Any other TH-camr with 500k subscribers would have a i9 & a 4090, so it’s get to see the humble gamer who is content with their setup, not everyone needs 4k ultra settings to game. Great video, Iooks like I’m keeping my 16gb of RAM 👌
A 8 vs 16 gig comparison could also be interesting - budget or mid-range prebuilts from jsut a few years ago still often had only 8, and they're not uncommon on the used market that could probably benefit a lot from from an update to 16.
Definitely will improve performance with 16. Depending on what you use it for 16 might start to be short. Personally I upgraded to 32 for music production, especially for virtual libraries which can eat away your RAM easily
@@888DS of the Office pc is doing only simple task and little multitasking, 8gb are fine, but anything involving multiple web Pages and any kind of graphic/video software not...
Another great video. I upgraded and maxed out my motherboard to 32GBs a few months back on a really really good Amazon deal. Definitely makes everything snappier and more responsive even with video/photography workloads and gaming and really anything I need my machine to do. Have it paired with an i5-8400 and a GTX 1080ti FE from MSI.
I’ve been happily using 2x 16GB (32GB) in all my rigs since 2017 and love having the additional memory when I’m running multiple tasks, tabs and browsers for a snappy response on my pc. In addition when gaming, and having TH-cam, music etc going at the same time I find the higher ram count to be beneficial.
If you have a low VRAM GPU, more RAM should definitely help as the game will use RAM instead when VRAM is full. My 1060 3GB gets to 16gb of RAM with medium textures and if I increase textures to high it crashes without 32 GB of RAM.
This depends on how the game is made, but having to rely on system memory to replace vram will kill performance, so you have to make sure that doesn't happen at all.
@@jmtradbr yeah it drops but at least you can play the game and while I admit it's shouldn't happen, it's better than just not being able to play the game at all
@@SuperLaziboi and nowdays texture scaling is so shit like, disparity between low to ultra is so bad. Ultra looks gorgeous and then you turn to high it looks shit but acceptable but then you go to medium and that's where you see the real goo like shit in the name of textures while still using more than 4gb vram. Why ??? Even if cards nowadays come with 8gb vram that doesn't mean 4 and 6gb cards magically disappeared. Its the companies shoving down those cards with bare minimum vram on us customers without taking any responsibility
More system RAM is NOT a solution for a lack of VRAM. You get bad performance whenever the game needs something that isn't in VRAM, because it has to hit system RAM to retrieve it. The memory chips themselves are placed very far away from the GPU chip. It's physics. And the data has to pass through multiple gates, controllers, to get to the GPU. It's not optimal in the least.
Ryzen 5000 specifically gains a decent chunk of performance with dual rank memory. Not sure if that's worth it for budget builds though, since you might as well use the extra money to upgrade your processor directly, (I.e. 5500 -> 5600 or 5600 -> 5700) or getting a stronger gpu. You can always expand memory later, so I'd just go with 16 gigs and don't worry about it.
depends on what you play. if your playing a simulation game like anno 1800 total war warhammer 3 stellaris etc... you will see tremendous performance gains in 32gbs of ram as 16 gb is just not enough for long playthroughs in those games unless you have nothing going on in the background. also if you use mods on your games the higher the ram the better.
I'm curious about something: since you seem to sometimes test/utilize components better than the ones mentioned in this video, how come you don't daily drive them? Great video as always!
Not sure really haha. I don’t really game all that much outside of benchmarking and when I do, the 3050 can more than handle the games I play. E.g fallout new vegas and gta 4 😂
I really like rhis channel for presentation and focus on what the average person will actually notice. Too many channels focused on the 2% difference between the latest $700 CPUs . Same with upgrades. I can really relate to the disappointment someone who had chose between a new game and swapping their 16gig setup for 32 and getting no benefit.
Why would one upgrade their RAM on a whim if they weren't encountering errors? If they can google the nearest store to find another 16GB pack, they could google whether or not the title(s) they're playing would benefit from said RAM upgrade.
So this pretty much confirms to us that 16GB ram is the official entry point for 9th gen gaming. P.S: your cyberpunk gt1660 raytracing video just got a shoutout in the latest digital foundry direct weekly video podcast.🎉
PS5 has 16 GB RAM, and games are written for consoles. However, with some background processes in Win 10,11 bloatware, sometimes you could need more than 16 if only to avoid micro-stutters.
would love to see the same test but with an APU as it uses RAM as VRAM. with the way games use VRAM nowadays pretty sure that is gonna be a very interesting test.
It helps. I have tested that with my 5600g when I've bought for my little brother a 32GB kit. And it really helps in some games, games that uses a lot of RAM and VRAM.
It helps but from my understanding there is a limit on how much vram you can set from the bios , so depending on the game that extra ram amount may not help much
@@lynackhilou4865 that's memory dedictaed for the iGPU, not memory the iGPU can access it. all of your dram is a unified buffer the iGPU _can_ access, all you do when you set portions of it aside is tell the machine that that particular chunk is for _only_ the iGPU. not vice versa
I ran Ryzen 3 1200 and 8GB for 6 years til I changed to my current Ryzen 5 5500 and 16GB more 2 weeks ago. And I can say it made my PC far more convenient in my case. CPU side of course, since it's like 5x times more powerful ( UE5 doesn't struggle to load anything for my current needs and gaming is flawless on the CPU ) but RAM was actually the best thing I think. Reactivity and responsiveness is outrageously faster than before even though I use the same SSD. 24GB pool also get to help my GTX 1060 on some really heavy games where 6GB tends to struggle a bit.
i was going to go for 16GB for my new build, but a friend offered me 32GB 3600 for £18, and i simply couldn't pass on that. needless to say, i did not regret it, especially with the copious amounts of multitasking im able to do with that much memory. my APU also largely benefits as im running dual sticks
I find your humble honesty to have a wholesome quality not seen much anymore. Being surrounded by braggarts in my daily life, your videos are a relaxing breath of fresh air. You're kinda like the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood", but with pc gaming.
Thanks so much for sharing! I'm working up a build now for the first time in over 10 years and so much has changed. Your build appears to be very similar to what I'm hoping to end up with, so the comparisons between 16 and 32GB used here is very relevant to my needs. Thanks so much!
Just saw your comment about what games you mainly play. I think it would be a great idea to put together the cheapest pc that will run older titles with a few mods and see how it handles/how cheap you can build it for. So many people test with e sports titles when it comes to "super-budget" rigs and I think it would be helpful and appreciated to/by the folks who might just want to get back into that game (catalogue) they never finished in 2008. TLDR: Budget Fallout/2000s era games rig video? Much love from Nova Scotia!
@@RandomGaminginHD holy fast response! I also 100% understand the benchmarking more than gaming, it becomes addictive really fast. Probably why I hardly get into newer games as I'd have to bench them in every possible configuration purely out of curiosity first. Its a curse lol
It’s kinda been done to death tho, like budget gaming pc’s seem to be 50% of computer content. Not to mention all the old benchmarks from years ago are also budget builds now on top of that
Worth noting that your error bars should increase as you go to 1% and 0.1% lows because you'll have fewer data points to draw from. So whereas you might, for example, say that +/-2 FPS is within margin of error for average FPS, the margin of error might be 5 and 10 FPS respectively for the 1% and 0.1% lows depending on how long the test was or how many samples you took. Note these numbers were just for illustrative purposes and aren't hard and fast.
This. 0.1% lows mean you only have a sample size of 1 in thousand. Let's say you take an hours worth of game footage, then 0.1% are the worst 3.6 seconds of fps. Imagine that even the slightest difference in what's happening can make a giant difference in those frames. Since the RAM isn't close to the limit of 16gb in most of those cases and still has the same bandwidth etc, I doubt it makes a noticeable difference.
@@Jakiyyyyy Standard average fps reports the average of all performance - all frames generated (100%). 1% lows would be the average fps when the game runs really bad - lowest 1% performance - we exclude the upper 99%, take only the 1% worst case scenarios and take the average of those. 0.1% would then take only the lower one tenth of the 1% - so even worse worst cases :D These numbers are important because they tell you how your system behaves under worst scenarios - does it produce stutters or are 1% (and 0.1%) lows closer to the overall average.
Intelligent Stanbdy List Cleaner (ISLC, from the maker of DDU) is a nice small software for cleaning up standby list automatically. Windows fills this up by itself with time and in some games it causes stutter. It can be left safely in the background and it will clean the list automatically thus reducing stutter.
G'day Random, Nice comparison, so many people in comments saying "YOU NEED 32GB for gaming" I like these videos that show what actual gains you will get & while with 32GB there is some improvement gaming but it is not performance destroying, 16GB can still be fine especially depending on the games you like & settings you play at. Plus the good thing about PCs being evolving & not locked like a Console is rather than cutting cost elswhere like CPU or GPU if you start with 16GB unless you went with a 2DIMM Motherboard there is always the option of finding another 8GB RAM to match your original set later on when you can afford it after saving some more.
As someone who plays Star Citizen I can tell you that 32gb is a HUGE difference over 16gb. Almost night and day difference. I have 4x 8gb sticks @ 2666Mhz... reason I have 2666Mhz is because it's the fastest stock DDR4 speed without XMP since overclocking is something I'm not comfortable with.
Nice video, however. If you have a PC that has 4 RAM slots, you will see a much bigger difference if you use 4 x 8GB Cards instead of 2 x 16GB cards as the CPU can then use multichannel to increase the bus throughput (On my sons i5 single channel got a Passmark score of 2200, multichannel went up to 3500). If using an Nvidia card, to see the biggest improvement, change the settings in the Nvidia control panel from quality to performance.
the test may be unfair because the 32gb kit could be dual rank models that may be why spiderman and cyberpunk took a hit with 16gb despite the game using only 8gb ,so the best to way to test the difference is virtual machine with the same kit
i dont know if u 16 gb per dimm kit is single or dual rank Added 2 sticks of 8gb for a total of 4 sticks 32 gb (so each channel got 2 ranks available) and stuttering issues got alleviated. i play e sport titles that never use more than a few gb of ram performance improvement come from the extra ranks in my case.
There is one (And only *one*) game where it will use as much RAM as you have available while otherwise being pretty modest in terms of other requirements and that is heavily modded Cities: Skylines. Mind you, the base game barely has any usage, but if you add all of the expansions and several popular mods it's easy to eat up 32 or even 64gb of ram as the game is pretty inefficient in loading the custom assets to memory. So that might be the *one* case where a budget gaming PC might actually benefit from more than 16gb of ram but it's a weird enough case that it isn't worth re-testing tbh.
Not sure if your 32GB kit was dual rank but there's a significant difference between single and dual rank. 4x8GB will always be dual rank but you can find 2x16GB dual rank kits as well.
You're right, my guess is that it wouldn't really make much of a difference in this case but indeed there's a performance uplift if the 2x16 are dual rank
@@yyeezyy630 I guess in laymans terms with single rank setups the CPU has to wait that previous task has been completed in a certain memory bank before it can be accessed again which creates latency. In dual rank setups the CPU doesn't have to wait as it can do it's thing using another memory bank.
The reason you should upgrade your memory is to give your OS "breathing room" to do more outside of the game. Most games by themselves will not benefit from a 16to32 memory upgrade (at this time)... better APU/iGPU performance maybe?
The thing I like about your content is that it gives me a reality check on what is actually usable. There's a lot of channels out there that (for obvious reasons) focus on the latest most powerful CPU and the stonkiest GPU, usually the RTX4090. All I want to do is use my machine for productivity and gaming, do I really need to spend $5,000 to do it? Obviously not. I would really appreciate you continuing this theme of realistic builds for 'normal' people. Here's a question. Just how much does RAM speed actually affect overall gaming performance. for example DDR4 3200 Vs DDR4 4200 or DDR4 vs DDR5. Not in synthetic benchmarks but actual gaming or productivity. Even in today's market is it worth the upsell?
Thanks so much! 🙏 I have a 12400f RTX 3060 PC I built not too long ago with 16 GB of ddr4 c16 ram, I was really wondering whether I should go for 32 gigs since I like watching TH-cam while gaming. Your comparisons help thousands of people everyday and the size of your channel is truly inspiring, my channel is still small and I've been making videos for nearly 4 years. I hope my channel becomes big like yours one day... All the best and I hope this comment warms your heart if you do happen to read this ❤
You should be able to tighten up the timings, and clock it to 3600. You'll see a good performance boost. Also good that you are only using 1 DIMM per channel, as it's easier on the memory controller. If you want to drop the model number of the new RAM, I can set you up with a good stable starting profile for the timings. Have a great day, Sir! o7
some of the LPX sticks don't play nice with tight and fast OC unless you put the juice to em. with the added voltage they get hot as hell. not sure if its a defect in some sticks or if its just a binning issue.
I was really thinking about upgrading from 16 to 32gb on my R5 5600/3060Ti setup. This video came in at the perfect time. I still think that i'm gonna upgrade even if there isn't any measurable performance gain because i often play games with discord and 1/2 tabs of Chrome in the background besides all the windows things running. It should also help a little down the line when inevitably the 8gb of VRAM on the 3060Ti will truly become an annoyance.
I'm in the same boat, tho only a 2070 and an i5 not a Ryzen. It's not that I'm expecting double FPS(Or even really any notable improvement) in games but, I often multibox clients of WoW while having Steam, Discord, Chrome with a shitload of tabs etc etc. And I have noticed my system hitching a bit sometimes when it begins hovering around 90% RAM usage.
More RAM isn't about getting more FPS. Your computer will be more responsive when you got a lot of programs running in the background because more data can be kept in RAM instead of being swapped to a relatively slow SSD or HDD. DDR4 is so cheap at the moment, 32gb for everyone.
Only by 4k you gone need more systeem memory. A lot of other games under 4k you really only need between 8/12Gb. Only if you do more like video and browser and more. Than you need more. For the rest well all my systeem are fine with just 16Gb. Wel my laptop have 32Gb its not use it.
@@dyslectische not true, it depends on what you have running in the background. Was just a headache closing all the background apps I had running and this will be more an issue with newer games like hogwarts legacy.
its more a matter of being able to go into any game that you want, without having to close any tabs, background tabs, or anything at all in the background ever, as well as smoother and snappier os experience in general. in game with nothing left in the background there will be little difference.
This video is right on time . Was considering buying 32GB of RAM today since memory is so cheap now, but I've had no problems with the 16GB I've been using in the games I play. I'll probably just keep using that for the time being based on these results, thanks!
@@vinyfiny Yeah, if all you do is game then It's not worth it. I game and work on my PC and 32gb was a nice upgrade, a nice upgrade that I couldn't pass up at 5.99$ for 32gb.
@@daniil3815 I have a 3080 10GB which hasn't seen any issues in any games YET. Plus my backlog of games is going to take me years anyway so by the time games start needing more than 10GB VRAM I won't get to those games before I upgrade my GPU again😂.
In hogwarts legacy you should've set the preset to high or ultra , since pumping up those settings increase ram usage significantly, at medium there won't be much of a difference
@@16xthedetail76 yeah not at 4k but at it can run it at 1080p high or maybe ultra with dlss quality and that consumes way more vram even without increasing resolution
Did you already establish a RAM upgrade in the form of *MORE* ram makes hardly any difference in modern gaming PC's regardless of "entry level"? Unless you're going from 4GB to 16GB, there is no difference in gaming performance. Now, VRAM will make a difference. Not DRAM, not in gaming applications, and not running 1 game looking for a performance boost. Running 3 multiplayer games and streaming, and watching TH-cam at the same time...yes. So what have we learned? It's purely situational. When did we learn that more RAM is situational? In the early 90's.
I personally think for the gamer who uses discord, streams to twitch or wherever and has all sorts of game related apps running on PC, the days of 16gb being enough, is almost over. For the casual gamer, who like to knock out a few hours of COD on the weekend, it wouldn't make much of a difference to them. If you're going to just game it here and there, with no other apps open or working, 16gb is fine. Also as far as editing videos and basic work on your PC, more ram, at least in my case, made things smoother and things were snappier. I made the move from 16gb to 32gb late last year, and in general I could tell a difference. I make, edit and render multiple videos a day, and it has helped out a lot. But overall, if hardcore gamer, with tons of apps running in the back ground, streaming and all the other things, I think 32 will become the new standard shortly. Love you videos, keep em coming!
OMG I can't believe this video, I just upgraded from 16 to 32 with the very same Corsair modules not a week ago, only by having 4x8 instead of 2x8GB. Though I have a 3060Ti. And the changes really weren't apparent, but I benchmarked FH5, CP2077 and WarThunder and the biggest win was in 1% figures as I also expected. Sadly it cannot run in Quad channel mode, since the B-450F doesn't support it.
I think extra RAM can come handy if you are VRAM limited. So maybe test with a card with 4GB VRAM and 32GB RAM. In those cases maybe extra RAM can be utilized by the game due to lack of VRAM.
It doesn't work like that. Only for APUs (where VRAM and system RAM is the same thing). If the VRAM isn't enough, it will spill into the RAM, and if the RAM isn't enough, it will spill into the page file (on disk, which is something you REALLY don't want). VRAM is always faster. It's also closer to the GPU chip, physically, while the system RAM is so, so much further away, and the data needs to travel through a lot of gates to reach the GPU. System RAM is an order of magnitude slower than VRAM. Especially when it comes to reading/writing parts of memory.
I had 16GB which is recommended for Borderlands 3. Afterburner reported I was using less than 11GB. After I got more ram, suddenly ram use went up to 14GB with the same use and 90% of the frame time spikes went away in BL3. Windows compression must be very aggressive.
@@RandomGaminginHD would be nice tho haha, since every pc build ive seen from others are always pushing for the highest of frames instead of just using components that are on the budgent end of things. thanks for the video, i was thinking of upgrading to 32gb of ram but there seems to be no benefit just yet well at least in gaming
3:21 somewhere around that moment I got a nostalgia for the times when specs for games had "1024MB RAM, 256MB or more VRAM" in the recommended specs...
Great video as always I don’t see many doing videos about performance per watt in the uk that would make a cool video I think making the best power efficient set up
it's also important to keep in mind, while in most games (except games like flight sim) it will run great, if you're the type of guy to have 20 chrome tabs open while you're watching a stream in discord and listening to music 32gb will be a game changer for you. it really gets rid of the sluggish, choppiness while just using windows if you're regularly hitting 14gb+ usage. when you have more ram windows doesn't have to compress things as much. but honestly yeah, 16gb is still pretty good entry level. although 16GB today is hitting the ceiling where 8GB was back in 2016. if your computer is being sluggish while multi tasking, it is definitely worth the look into more ram. was a game changer for me. but then again, I am the type of guy to have 20 different things open while playing the latest battlefield.
I upgraded my RAM a couple of months ago from 1x16GB stick to 4x8GB DDDR4 3200MHz sticks ngl the difference was huuuge not just in gaming but in basic tasks as well. Gonna upgrade the CPU in near future from a 3500X to a Ryzen 5700X and liquid cooling.
Exactly the content I needed to see and hear. Other reviewers test their 16 vs 32 gigs on very high end builds which don't reflect what most people have. I'm building a budget PC using Ryzen 5500 and RX6600 so I needed to know if 16 vs 32gb of RAM is even relevant to me, considering that the main bottleneck should be my GPU instead. Here in Malaysia the price difference between 16 and 32 is rather huge (almost twice the price of 16 for the 32gb RAM) so your video does allay my fears on going with 16GB of RAM.
Last year I upgraded my 8 year old PC to extend it's life. Primary reason was I wanted to run Flight Simulator and the PC was not quite up to minimum spec. First I upgraded the power supply just for safety. Then I upgraded my 8G DDR3 RAM to 32G. BEST MOVE EVER. Then I upgraded my RTX740 to a 3050. This is a PCI-E V4 card but was backwards compatible with the PCIE-3 motherboard. Finally, as a general upgrade, I moved to a SSD boot drive. Very happy with the results and I can run MSFS on ULTRA setting without a problem. When it comes time for the major upgrade the video card, SSD and power supply will all go into the new system. Without a doubt the RAM up[grade was the biggest overall performance boost to the system.
Maybe I'm a little bit out of place here, but I recently maxed out my 10 year old PC with cheap modules (went from 16 to 32 DDR3). My CPU (i5 4690) being as old as it is and with only 4 threads, is constantly being blasted at 100% with any relatively modern game, which often causes stutter. Despite the CPU limitation and to my surprise, my gaming experience improved and a lot of the stutter went away after the upgrade.
There are some games which benefit massively with 32GB vs 16GB RAM: - Anno 1800 (in later stages of the game) - Escape From Tarkov - modded Cities Skylines - DCS World in multiplayer - Rust - Star Citizen (people say that going from 32 to 64GB of RAM also makes a difference in this game) - 7 Days to Die (on a server with a lot of people) - Space Engineers if you have a lot of big stuff builded in your world
My man actually touches grass and talks about gaming at the same time!! He's the next level of human evolution!! Salute to you, man!! Not kidding!! Just SALUTE!!
I'd love to see a follow up video that pits 8GB of RAM against 16GB of RAM. I have my personal take on the current "memory issues" in PC gaming. For the main system memory, 8GB of DDR4/DDR5 RAM is on the way out and entry level builds should be planned with 16GBs of system memory from the outset. For discrete graphics card memory, 8GB of VRAM is also at the end of the line for anything above 1080p, 45fps, medium settings graphics and builds targeting 60fps/1080p without immediately having to fall back to DLSS/FSR will need to have at least 12GB VRAM. Personally, I have 32GB in my build I put together after this past Black Friday, but I mainly bought 32GB for future proofing so that I don't have to go RAM hunting in about four years from now when 16GB starts to become obsolete.
the good thing with excessive amount of ram is you can make a ramdisk out of it, i got 512gb of ram on my dell t7610 using a software called "ultra ramdisk" i make 128 gb for doing FEA simulation, i saved the project on ramdisk and use an enterpise ssd as a cache storage, i can say it's a noticeable differece, doing topology optimization before with a sata ssd it took around 45 minutes and now it's around 15-20 minutes, and its only cost me around 660$ to build all system
Perhaps a test with something running in the background would make an interesting video? Can you still game with something running in the background? More cores would obviously help, but what about more ram? Do the modern CPUs deal with this scenario better?
32gb ddr4-3200 (2x16) dual channel gained me around 10-15% over 16gb single channel mode on a Ryzen 7 5700. I don't think purely the size of 32gb vs 16gb will gain you much anywhere unless you plan on using some of that extra 16GB as a ramdisk for temporary files.
upgrading from 16 to 32 for Hogwartz did make a difference. The PC uses almost 20gb of RAM when that game runs, so definitely going to be worth it for AAA games in the future like GTA 6.
I love your approach to testing things, extremely thorough and even more thoroughly explained. Using a Ryzen 7 5800X myself, I did notice a change in multi-tasking/general purpose use when going from 16 to 32 to 64gb of RAM. Gaming doesn't seem to make much difference, and I'm glad you pointed out that 16gb is plenty for just gaming.
I would try this with some multitasking involved too. Like lets say a browser in the background/2nd monitor with a few tabs open and maybe a stream/youtube vid playing at the same time.or maybe even some other stuff like discord , spotify , wallpaper engine...
Ive not even watched this yet, but the title alone has grabed me. You keep bashing these vids out, so relevant to me personally, and im sure with the state of afairs in most countries, its the type of money saving or super useful tests consumers appreciate. Now ill watch the video 😄
With Ryzen APU, when using iGPU, I've seen more improvements in many aspects. Higher stability of performance + being able to use higher quality textures in certain games, like RDR2. Anyway, 32GB of RAM is pretty affordable right now. So people that still build on DDR4 platforms, or just want bring a bit more longevity to their DDR4 system, should definitely go on 32GB.
@@ndgoliberty Sure, fast Ram and dualchannel. I ment it more like if you have 16GB RAM and have 4GB set for the APU to use an VRAM and that the OS uses about 3-4GB, there are basically ~8GB of the total memory left for the game/application. In that case I bet, there will be a good difference between a 16 and 32GB system.
I've stumbled on two or three TH-camrs stating the difference will be bigger if the GPU is more powerful. Paraphrasing them, if you have an old rig, but get a powerful GPU, then the RAM difference, between 16 and 32 GB, specially 2400 and 3200hz with low cas, will be noticeable. Any chance to try something like that? We need a trustful source like you to corroborate it!!
I had a similar experience when it came to better 1% and 0.1% lows when upgrading from 8gb to 16gb back a few years. Although my avg FPS on SQUAD increased marginally, it was an overall smoother experience with fewer stutters. I was running on a R3 2200G and RX-460 2gb then mind you, if I had something with more VRAM it might have made a smaller difference.
main reason I switched from 16 to 32 was because I was getting low fps on horizon/borderlands 3. Task manager said I was using up all my memory. Think for gaming most games will be fine on 16, but for livestreaming it might be worth getting that headroom
Put in all four sticks so you'll have 48GB. I did that with 2 kits of Patriot Blackout 3200 MT/s CL16. An 8GB kit (2x4GB) and a 16GB kit (2x8GB) for a total of 24GB. XMP enabled without a hitch and everything operated completely normal.
i was surprised to see the same two sticks just with higher capacity bringing up the 1% lows on the borderline titles . I've always seen 1% lows improve with 4 sticks. i guess devs are using more of the ram we all bought , it makes sense as well as all those background tasks taking up more.
I recently upgraded a HP Envy x360 laptop (Ryzen7 5825U, with integrated Vega graphics) from 8GB to 32GB and it made a huge difference in gaming. While this isn't a gaming beast, it made some games which were previously unplayable to actually playable. The biggest one was X4:Foundations. With the initial 8GB it couldn't be played. Every 4-5 seconds or so the game textures would disappear, and then reload over 1-2 seconds, only for the process to repeat a few seconds later. With 32GB that doesn't happen anymore and it's playable on low settings. That is most likely due to the iGPU on that chip having a low amount of dedicated memory (512MB only) and its using system memory for textures (via GART). 8GB was clearly not enough to share between the CPU and the GPU, whereas 32GB is enough. So in this case, it was a win. And in the present day, 32GB of DDR4-3200 SODIMMs were only $50 so a worthy upgrade in my book.
As long as you don't max out the RAM, more RAM will generally not improve anything. However, more RAM will ensure you won't eat up valuable memory if you want to run programs in the background like discord, browsers, music and so on. A typical gaming rig today would probably benefit from double the RAM of what your games will require, to allow for background programs like I just mentioned.
@@oxfordsparky That is because he exceeds 16GB of RAM when using 32GB. Accounting for Windows and other stuff on top of that, it is evident 16GB in this case is not enough.
@@PhobetorXVII Actually it doesn't. Virtual Memory is using disk space as RAM and a drive/SSD is typically no where near fast enough to compensate for RAM. A typical SSD M.2 drive is around 10% the speed of DDR5 RAM. And in this case the RAM is much faster than the SSD.
In The Last of Us Part 1 the difference is even more noticeable when using High or Ultra presets, I can tell that Ultra with ray tracing it improved a lot when upgrading
Somewhat OT, but an even cheaper (or at least easier) way of getting 32GB is adding another pair of identical 8GB sticks, which I've just done. They're G-skill Samsung B-die (3200 CL14) and they were so cheap I couldn't resist. However, I've never seen more than about 10GB in use even with multiple programs open, video/audio edit/capture, two or three different web browsers with dozens of tabs open etc' (I even made a point of opening every single program I use regularly at once, then opening files in them), and I wonder if I've actually down-graded the machine by making it access four dimms instead of two.
It's not always possible to have 4 sticks because of ventirad or GPU being bigger and bigger. For example I have a big ATX motherboard but I can't use the last RAM slot. So I ended up with 4+4+16
Hmm ... I got 16GB of DDR4 for my new system build in 2017, but one of the two 8GB modules was faulty. But I saw another kit real cheap on eBay, so I bought that, and then got too lazy to send my first one back for warranty replacement. More recently, I was thinking I should get that (lifetime) warranty replacement done, then I can have a 32GB system ... but now I'm feeling lazy again ...
Wow! I didn't actually know your personal rig had an RTX 3050. So much respect for you, other tech TH-camrs wouldn't dare use anything less than a 4090 in their personal rig.
Thanks for the content! Any chance you can test the performance of the AM5 igpus? I'm trying to see how it performs on older titles like Minecraft and also on esports titles.
Thanks, the less stutters are what I hoped for when I upgraded my aging system to 32GB DDR3-1866 from 16GB DDR3-1600. I think the results should be transferable, or I'd even think that even older systems should need enough ram more necessarily in order to keep modern games stutter free.
I've had these sticks since my r7 1700 at release, only worked at 3200 since agesa6 which took a couple of months to wait. Still use them on a 5800x3d, only it's 4 of them (no thanks to modern browsers), amazingly these are still on the same memory chips as all those years ago. Nice RAM.
I went from 8gb ram to 32gb and saw a decent rise in performance. Typically 15-20% better frames and it became much more stable. The drops smoothed right out. Then i replaced my power supply from a 460w to a 650w gold. Thjngs got even more stable and my temperatures dropped because of the more consistant and reliable power draw. Then i replaced the factory thermal paste even though it was only 2 years old because i know every manufacturer cheaps out on thermal paste. Then i saw my fan speeds drop considerably. My gpu and cpu were running the same temp because they were already decently low. But now my rig is half as loud, if even that. I did these upgradez while waiting for GPU prices to come down. And last month i finally scooped up my new rx6750xt. My system is everything ive wanted and more, for a downright reasonable price in my opinion.
Currently running Windows 11 with 16GB DDR4@3200, Windows 11 likes to eat RAM specially if you are a power user and got some programs in the background. Sometimes doing everyday tasks like watching youtube, browsing and listening to music I see my RAM usage around 5GB leaving a tight room for running modern games without having to close everything. Upgrading to 32GB DDR4@3600 next week.
I really hate to say this but your personal/editing rig should be much higher spec. There’s a car guy I watch on TH-cam and he was just a regular guy before he started his channel, now he ‘only’ has 250k subscribers compared to your 500k (well done btw) but he has three Ferraris and a dozen other cars. The money you must be making from TH-cam at this point must enable you to buy every card under the sun so you have them on hand for various testing scenarios. I’m a window cleaner and I have a 3080 Ti, not a boast, just saying I don’t have half a million followers but still have a £1000 gpu. Treat yourself man, you’ve earned it.
Can you redo these tests but while broadcasting to twitch or sharing screen over discord? While having some music on chrome, just to have a real case scenario, i dont think many people is closing everything but the game to play
Any other TH-camr with 500k subscribers would have a i9 & a 4090, so it’s get to see the humble gamer who is content with their setup, not everyone needs 4k ultra settings to game. Great video, Iooks like I’m keeping my 16gb of RAM 👌
A 8 vs 16 gig comparison could also be interesting - budget or mid-range prebuilts from jsut a few years ago still often had only 8, and they're not uncommon on the used market that could probably benefit a lot from from an update to 16.
he already made a video on that
Definitely will improve performance with 16. Depending on what you use it for 16 might start to be short. Personally I upgraded to 32 for music production, especially for virtual libraries which can eat away your RAM easily
Short answer: 8GB is not enough in 2023. TLOU2, Hogwarts Legacy needs at least 16GB.
with almost every modern videogame, with only 8gb ram you either crash or run on drive swap and get bad performance/increased wear on data drive
@@888DS of the Office pc is doing only simple task and little multitasking, 8gb are fine, but anything involving multiple web Pages and any kind of graphic/video software not...
Another great video. I upgraded and maxed out my motherboard to 32GBs a few months back on a really really good Amazon deal. Definitely makes everything snappier and more responsive even with video/photography workloads and gaming and really anything I need my machine to do. Have it paired with an i5-8400 and a GTX 1080ti FE from MSI.
I found the same and it made me wonder if 64Gbs would add further improvements even if latency would have to be higher.
I’ve been happily using 2x 16GB (32GB) in all my rigs since 2017 and love having the additional memory when I’m running multiple tasks, tabs and browsers for a snappy response on my pc. In addition when gaming, and having TH-cam, music etc going at the same time I find the higher ram count to be beneficial.
Yeah definitely helps with heavy multitasking :)
Yup this is the reason for me using 32GB too.
It's very helpful for my purpose too (virtualization)
I updated my 32 gb of ram to 64 as its sooo cheap and upgraded my graphics to a 12 gb model. Didn't make no difference but it is done now.
@@jpcoll2011 I bet it made a difference to your disposable income over the next couple of weeks :P
Why upgrade if you had no need to? For the science?
If you have a low VRAM GPU, more RAM should definitely help as the game will use RAM instead when VRAM is full. My 1060 3GB gets to 16gb of RAM with medium textures and if I increase textures to high it crashes without 32 GB of RAM.
This depends on how the game is made, but having to rely on system memory to replace vram will kill performance, so you have to make sure that doesn't happen at all.
Yeah when the games changes vram to ram is where the fps drops
@@jmtradbr yeah it drops but at least you can play the game and while I admit it's shouldn't happen, it's better than just not being able to play the game at all
@@SuperLaziboi and nowdays texture scaling is so shit like, disparity between low to ultra is so bad. Ultra looks gorgeous and then you turn to high it looks shit but acceptable but then you go to medium and that's where you see the real goo like shit in the name of textures while still using more than 4gb vram. Why ??? Even if cards nowadays come with 8gb vram that doesn't mean 4 and 6gb cards magically disappeared. Its the companies shoving down those cards with bare minimum vram on us customers without taking any responsibility
More system RAM is NOT a solution for a lack of VRAM.
You get bad performance whenever the game needs something that isn't in VRAM, because it has to hit system RAM to retrieve it. The memory chips themselves are placed very far away from the GPU chip. It's physics. And the data has to pass through multiple gates, controllers, to get to the GPU. It's not optimal in the least.
Ryzen 5000 specifically gains a decent chunk of performance with dual rank memory. Not sure if that's worth it for budget builds though, since you might as well use the extra money to upgrade your processor directly, (I.e. 5500 -> 5600 or 5600 -> 5700) or getting a stronger gpu.
You can always expand memory later, so I'd just go with 16 gigs and don't worry about it.
3600MHz 16GBx2 dual rank kits aren't super expensive now at least
depends on what you play. if your playing a simulation game like anno 1800 total war warhammer 3 stellaris etc... you will see tremendous performance gains in 32gbs of ram as 16 gb is just not enough for long playthroughs in those games unless you have nothing going on in the background. also if you use mods on your games the higher the ram the better.
4 sticks of 8 will ensure dual rank
I've recently upgraded from 16gb to 32gb and I can say I can see a massive difference. Micro stutters are now a thing of the past :D
I'm curious about something: since you seem to sometimes test/utilize components better than the ones mentioned in this video, how come you don't daily drive them? Great video as always!
Not sure really haha. I don’t really game all that much outside of benchmarking and when I do, the 3050 can more than handle the games I play. E.g fallout new vegas and gta 4 😂
@@RandomGaminginHD Cousin, lets go bowling!
@@RandomGaminginHD You could definitely pair a much better GPU with the 12400F. It has enough power to fully utilize even a 6800 XT.
@@Typhy7 i mean he already said a 3050 was enough for him
@@Typhy7 his 3050 works just fine. I don’t get comments like these even after when a TH-camr explains.
I really like rhis channel for presentation and focus on what the average person will actually notice. Too many channels focused on the 2% difference between the latest $700 CPUs . Same with upgrades. I can really relate to the disappointment someone who had chose between a new game and swapping their 16gig setup for 32 and getting no benefit.
Why would one upgrade their RAM on a whim if they weren't encountering errors? If they can google the nearest store to find another 16GB pack, they could google whether or not the title(s) they're playing would benefit from said RAM upgrade.
So this pretty much confirms to us that 16GB ram is the official entry point for 9th gen gaming.
P.S: your cyberpunk gt1660 raytracing video just got a shoutout in the latest digital foundry direct weekly video podcast.🎉
PS5 has 16 GB RAM, and games are written for consoles. However, with some background processes in Win 10,11 bloatware, sometimes you could need more than 16 if only to avoid micro-stutters.
@@aleksazunjic9672Agreed. Which is why win10 optimizations guides on TH-cam are a lifesaver
@@SlickOnTop Yup, but they are too complex for an average user, that does not like to poke around system ;)
@@SlickOnTop damn, they saved your life?
@@BarryChub they definitely did save the life of my PC
love these videos, always interesting configurations i havent thought of but want to see tested!
would love to see the same test but with an APU as it uses RAM as VRAM. with the way games use VRAM nowadays pretty sure that is gonna be a very interesting test.
It helps. I have tested that with my 5600g when I've bought for my little brother a 32GB kit. And it really helps in some games, games that uses a lot of RAM and VRAM.
It helps but from my understanding there is a limit on how much vram you can set from the bios , so depending on the game that extra ram amount may not help much
@@lynackhilou4865 I am not sure if my B550 let's me to set 8GB of RAM for iGPU, but 4GB it can do 100%.
@@lynackhilou4865 that's memory dedictaed for the iGPU, not memory the iGPU can access it. all of your dram is a unified buffer the iGPU _can_ access, all you do when you set portions of it aside is tell the machine that that particular chunk is for _only_ the iGPU. not vice versa
I ran Ryzen 3 1200 and 8GB for 6 years til I changed to my current Ryzen 5 5500 and 16GB more 2 weeks ago. And I can say it made my PC far more convenient in my case. CPU side of course, since it's like 5x times more powerful ( UE5 doesn't struggle to load anything for my current needs and gaming is flawless on the CPU ) but RAM was actually the best thing I think. Reactivity and responsiveness is outrageously faster than before even though I use the same SSD. 24GB pool also get to help my GTX 1060 on some really heavy games where 6GB tends to struggle a bit.
i was going to go for 16GB for my new build, but a friend offered me 32GB 3600 for £18, and i simply couldn't pass on that. needless to say, i did not regret it, especially with the copious amounts of multitasking im able to do with that much memory. my APU also largely benefits as im running dual sticks
What a bargain
I find your humble honesty to have a wholesome quality not seen much anymore. Being surrounded by braggarts in my daily life, your videos are a relaxing breath of fresh air. You're kinda like the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood", but with pc gaming.
Thanks so much for sharing! I'm working up a build now for the first time in over 10 years and so much has changed. Your build appears to be very similar to what I'm hoping to end up with, so the comparisons between 16 and 32GB used here is very relevant to my needs. Thanks so much!
Hey thats cool! What specs does your old build have? And why did you want to upgrade?
@@whatido30 my computer was over 10 years old and was starting to show the age! Intel i5-3450, GTX 560, and 16gb of DDR3 1600 ram.
@@TheyCallHimDietSeth wow man I had a xeon e1231 v3, 16gb 1333 ddr3 ram and a amd r290x😎😂
@@TheyCallHimDietSeth what are you building with now?
Old build Guild! I'm rocking a i5 3570k with a 1060 6gb🤣🤣
Just saw your comment about what games you mainly play. I think it would be a great idea to put together the cheapest pc that will run older titles with a few mods and see how it handles/how cheap you can build it for. So many people test with e sports titles when it comes to "super-budget" rigs and I think it would be helpful and appreciated to/by the folks who might just want to get back into that game (catalogue) they never finished in 2008.
TLDR: Budget Fallout/2000s era games rig video?
Much love from Nova Scotia!
Yeah that’s a good idea!
@@RandomGaminginHD holy fast response!
I also 100% understand the benchmarking more than gaming, it becomes addictive really fast. Probably why I hardly get into newer games as I'd have to bench them in every possible configuration purely out of curiosity first. Its a curse lol
It’s kinda been done to death tho, like budget gaming pc’s seem to be 50% of computer content. Not to mention all the old benchmarks from years ago are also budget builds now on top of that
Worth noting that your error bars should increase as you go to 1% and 0.1% lows because you'll have fewer data points to draw from. So whereas you might, for example, say that +/-2 FPS is within margin of error for average FPS, the margin of error might be 5 and 10 FPS respectively for the 1% and 0.1% lows depending on how long the test was or how many samples you took. Note these numbers were just for illustrative purposes and aren't hard and fast.
This. 0.1% lows mean you only have a sample size of 1 in thousand. Let's say you take an hours worth of game footage, then 0.1% are the worst 3.6 seconds of fps. Imagine that even the slightest difference in what's happening can make a giant difference in those frames.
Since the RAM isn't close to the limit of 16gb in most of those cases and still has the same bandwidth etc, I doubt it makes a noticeable difference.
Croissant
Baggett
Can you explain what are 1% lows and 0.1% lows in this easiest way to understand?
@@Jakiyyyyy Standard average fps reports the average of all performance - all frames generated (100%). 1% lows would be the average fps when the game runs really bad - lowest 1% performance - we exclude the upper 99%, take only the 1% worst case scenarios and take the average of those. 0.1% would then take only the lower one tenth of the 1% - so even worse worst cases :D
These numbers are important because they tell you how your system behaves under worst scenarios - does it produce stutters or are 1% (and 0.1%) lows closer to the overall average.
You should consider adding amazon affiliate links to your description, I literally just bought a 32gb kit because of this video
Intelligent Stanbdy List Cleaner (ISLC, from the maker of DDU) is a nice small software for cleaning up standby list automatically. Windows fills this up by itself with time and in some games it causes stutter. It can be left safely in the background and it will clean the list automatically thus reducing stutter.
G'day Random,
Nice comparison, so many people in comments saying "YOU NEED 32GB for gaming" I like these videos that show what actual gains you will get & while with 32GB there is some improvement gaming but it is not performance destroying, 16GB can still be fine especially depending on the games you like & settings you play at.
Plus the good thing about PCs being evolving & not locked like a Console is rather than cutting cost elswhere like CPU or GPU if you start with 16GB unless you went with a 2DIMM Motherboard there is always the option of finding another 8GB RAM to match your original set later on when you can afford it after saving some more.
As someone who plays Star Citizen I can tell you that 32gb is a HUGE difference over 16gb. Almost night and day difference.
I have 4x 8gb sticks @ 2666Mhz... reason I have 2666Mhz is because it's the fastest stock DDR4 speed without XMP since overclocking is something I'm not comfortable with.
Nice video, however. If you have a PC that has 4 RAM slots, you will see a much bigger difference if you use 4 x 8GB Cards instead of 2 x 16GB cards as the CPU can then use multichannel to increase the bus throughput (On my sons i5 single channel got a Passmark score of 2200, multichannel went up to 3500). If using an Nvidia card, to see the biggest improvement, change the settings in the Nvidia control panel from quality to performance.
the test may be unfair because the 32gb kit could be dual rank models that may be why spiderman and cyberpunk took a hit with 16gb despite the game using only 8gb ,so the best to way to test the difference is virtual machine with the same kit
i dont know if u 16 gb per dimm kit is single or dual rank
Added 2 sticks of 8gb for a total of 4 sticks 32 gb (so each channel got 2 ranks available)
and stuttering issues got alleviated. i play e sport titles that never use more than a few gb of ram
performance improvement come from the extra ranks in my case.
There is one (And only *one*) game where it will use as much RAM as you have available while otherwise being pretty modest in terms of other requirements and that is heavily modded Cities: Skylines.
Mind you, the base game barely has any usage, but if you add all of the expansions and several popular mods it's easy to eat up 32 or even 64gb of ram as the game is pretty inefficient in loading the custom assets to memory. So that might be the *one* case where a budget gaming PC might actually benefit from more than 16gb of ram but it's a weird enough case that it isn't worth re-testing tbh.
Not sure if your 32GB kit was dual rank but there's a significant difference between single and dual rank. 4x8GB will always be dual rank but you can find 2x16GB dual rank kits as well.
You're right, my guess is that it wouldn't really make much of a difference in this case but indeed there's a performance uplift if the 2x16 are dual rank
What’s that mean? Iv been watched benchmarks and 2 sticks of ram equal in size always outperforms 4 sticks of equal size
@@yyeezyy630 I guess in laymans terms with single rank setups the CPU has to wait that previous task has been completed in a certain memory bank before it can be accessed again which creates latency. In dual rank setups the CPU doesn't have to wait as it can do it's thing using another memory bank.
@@Remu- you just described dual channel memory. Is that what you mean by ‘dual rank’?
@@wrth No, dual channel doubles the memory bandwidth and is a different thing.
The reason you should upgrade your memory is to give your OS "breathing room" to do more outside of the game. Most games by themselves will not benefit from a 16to32 memory upgrade (at this time)... better APU/iGPU performance maybe?
The thing I like about your content is that it gives me a reality check on what is actually usable. There's a lot of channels out there that (for obvious reasons) focus on the latest most powerful CPU and the stonkiest GPU, usually the RTX4090. All I want to do is use my machine for productivity and gaming, do I really need to spend $5,000 to do it? Obviously not. I would really appreciate you continuing this theme of realistic builds for 'normal' people. Here's a question. Just how much does RAM speed actually affect overall gaming performance. for example DDR4 3200 Vs DDR4 4200 or DDR4 vs DDR5. Not in synthetic benchmarks but actual gaming or productivity. Even in today's market is it worth the upsell?
It’s like this with everything online. If you’re not min maxing you’re trash!
Digital Foundry gave you a shout-out and big companies are sending you big things.
You're going places, dude.
Thanks so much! 🙏 I have a 12400f RTX 3060 PC I built not too long ago with 16 GB of ddr4 c16 ram, I was really wondering whether I should go for 32 gigs since I like watching TH-cam while gaming. Your comparisons help thousands of people everyday and the size of your channel is truly inspiring, my channel is still small and I've been making videos for nearly 4 years. I hope my channel becomes big like yours one day... All the best and I hope this comment warms your heart if you do happen to read this ❤
You should be able to tighten up the timings, and clock it to 3600. You'll see a good performance boost. Also good that you are only using 1 DIMM per channel, as it's easier on the memory controller. If you want to drop the model number of the new RAM, I can set you up with a good stable starting profile for the timings.
Have a great day, Sir! o7
some of the LPX sticks don't play nice with tight and fast OC unless you put the juice to em. with the added voltage they get hot as hell. not sure if its a defect in some sticks or if its just a binning issue.
It's not an AMD platform, the memory sub system on AMD is so bad it needs all the help it can get, Intel systems don't have that problem
It’s an Intel system so speed and DIMMs per channel don’t really matter. Would be a lot of work for not much gain.
Ignore the other comments, will do better with faster, free performance.
Also intel doesn't have nothing on the 3d chips, it's really yesterday tech..
I tried to fiddle with LPX memory on 4 systems and it never worked.
Congrats on the shoutout in digital foundry direct weekly!
I was really thinking about upgrading from 16 to 32gb on my R5 5600/3060Ti setup. This video came in at the perfect time. I still think that i'm gonna upgrade even if there isn't any measurable performance gain because i often play games with discord and 1/2 tabs of Chrome in the background besides all the windows things running. It should also help a little down the line when inevitably the 8gb of VRAM on the 3060Ti will truly become an annoyance.
I'm in the same boat, tho only a 2070 and an i5 not a Ryzen.
It's not that I'm expecting double FPS(Or even really any notable improvement) in games but, I often multibox clients of WoW while having Steam, Discord, Chrome with a shitload of tabs etc etc. And I have noticed my system hitching a bit sometimes when it begins hovering around 90% RAM usage.
More RAM isn't about getting more FPS. Your computer will be more responsive when you got a lot of programs running in the background because more data can be kept in RAM instead of being swapped to a relatively slow SSD or HDD. DDR4 is so cheap at the moment, 32gb for everyone.
Only by 4k you gone need more systeem memory.
A lot of other games under 4k you really only need between 8/12Gb.
Only if you do more like video and browser and more.
Than you need more.
For the rest well all my systeem are fine with just 16Gb.
Wel my laptop have 32Gb its not use it.
@@dyslectische not true, it depends on what you have running in the background. Was just a headache closing all the background apps I had running and this will be more an issue with newer games like hogwarts legacy.
its more a matter of being able to go into any game that you want, without having to close any tabs, background tabs, or anything at all in the background ever, as well as smoother and snappier os experience in general. in game with nothing left in the background there will be little difference.
This video is right on time . Was considering buying 32GB of RAM today since memory is so cheap now, but I've had no problems with the 16GB I've been using in the games I play. I'll probably just keep using that for the time being based on these results, thanks!
I mean if all you do is game It's not really worth it but if you are running a lot of memory hungry applications It's definitely worth it.
@@Gatorade69 Yeah my gaming computer is ONLY for gaming. I have a separate work laptop and a media server PC.
@@vinyfiny Yeah, if all you do is game then It's not worth it. I game and work on my PC and 32gb was a nice upgrade, a nice upgrade that I couldn't pass up at 5.99$ for 32gb.
What gpu do you have? 0.1% lows is important. If you have 8gb gpu and playing new AAA games, I would recommend adding another 16gb
@@daniil3815 I have a 3080 10GB which hasn't seen any issues in any games YET. Plus my backlog of games is going to take me years anyway so by the time games start needing more than 10GB VRAM I won't get to those games before I upgrade my GPU again😂.
Did catch video, always glad to leave like 👍
Nice, your cyberpunk RT on the 1660ti got a mention on digital foundry 👌
In hogwarts legacy you should've set the preset to high or ultra , since pumping up those settings increase ram usage significantly, at medium there won't be much of a difference
An entry level PC wont be playing hogwarts legacy in 4k which is what this video is based on.
@@16xthedetail76 yeah not at 4k but at it can run it at 1080p high or maybe ultra with dlss quality and that consumes way more vram even without increasing resolution
Exactly. When vram isn’t enough, extra RAM is lifesaver from stuttering
Dude. This is gold. I just was conidering this topic
This is QUALITY content
Also an upgrade of gpu would be highly recommended, 32gb ram with a RTX3060 would be the right choice, which in my case worked prefectly.
For games that require lots of ram, (Escape From Tarkov) an increase from 16 to 32gb wasn’t only beneficial but necessary for me.
Same here!That plus 5800xd!
Same here
Did you already establish a RAM upgrade in the form of *MORE* ram makes hardly any difference in modern gaming PC's regardless of "entry level"? Unless you're going from 4GB to 16GB, there is no difference in gaming performance. Now, VRAM will make a difference. Not DRAM, not in gaming applications, and not running 1 game looking for a performance boost. Running 3 multiplayer games and streaming, and watching TH-cam at the same time...yes.
So what have we learned? It's purely situational. When did we learn that more RAM is situational? In the early 90's.
I personally think for the gamer who uses discord, streams to twitch or wherever and has all sorts of game related apps running on PC, the days of 16gb being enough, is almost over. For the casual gamer, who like to knock out a few hours of COD on the weekend, it wouldn't make much of a difference to them. If you're going to just game it here and there, with no other apps open or working, 16gb is fine. Also as far as editing videos and basic work on your PC, more ram, at least in my case, made things smoother and things were snappier.
I made the move from 16gb to 32gb late last year, and in general I could tell a difference. I make, edit and render multiple videos a day, and it has helped out a lot. But overall, if hardcore gamer, with tons of apps running in the back ground, streaming and all the other things, I think 32 will become the new standard shortly. Love you videos, keep em coming!
Thanks :) yeah I agree if you’re doing a bit of everything the more ram the better
OMG I can't believe this video, I just upgraded from 16 to 32 with the very same Corsair modules not a week ago, only by having 4x8 instead of 2x8GB. Though I have a 3060Ti. And the changes really weren't apparent, but I benchmarked FH5, CP2077 and WarThunder and the biggest win was in 1% figures as I also expected. Sadly it cannot run in Quad channel mode, since the B-450F doesn't support it.
i don't think any consumer boards support quadchannel? only x99 and similar
Excellent benchmarks, like!
I think extra RAM can come handy if you are VRAM limited. So maybe test with a card with 4GB VRAM and 32GB RAM. In those cases maybe extra RAM can be utilized by the game due to lack of VRAM.
It doesn't work like that. Only for APUs (where VRAM and system RAM is the same thing).
If the VRAM isn't enough, it will spill into the RAM, and if the RAM isn't enough, it will spill into the page file (on disk, which is something you REALLY don't want).
VRAM is always faster. It's also closer to the GPU chip, physically, while the system RAM is so, so much further away, and the data needs to travel through a lot of gates to reach the GPU. System RAM is an order of magnitude slower than VRAM. Especially when it comes to reading/writing parts of memory.
@@zdspider6778 it is like that. if you are VRAM limited on a dedicated GPU(not APU), the RAM usage does spike up.
Great video, mate :)
I had 16GB which is recommended for Borderlands 3. Afterburner reported I was using less than 11GB. After I got more ram, suddenly ram use went up to 14GB with the same use and 90% of the frame time spikes went away in BL3.
Windows compression must be very aggressive.
can you do a set up tour 2023? would be nice to see your pc and set up compared to other youtubers who always go crazy with their setups
My setup is massively unimpressive haha
@@RandomGaminginHD would be nice tho haha, since every pc build ive seen from others are always pushing for the highest of frames instead of just using components that are on the budgent end of things. thanks for the video, i was thinking of upgrading to 32gb of ram but there seems to be no benefit just yet well at least in gaming
3:21 somewhere around that moment I got a nostalgia for the times when specs for games had "1024MB RAM, 256MB or more VRAM" in the recommended specs...
Great video as always I don’t see many doing videos about performance per watt in the uk that would make a cool video I think making the best power efficient set up
it's also important to keep in mind, while in most games (except games like flight sim) it will run great, if you're the type of guy to have 20 chrome tabs open while you're watching a stream in discord and listening to music 32gb will be a game changer for you. it really gets rid of the sluggish, choppiness while just using windows if you're regularly hitting 14gb+ usage. when you have more ram windows doesn't have to compress things as much. but honestly yeah, 16gb is still pretty good entry level. although 16GB today is hitting the ceiling where 8GB was back in 2016.
if your computer is being sluggish while multi tasking, it is definitely worth the look into more ram. was a game changer for me.
but then again, I am the type of guy to have 20 different things open while playing the latest battlefield.
Thank you for this video, Great one!
I upgraded my RAM a couple of months ago from 1x16GB stick to 4x8GB DDDR4 3200MHz sticks ngl the difference was huuuge not just in gaming but in basic tasks as well. Gonna upgrade the CPU in near future from a 3500X to a Ryzen 5700X and liquid cooling.
Exactly the content I needed to see and hear. Other reviewers test their 16 vs 32 gigs on very high end builds which don't reflect what most people have. I'm building a budget PC using Ryzen 5500 and RX6600 so I needed to know if 16 vs 32gb of RAM is even relevant to me, considering that the main bottleneck should be my GPU instead. Here in Malaysia the price difference between 16 and 32 is rather huge (almost twice the price of 16 for the 32gb RAM) so your video does allay my fears on going with 16GB of RAM.
Last year I upgraded my 8 year old PC to extend it's life. Primary reason was I wanted to run Flight Simulator and the PC was not quite up to minimum spec. First I upgraded the power supply just for safety. Then I upgraded my 8G DDR3 RAM to 32G. BEST MOVE EVER. Then I upgraded my RTX740 to a 3050. This is a PCI-E V4 card but was backwards compatible with the PCIE-3 motherboard. Finally, as a general upgrade, I moved to a SSD boot drive. Very happy with the results and I can run MSFS on ULTRA setting without a problem. When it comes time for the major upgrade the video card, SSD and power supply will all go into the new system. Without a doubt the RAM up[grade was the biggest overall performance boost to the system.
Maybe I'm a little bit out of place here, but I recently maxed out my 10 year old PC with cheap modules (went from 16 to 32 DDR3). My CPU (i5 4690) being as old as it is and with only 4 threads, is constantly being blasted at 100% with any relatively modern game, which often causes stutter. Despite the CPU limitation and to my surprise, my gaming experience improved and a lot of the stutter went away after the upgrade.
There are some games which benefit massively with 32GB vs 16GB RAM:
- Anno 1800 (in later stages of the game)
- Escape From Tarkov
- modded Cities Skylines
- DCS World in multiplayer
- Rust
- Star Citizen (people say that going from 32 to 64GB of RAM also makes a difference in this game)
- 7 Days to Die (on a server with a lot of people)
- Space Engineers if you have a lot of big stuff builded in your world
My man actually touches grass and talks about gaming at the same time!! He's the next level of human evolution!! Salute to you, man!! Not kidding!! Just SALUTE!!
I'd love to see a follow up video that pits 8GB of RAM against 16GB of RAM.
I have my personal take on the current "memory issues" in PC gaming. For the main system memory, 8GB of DDR4/DDR5 RAM is on the way out and entry level builds should be planned with 16GBs of system memory from the outset. For discrete graphics card memory, 8GB of VRAM is also at the end of the line for anything above 1080p, 45fps, medium settings graphics and builds targeting 60fps/1080p without immediately having to fall back to DLSS/FSR will need to have at least 12GB VRAM.
Personally, I have 32GB in my build I put together after this past Black Friday, but I mainly bought 32GB for future proofing so that I don't have to go RAM hunting in about four years from now when 16GB starts to become obsolete.
the good thing with excessive amount of ram is you can make a ramdisk out of it, i got 512gb of ram on my dell t7610 using a software called "ultra ramdisk" i make 128 gb for doing FEA simulation, i saved the project on ramdisk and use an enterpise ssd as a cache storage, i can say it's a noticeable differece, doing topology optimization before with a sata ssd it took around 45 minutes and now it's around 15-20 minutes, and its only cost me around 660$ to build all system
Perhaps a test with something running in the background would make an interesting video? Can you still game with something running in the background? More cores would obviously help, but what about more ram? Do the modern CPUs deal with this scenario better?
32gb ddr4-3200 (2x16) dual channel gained me around 10-15% over 16gb single channel mode on a Ryzen 7 5700.
I don't think purely the size of 32gb vs 16gb will gain you much anywhere unless you plan on using some of that extra 16GB as a ramdisk for temporary files.
upgrading from 16 to 32 for Hogwartz did make a difference. The PC uses almost 20gb of RAM when that game runs, so definitely going to be worth it for AAA games in the future like GTA 6.
I love your approach to testing things, extremely thorough and even more thoroughly explained.
Using a Ryzen 7 5800X myself, I did notice a change in multi-tasking/general purpose use when going from 16 to 32 to 64gb of RAM. Gaming doesn't seem to make much difference, and I'm glad you pointed out that 16gb is plenty for just gaming.
I would try this with some multitasking involved too. Like lets say a browser in the background/2nd monitor with a few tabs open and maybe a stream/youtube vid playing at the same time.or maybe even some other stuff like discord , spotify , wallpaper engine...
Ive not even watched this yet, but the title alone has grabed me. You keep bashing these vids out, so relevant to me personally, and im sure with the state of afairs in most countries, its the type of money saving or super useful tests consumers appreciate.
Now ill watch the video 😄
Thank you. I always try and make relatable videos for all budgets :)
your vids are great. subbed
Honestly more than I expected. I do care quite a bit about those 0.1%lows
Tnx for this video m8, you just save me some money
With Ryzen APU, when using iGPU, I've seen more improvements in many aspects. Higher stability of performance + being able to use higher quality textures in certain games, like RDR2. Anyway, 32GB of RAM is pretty affordable right now. So people that still build on DDR4 platforms, or just want bring a bit more longevity to their DDR4 system, should definitely go on 32GB.
This test would be very interesting with an APU and like 4GB or more configured as dedicated VRAM.
Fast ram makes a huge difference on APUs.
@@ndgoliberty Sure, fast Ram and dualchannel.
I ment it more like if you have 16GB RAM and have 4GB set for the APU to use an VRAM and that the OS uses about 3-4GB, there are basically ~8GB of the total memory left for the game/application.
In that case I bet, there will be a good difference between a 16 and 32GB system.
We have very similar systems. Mine is 12400F -32GB RAM - 3060 which never leaves me feeling it's not enough.
I've stumbled on two or three TH-camrs stating the difference will be bigger if the GPU is more powerful. Paraphrasing them, if you have an old rig, but get a powerful GPU, then the RAM difference, between 16 and 32 GB, specially 2400 and 3200hz with low cas, will be noticeable.
Any chance to try something like that? We need a trustful source like you to corroborate it!!
I had a similar experience when it came to better 1% and 0.1% lows when upgrading from 8gb to 16gb back a few years. Although my avg FPS on SQUAD increased marginally, it was an overall smoother experience with fewer stutters. I was running on a R3 2200G and RX-460 2gb then mind you, if I had something with more VRAM it might have made a smaller difference.
main reason I switched from 16 to 32 was because I was getting low fps on horizon/borderlands 3. Task manager said I was using up all my memory.
Think for gaming most games will be fine on 16, but for livestreaming it might be worth getting that headroom
Memory helps a lot if you have a lot of things like browsers, streaming, utilities, etc. running in the background in addition to games.
7:03 it's not an issue of optimization. The game CLEARLY states that 8GB cards are ok at high settings, but not ultra
Put in all four sticks so you'll have 48GB. I did that with 2 kits of Patriot Blackout 3200 MT/s CL16. An 8GB kit (2x4GB) and a 16GB kit (2x8GB) for a total of 24GB. XMP enabled without a hitch and everything operated completely normal.
Did think the same. and left a comment for him to see 😀
i was surprised to see the same two sticks just with higher capacity bringing up the 1% lows on the borderline titles . I've always seen 1% lows improve with 4 sticks. i guess devs are using more of the ram we all bought , it makes sense as well as all those background tasks taking up more.
Good to know about the content creation side though.
I recently upgraded a HP Envy x360 laptop (Ryzen7 5825U, with integrated Vega graphics) from 8GB to 32GB and it made a huge difference in gaming. While this isn't a gaming beast, it made some games which were previously unplayable to actually playable. The biggest one was X4:Foundations. With the initial 8GB it couldn't be played. Every 4-5 seconds or so the game textures would disappear, and then reload over 1-2 seconds, only for the process to repeat a few seconds later. With 32GB that doesn't happen anymore and it's playable on low settings. That is most likely due to the iGPU on that chip having a low amount of dedicated memory (512MB only) and its using system memory for textures (via GART). 8GB was clearly not enough to share between the CPU and the GPU, whereas 32GB is enough. So in this case, it was a win. And in the present day, 32GB of DDR4-3200 SODIMMs were only $50 so a worthy upgrade in my book.
As long as you don't max out the RAM, more RAM will generally not improve anything. However, more RAM will ensure you won't eat up valuable memory if you want to run programs in the background like discord, browsers, music and so on. A typical gaming rig today would probably benefit from double the RAM of what your games will require, to allow for background programs like I just mentioned.
Yet in the video the 0.1% lows were improved in basically every game by running 32GB, sometimes almost double compared to 16GB.
@@oxfordsparky That is because he exceeds 16GB of RAM when using 32GB. Accounting for Windows and other stuff on top of that, it is evident 16GB in this case is not enough.
virtual memory helps in this case
@@PhobetorXVII Actually it doesn't. Virtual Memory is using disk space as RAM and a drive/SSD is typically no where near fast enough to compensate for RAM. A typical SSD M.2 drive is around 10% the speed of DDR5 RAM. And in this case the RAM is much faster than the SSD.
Nice, did you just get 2 extra 8GB ram sticks or got 2x16gb ?
So you just have a 4070 laying around but you choose to use a 3050 instead?
In The Last of Us Part 1 the difference is even more noticeable when using High or Ultra presets, I can tell that Ultra with ray tracing it improved a lot when upgrading
Somewhat OT, but an even cheaper (or at least easier) way of getting 32GB is adding another pair of identical 8GB sticks, which I've just done. They're G-skill Samsung B-die (3200 CL14) and they were so cheap I couldn't resist. However, I've never seen more than about 10GB in use even with multiple programs open, video/audio edit/capture, two or three different web browsers with dozens of tabs open etc' (I even made a point of opening every single program I use regularly at once, then opening files in them), and I wonder if I've actually down-graded the machine by making it access four dimms instead of two.
It's not always possible to have 4 sticks because of ventirad or GPU being bigger and bigger. For example I have a big ATX motherboard but I can't use the last RAM slot. So I ended up with 4+4+16
@@docteurgreene + more budget motherboard often only have 2 slots in the first place.
Very interesting. Thanks.
you always brighten up my day
Thanks for watching. Comments like this brighten up mine :)
Hmm ... I got 16GB of DDR4 for my new system build in 2017, but one of the two 8GB modules was faulty. But I saw another kit real cheap on eBay, so I bought that, and then got too lazy to send my first one back for warranty replacement. More recently, I was thinking I should get that (lifetime) warranty replacement done, then I can have a 32GB system ... but now I'm feeling lazy again ...
Wow! I didn't actually know your personal rig had an RTX 3050. So much respect for you, other tech TH-camrs wouldn't dare use anything less than a 4090 in their personal rig.
Thanks for the content! Any chance you can test the performance of the AM5 igpus? I'm trying to see how it performs on older titles like Minecraft and also on esports titles.
Thanks, the less stutters are what I hoped for when I upgraded my aging system to 32GB DDR3-1866 from 16GB DDR3-1600. I think the results should be transferable, or I'd even think that even older systems should need enough ram more necessarily in order to keep modern games stutter free.
I've had these sticks since my r7 1700 at release, only worked at 3200 since agesa6 which took a couple of months to wait. Still use them on a 5800x3d, only it's 4 of them (no thanks to modern browsers), amazingly these are still on the same memory chips as all those years ago. Nice RAM.
I went from 8gb ram to 32gb and saw a decent rise in performance. Typically 15-20% better frames and it became much more stable. The drops smoothed right out.
Then i replaced my power supply from a 460w to a 650w gold. Thjngs got even more stable and my temperatures dropped because of the more consistant and reliable power draw.
Then i replaced the factory thermal paste even though it was only 2 years old because i know every manufacturer cheaps out on thermal paste. Then i saw my fan speeds drop considerably. My gpu and cpu were running the same temp because they were already decently low. But now my rig is half as loud, if even that.
I did these upgradez while waiting for GPU prices to come down. And last month i finally scooped up my new rx6750xt.
My system is everything ive wanted and more, for a downright reasonable price in my opinion.
Currently running Windows 11 with 16GB DDR4@3200, Windows 11 likes to eat RAM specially if you are a power user and got some programs in the background. Sometimes doing everyday tasks like watching youtube, browsing and listening to music I see my RAM usage around 5GB leaving a tight room for running modern games without having to close everything. Upgrading to 32GB DDR4@3600 next week.
I really hate to say this but your personal/editing rig should be much higher spec. There’s a car guy I watch on TH-cam and he was just a regular guy before he started his channel, now he ‘only’ has 250k subscribers compared to your 500k (well done btw) but he has three Ferraris and a dozen other cars. The money you must be making from TH-cam at this point must enable you to buy every card under the sun so you have them on hand for various testing scenarios. I’m a window cleaner and I have a 3080 Ti, not a boast, just saying I don’t have half a million followers but still have a £1000 gpu. Treat yourself man, you’ve earned it.
hopefully this car guy doesn't do the big dumb like Hoovie 🤣🤣
Can you redo these tests but while broadcasting to twitch or sharing screen over discord? While having some music on chrome, just to have a real case scenario, i dont think many people is closing everything but the game to play
I understand mix and match is not ideal but can you do a test with both set combined to 48gb just curious on the performance difference.