's because your OS is shitly optimized and can't help but cough blood under all that bloatware + spyware. Optimize your shit, return to Windows95 aesthetics and you'll have more ram to ram up your processes than you can install. If your CPU doesn't sit at 0 ~ 4 % with several Chrome tabs open, a movie, media player and several other things open, don't even speak to my son, Eightgig. No, but seriously, optimize your OS. It's garbage. Doesn't matter who makes it. It's still garbage.

[@B20C0]

Yes, but because of Dual Channel you'd have to go for 2x 8gb and 2x 4 gb and I hate using mixed modules :-/

[@Verpal]

For a laptop 2GB of Ram is permanently reserved by iGPU, at least most modern iGPU does that, so the 8GB in laptop is actually substantially smaller than 8GB in desktop that use dGPU.

[@fransmurdani83]

8gb laptop is actually 6gb ram + 2gb hardware reserve All laptop have iGPU even if they have dGPU You can easy set how much hardware reserve for your system

[@theimmoralcookie6344]

You need to do updated videos of components like theses like GPU, CPU, power supply, etc individually. I've needed this RAM video.

[@ryans1632]

Tribes. I cried tears of nostalgia.

[@damaylaphoenix1155]

linus , does intel have a infinity fabric . i using a intel 11700k on a z590 motherboard , whats the best memory speed? i was thinking on using 4000 hz memory!

[@PowerPointWarrior]

I wonder when we are going to get to the point where we use more vram than ddr! I personally think that if you have at least 16GB of ram, you will be good to go for another few years. Also cool to know that ddr5 has no performance loss when used in single channel! Finally prebuilts cannot cheap out!

[@weekdays133]

Dell=ddr5-1600

[@jeffisa5035]

@@weekdays133 dell unironically has ddr5 in their pre builts running at 3600mhz💀

[@bradforever10]

When I got a custom PC, I started out with 16GB, but I quickly had to upgrade it to 32GB. Granted, this was likely because of my 100+ chrome tabs, but it does show that there is certainly a call for it if you know you're going to be 'wasting' a lot of your memory on background tasks while playing games

[@killval849]

@@bradforever10 Yo u ever heard of Onetab? It'll change your life if you haven't hah.

[@infin1ty850]

For sure. If it wasn't for the fact that I was building a new rig, I would have stayed with 16GB, but decided to spring for a 32GB setup since I was buying anyway, so somewhat future proofed it.

[@MrKempix]

I found a massive upturn in performance on a game like Anno 1800 going from 16gb to 32gb the late game processes as the save file gets bigger eats ram like crazy. I think it really depends on what each game entails. I was surprised anno wasn't on here since Linus is a big fan!

[@vancedyoutube5953]

I think not including more ram hungry titles makes this video misleading at best. Anno, MS Flight Sim, CIV, Cities Skylines are all popular (albeit not triple a) titles but would be a much more interesting test auite

[@XDSDDLord]

Honestly, I'm not, because Linus' rigs are so balls to the wall that even when they are four years old they are above average by modern standards. I double he ever has to pay attention to his RAM, I think his current rigs run either 64GB or 128GB.

[@berndkemmereit8252]

yea same here, I build my PC in 2020 with Anno 1800 in Mind, I got right away 32GB. I checked with MSI Afterburner and it used 26GB of Ram, and I didn't had Crwon Falls "efficiently" populated and the new DLC's where not out like High Rise...etc....so yes 32GB when playing Anno 1800 is a must. If you have other programs open I would say 64GB, as the 32GB will be fully utilised very quickly.

[@TheArseen]

Does going quad channel help or is it basically same as dual?

[@CheesyPotat0]

I've been at the limit of 8GB gaming at 4K and 8K and even at 1080p. I know 16GB isn't enough to check tons of Facebook notification tabs on Chrome. I always run out of memory doing that. I'm bumping up to 32GB on the next build.

[@macr3xlp441]

I think that ltt should've included 32 gigs, because I'd be interested in seeing if there are noticeable differences in gaming between 16 an 32 gigs

[@Micromation]

It is if you multitask. If you just run game, overwhelming majority of games do not exceed 4gb, often less than that but you need to have headroom for the system and other apps running in the background (web browser is massive resource hog, especially with multiple tabs open it can grow to gargantuan size - I've peaked at 58 out of 64GB the other day and was loading Escape from Tarkov raid significantly slower than my friend that I usually had to wait on ...) otherwise your game will take lower priority and you will be shuffling page file around which will directly affect your loading times. Other than that if you run nothing but game you should be fine in 99% instances but personally I wouldn't be able to live with such low amounts like 8 or 16gb - I don't have multiple monitors to keep them empty while I play the game...

[@sam0jagaming424]

You have bunch of videos on yt... no big difference.

[@KryssN1]

Yes, dual rank memory (depending on CPU and depending on game) can be up to 10% faster. So 4x8gb or 2x16gb can be faster than 2x8gb in some scenarios.

[@susnojutsu2525]

Just as going from 2x4gb to 2x8gb didn't give a significant difference, 2x16 wont either. 2x8gb is the sweet spot you need, gaming usually won't take lots of ram and you can be in discord and have youtube open all at the same time with it. I can do that even with 1x8gb but at times it's a struggle.

[@KryssN1]

@@susnojutsu2525 You are wrong, go read about RAM ranks and Hardware Unboxed as well as GamerNexus has benchmarks which shows what I am saying holds true. Dual Rank ( some 2x16gb kit and 4x8gb) can be 10% faster in some games over Single Rank kit like 2x8gb It's not about RAM capacity, it's about RAM topology (layout of the chips). The sweet spot doesn't matter, I am just stating a fact. Sure sweet spot is 2x8gb 3600cl18, but in some areas RAM is dirt cheap at the moment. So why don't go for 32gb for 80$ more.

[@thatsgottahurt]

Awesome video, all are decent, but some are better than others - like this one. Loved the dinner date intro, and the Tribes2 disc. LOL

[@tivatavi]

OHHHH! That Tribe 2 jewel case bring back so much memory.

[@bjarne431]

Good test, finally a ram test that does the right thing and pins dual channel 16gb vs dual channel 8gb and not just single channel 8gb vs dual channel 16gb - which doesn’t help much

[@ChrisSmithSmooth]

I run 32GB because even though 16 would usually be enough, the issues you get from not enough RAM are just so damn annoying that I never want to encounter them again 😄.

[@bradforever10]

Same, although I only really have myself to blame for needing to upgrade to 32, given that I pretty much permanently have over 100 chrome tabs open in the background

[@kevinwells9751]

Given that RAM is relatively inexpensive these days I also upgraded to 32GB of fairly fast RAM just to be safe, and I don't think I'll have to upgrade that for a good long while. The only reason I'll eventually have to upgrade is when DDR5 is ubiquitous and starts to be necessary to play games.

[@abadenoughdude300]

@@bradforever10 I can't fathom buying more ram to be the preferred option over switching to a lighter browser for free but I guess I'm just boomer like that. 😄

[@bradforever10]

@@abadenoughdude300 I think I'm just really used to Chrome at this point, and don't want to switch to something else. Plus, I was already thinking about buying more RAM anyway, so when I saw I was using it all, I kind of just figured I may as well go for it