RAM or Random-access memory is responsible for storing temporary data for quick use by your CPU and operating system. Having enough RAM means your entire PC and gaming experience runs smoothly without stuttering or freezing.
Most gamers would be more than happy with the performance of 16GB of RAM. However, there are some specific gaming usage scenarios where more than 16GB of RAM is required for a stable experience. There are no exact one-size-fits-all answers as to how much RAM you need.
This article compares the different RAM options by price/performance so that you can ultimately make the right choice when building or upgrading your PC system.
How do you know if your current RAM is maxed out?
It’s incredibly easy to discover that you have a RAM-related bottleneck. Here are the steps to do this:
- Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and then click “task management“
- Click on the Performance Top tab
- Click on the section called “Memory“
- If you see your RAM usage is above 80%it’s a clear indicator that you’re almost getting the most out of it.
Keep in mind that even if a game only uses less than 80% of your RAMyou should consider another 4-5 gigabytes of RAM used by your background processes or applications such as browser tabs Discord and other apps you may be running in parallel to gaming.
A good rule is to always leave a few GB of free RAM if a buffer to increase the stability and smoothness of the in-game FPS.
Is 16 GB enough for gaming?
to have 16GB of RAM is the Golden standard for current PC gaming builds. Since RAM has become much more affordable in recent years, it makes little sense to use anything less than 16GB for modern games. Even if your other PC parts are fine, anything under 16GB will get you a lot of micro-freezes and in-game stuttering.
To put things in perspective Modern titles like Cyberpunk and the latest Call of Duty versions all have 8GB of RAM as a minimum requirement and 16GB of RAM as recommended.
If you plan on playing low-to-moderate-intensity games like League of Legends or Minecraft, anything above 8GB of RAM won’t give you an in-game performance boost. So while you can get away with just 8GB of RAM, you’ll find that many of the more demanding modern games will freeze and stutter if they hit the 8GB RAM limit at most.
If your PC has 16GB of RAM, rest assured that any modern game title will run smoothly and you won’t experience significant drops in FPS due to lack of RAM.
Benefits of 16 GB RAM for gaming
- Offers the best price/performance when building/upgrading a gaming PC
- Covers the recommended RAM according to all current game requirements
- Let you run any game smoothly
- No need to worry about freezing when switching between your game and other applications
Who would 16 . need to buyNL from RAM?
The person best suited for 16 GB of RAM is the budget oriented person who likes to spread out their PC build or upgrade budget as efficient as possible by not overspending in a single hardware category. You get the most FPS for the price spent by going ahead? 16GB RAM.
While no current game will exceed 16GB of RAM by the year 2022, this could change rapidly in the coming years as GPUs and game engines become more sophisticated and demanding.
16GB RAM vs 32GB RAM
As for budget and mid-range gaming solutions, it will be difficult to justify the price increase from 16 GB to 32 GB of RAM. This is because almost all current games are optimized to run smoothly by using less than 16 GB of RAM. Very few AAA titles in between sometimes come close to 16GB of RAM usage, especially with resolutions higher than 1080p.
The in-game FPS gains you get from upgrading from 16 GB to 32 GB of RAM would be quite disappointing. Almost all benchmarks comparing 16GB vs 32GB RAM often show only a few FPS increases for using 32GB. So for the average gamer, the only noticeable performance difference is the speed and responsiveness when switching between applications and multitasking during gameplay.
In some rare cases, the in-game 1% and 0.1% lowest framerate times would also go up, increasing the overall smoothness of your gameplay. This is especially noticeable if you are using monitors with a high refresh rate. Successfully increasing the 1% lowest framerates during gameplay would mean that the game looks much more dynamic and smooth. Gamers often get fixated on the average FPS, which is extremely important.
Benefits of 32 GB RAM for gaming
- Can boost your FPS lows of 0.1% and 1% in certain situations
- Eliminate in-game micro stuttering due to RAM
- Make sure you have enough RAM to play all AAA titles for years to come
- Gives you a large buffer so you can multitask without worry while gaming
- Can give you a slight competitive advantage when gaming at high refresh rates
Which user should get 32 GB of RAM?
to have 32GB RAM would fit best in your gaming build if you already have the best GPU, CPU and other hardware parts. In that case, you can rest assured that no matter what kind of game you do, you will never have to deal with the drawbacks of not having enough RAM. Overall, 32GB of RAM is a great way to future-proof your system for years to come.
With 32GB of RAM, you’re also in an excellent place to use other RAM-intensive tasks, such as: video processing for example.
Finally, if you have a pennantyou will find that 32 GB RAM is the ideal way to go as it allows you to stream any gameplay with better performance compared to a streamer with only 16 GB RAM.
32 GB vs 64 GB RAM for gaming
While 64GB of RAM may be impressive to your friends in addition to your PC specs, your gameplay FPS will see no tangible difference among 32GB and 64GB from RAM. As many benchmarks have promptly shown in the year 2022, with 64GB of RAM just for gaming, no matter what resolution, settings or game it would bring declining performance efficiency.
At this point, your budget is better allocated to upgrading your GPU, CPU, or other components (if you’re strictly looking for better gaming performance).
Who should get 64 GB of RAM?
If you’re a music produceruse heavy 3D modeling software, game development engines and even run physics or AI simulations, then 64GB of RAM may be a necessity. RAM-intensive tasks such as: display 4k or 8k video will soon eat up almost all that 64GB of RAM.
In short, any PC enthusiast or professional looking to run RAM-heavy specialized software should definitely look at 64GB RAM
Can we mix two RAM sticks?
The way RAM works allows you to mix different brands, RAM speeds and sizes of the RAM sticks. Your system will still boot as usual.
This does not mean that it is recommended to do so for various reasons. When using mismatched RAM of different sizes, the memory is automatically forced to operate in SDR or lower performing single data rate mode.
Mismatched RAM also works in single channel mode, which is significantly slower in terms of bandwidth capacity and memory timing, compared to the recommended configuration to have ram in dual channel mode.
If you use the same gigabyte capacity for your RAM sticks, but suppose they have different speeds, then your system will always limit the RAM speed to the slowest installed. This means that if you have one 3200 MHz stick and another 1600 MHz stick of RAM, your system will both run at only 1600 MHz.
So, as a rule of thumb, always try to get the same size and speed (and preferably brand) when you put RAM in your system.
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