Problems with gaming usually tends to be related to Game Companies screwing over the customers in my case. No matter how much RAM you throw at them it doesn't fix the issue :(
@@bulutcagdas1071 Yeah like how some games use 14+ GB of VRAM now. Utterly absurd. People complain that nvidia and AMD don't put enough VRAM in their cards, sure I agree with that, now how about asking devs wtf they're doing that makes their games demand 3x as much VRAM as slightly older (but still graphically impressive) games? That's not normal technological progress that's just bad code, sorry not sorry.
I have 16GB of ddr5 6000mhz and it doesn't really have any issues but my brother who was using 16gb ddr4 3000mhz and he was having issues and upgraded to 32gb sadly things are getting obsolete again
Latest big AAA games use just about 5-8GB of RAM. Aside from a single one example - Hogwarts Legacy. This game uses 14-16GB, so it runs fine on a PC with 16GB of RAM only if you use optimised Windows build w/o any unnecessary background apps/processes. All other modern AAA/AA games run perfectly fine. Modern games actually prefer to use more VRAM than RAM. For example HFW needs 10-14GB of VRAM at max settings (depending on the resolution), but utilizes just about 5-7GB of RAM. So you'd better upgrade your GPU, rather than RAM. 16GB of VRAM + 16GB of RAM is a perfect combination for 99% of games, excluding some rare titles that always stay at "Beta" state (Escape from Tarkov, for example).
People have lost the plot with modern gaming. Like, you shouldn't need to spend thousands upgrading your PC every year for the privilege of playing an unoptimized dumpster fire. The games are the problem, not the hardware.
@ourchicken It's not that it can't work. Just that if you added more ram. Your fps would go up. You can get the job done with less but performance drops.
@rotaxt5411 Several, actually, you act this is the first time someone has done a video on ram. Hardware unboxed did one not too long ago. Along with other youtuber. The conclusion for most youtubers is that you need more than 16gb
One important note of RAM consumption, which you thankfully tested properly, is that idle RAM consumption of systems with different total amounts is incompatible. This as unused RAM is wasted RAM, so as the system gets used it should cache more if more space is available. If this extra memory gets freed again as another memory intensive app needs it, this is not only more than fine but the best and only sensible approach to memory management. Which is inarguable, unless considering excessive pre-caching or inefficient actual use of RAM, in which case the offending program is at fault, unless it has good reason for the usage.
That's why I don't understand people using intelligent standby list cleaner. Windows caching stuff Id a good thing. Especially if you have ram to spare
i find all this precaching and always use more ram to completely freeze up the system so i turned it all off, ram if not used is wasted then why does this method make my pc freeze?
@@Micecheese because that implementation uses too much resources or is prioritised too highly by the system. Background updates similarly take more resources than they could and bog down the system too much. Neither issues should be the case, but no amount of caching will help with a bad implementation that wastes resources. The implementation I am referring to doesn't pre-cache, but keeps all opened applications and files cached so they load quicker a second time, as long as there is RAM to spare.
By the way Ddr5 8gb sticks have half rhe bandwidth of 16gb because manufacturers disable half the die to make them. This will significantly impact their performance in games, video editing, modelling etc as a consequence more so than simply being less ram
I noticed a big difference in stuttering going from 16gb to 32gb, especially in Callisto Protocol. With 16gb it was using 10gb with occasional stutters. With 32gb it was using 13gb and zero stutters at all.
Wait until Google makes ad blocking impossible on Chrome and then you’ll need another 8GB of RAM, that’s why I’m pro Firefox. Almost every other browser uses the Chromium engine so they’re not real options.
One danger of buying the second stick separately is that it might contain different memory chips, which might not reach a high clock when put together. With quantity of RAM, as long as you have enough the performance will be near perfect. But once you run out the performance completely tanks, if the system continues to function at all that is. Frequency and especially latency (actual number to compare by is latency divided by latency) is what matters most otherwise.
The 16 GB vs 32 GB debate feels eerily similar to 8 GB vs 16 GB debate that was happening when I built my PC in 2017. Generally, the lower amount of ram will be fine in the vast majority of games but you should definitely get more if you're doing heavier workloads like video editing and whatnot.
16gb sticks can have memory on both sides of sticks, so they are a bit better... Probably it made a difference. OHHH, you used DDR5. DDR5 is weaker when using less than 16GB sticks....
Weird how long 16 GB of RAM have been enough for gaming. It's been like 10-ish years or so of 2x8 GB being the minimum standard for any gaming PC. I guess Windows memory management has gotten really optimized.
Nah, 10ish years ago 8GB was still recommended and 16GB was considered a bit overkill. I clearly remember those conversations when I was researching what to get for my 2013 build. Tho at that time we were seeing the same transition with 8GB vs 16GB as we are seeing today with 16GB vs 32GB. So there were a few people saying that it might be wise to get the bigger amount if more and more games took advantage of it.
@@takuma7812Nowadays most games tend to use more VRAM. Thus VRAM capacity became more important than RAM capacity for gaming. A few years ago most games needed 6-8GB of RAM and 6-8GB of VRAM. In 2024 VRAM requirements increased by quite a bit, while RAM requirements barely increased. Lately I usually see that games utilize just about 5-8GB of RAM. Recently I played A Plague Tale 2, Horizon FW, Ratchet & Clank RA and Banishers GoNE. These 4 games never used more 8GB of RAM. While some of then utilized up to 11GB of VRAM (at 1440p/maxed out).
@@takuma7812 Hmm yeah maybe I'm misremembering a bit then. I've had 2x8GB in my rig since 2014. Still seems like a fairly long time for RAM requirements. IIRC RAM requirements used to increase more rapidly back in the 90s and 00s. But maybe that's because as stangamer says, games mostly need more VRAM these days than they used to.
I'd like to see a comparison on VRAM heavy games. I've heard that in some extreme cases like Tarkov on the Streets of Tarkov map having 64GB of RAM is basically required if you wish to play with high textures
I upgraded from 16gb to 32gb because of Forza horizon 5. While I was playing it started to statter and a warning of low ram popped up. Right there I ordered a 32gb kit and installed the day after. Since then I've always went for 32gb in my other systems
Just a note about City Skylines 2: a 1 million population city is HUGE and takes a ton of time to ever get to that point. I've been playing the series for years and have never had a city get that big. The game actually simulates every citizen individually. They have names, relationships, addresses, daily routines, work places, etc.
Long time viewer, first-time commenter here. In the efforts of transparency, I want to point out that the neglible performance increases in some titles could also be due to the decreased latency from the 2x8gb SKHynix kit to the Corsair Vengeance 2x16gb kit and not just the increased capacity. CAS latency and memory rank configuration can have a huge impact on performance.
I am surprised by the performance of the single stick vs 2 sticks. The single stick performed better than I thought it would. Now I wonder if having quad channel memory on either AMD or Intels HEDT platforms makes a difference.
having 128gb octa channel ram at only 1333mhz felt just immaculate for system responsiveness on a server tower pc, but don't expect it to load games fast as the og asus ally extreme
More memory means less garbage collection/reliance on the page file, which means less overhead. It makes sense that having more RAM smooths things out.
If you heavily debloat the OS, the 16GB is mostly manageable. On top of that the OS uses memory compression and paging (SSD helps a lot there), and if the GPU has enough VRAM (so that textures doesn't go into RAM), then most games should be doing okay
@@syedsakifrahman3021I am using a separate OS for gaming, installed on a separate SSD. There are a lot of "optimized (custom) Windows builds", like Tiny 11. The creators of these builds remove all unnecessary apps and processes (including auto updates, etc.). So such a Windows build does literally nothing while you are gaming. Thus it uses just about 1,5-2GB of RAM for it's own needs. And games can use up to 14,5GB of RAM, if they need to. It is plenty for 99% of games.
I recently upgraded my 5900X to a 7800X3D and ended up putting 2x48gb of 6400MHz CL32 with it. I'm surprised by how little some games actually use still, but shocked as to how much Windows will use if you have more, on average I have 16-22gb total system usage with any modern game open, some games are so light on Ram that it doesn't get that high, without anything open I have 9gb for all the background processes Windows has going. I would have been fine on 32gb still, but I had 64gb for a while until my motherboard/CPU started rejecting the extra two sticks. I just feel better with more, knowing games with mods or memory leaks won't affect me, and Windows and any apps can use as much as they want without it ever affecting how I use my PC. Tech Deals once said, "do you want your PC to work for you, or do you want to work for your PC?"
I’m rocking 4x8gb sticks running at 3200MT/s, a 7700K running at 5GHz, and a Z270 motherboard with a modded bios to support Resizable bar, and coffee lake cpus. I got rebar working so that I could use an arc card.
it's needed to to say, that 16 gb of ddr5 ram performs noticeably slower than 32 gb ddr5 and it's not about the capacity per se, it's just how this type of RAM works.
I ran into a memory bottleneck while playing shadow of the erdtree with discord and one chrome tab open. 16gb here, it was 100% utilized and my windows started lagging
I know this video was formed around the system received from the sponsor but the answer was always going to be "yes, 16GB of DDR5 is going to be fine." The video would have perhaps been more relevant if it had been 16GB RAM results from DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5.
16 is beginning to be the minimum, with some games demanding 32 (or 24, if you still use a triple-channel 1156 board). Dual vs Single channel for the 780M iGPUs would be an interesting test, given that RAM speed alone is never the bottleneck if you have a dGPU. Most gamers use a few apps in the background (stream, chat, p0r*...), so above 16 is desirable.
19:40 In my experience if a game takes up more then 16gig as a whole it usually runs bad as the engine chokes on itself, you can add more ram but the underlying issue isn´t solved so the fps won´t really improve. At a certain point in these builder/sandbox games do you run the engine against a wall, nothing you can really do about that.
I think your conclusion is a bit off, as the increase from 16GB to 32GB showed a clear improvement to .1% lows in several of your benchmarks. That matter, as bad .1% lows cause perceptible stutter.
I reckon 32gb is the sweet spot, 16gb and lower is the sweat spot, as you may start sweating when you see your ram usage. I guess it all comes down to what you using your pc for. But for AAA gaming minimum, The sweat minimum SPOT 16GBs... dual channel yalllll
Are these sticks single or dual rank? Some of the performance difference between the 2x8 and 2x16 might be due to ranks and not capacity. Was this accounted for?
Am on 48gb but I have a lot of kits around with less. I remember swapping a 6gb one, that was a good idea. A lot of DDR3 kits were swapped for 16gb. DDR4 kits have 16 and 32. DDR5 is when I went for 32-48gb kits.
Before I i watch this video: I upgraded my system last year with 32gb ddr4 3600mhz and a 7800xt. Im easily using 15-20 gb of ram when gaming with my new gpu, even before then I was at max usage with 16.
Good job on the sponsors instead of the GB numbers, wonder how much difference there is between something like 16gb of ddr 3 1800 - ddr4 3200 - ddr5 5600 while the cpu itself could be a huge difference (4th gen i7 vs 12th gen i3 is about the closest we could get) it would be pretty fun how much ram speeds and latencies make in gaming instead of just sheer gigabyte numbers
more interesting would be ddr4 vs ddr5 u cant use ddr3 on modern cpu - yet u can get same cpu on intel side use both, and i think 4400mhz vs 8000mhz would be much more intresting aka maxout
I picked up a 64gb kit because at the time it was only a few dollars more than the same rated 32gb kit. So no worries for me on ram probably for longer than the pc is usable.
I had 16gb. Dropped in 16 more, and it's probably come in handy for streaming, but I haven't noticed a big difference otherwise. When I made the upgrade I was just looking to "future proof" but that can be a fool's errand. We'll see how it is in a couple years, but by that time I'll probably be building a new system with 64gb, so ehhh
If you want to run a bunch of apps in the background, it's always more taxing on the CPU, so instead of upgrading RAM, invest the money on a CPU you are sure can run games and lots of apps at the same time
I would be interested in a benchmark of balders gate 3 running with HDD mode enabled, as I believe it would store more of the data to ram to work around the slower HDD.
I have an incredible amount of stuttering within the last 5-6 months of gaming on my pc, I saw that it was a cause of multiple factors such as CPU bottleneck and high RAM usage, while I can lock frames and use frame gen to bypass CPU bottleneck, I can't do anything much about RAM, so I am very much considering upgrading to a 32GB kit
This is a jank way to compare ddr5. 8gb sticks are single 32bit channel. 16gb sticks are dual 32bit channel. 2x16 runs in quad channel while 2x8 runs in dual channel and 1x16 runs in dual channel. so 1x16 and 2x8 are effectively the same address layers and striping. regardless what you may think of ddr5 "quad channel" at half-width vs ddr4 dual channel, those 4 channels do allow 4 simultaneous accesses vs 2, which matters to things like games a great deal even if the channel width is halved.
its dual channel those cpus arent quad chanel, then u get double sided/4 sticks u get 2 channels and 2 ranks not quad. If they would be quad channel there would be 8 slot mobos not 4
@@erisium6988 DDR5 is 16 bit channels. One stick of 16gb or 32gb is 2x 16 bit channels. 2 sticks is 4x 16 bit channels. one stick of 8gb is just 1x 16bit channel, however.
I have a couple people who play things like star citizen and tarkov now i know there outliers but i do think 32 gig is the new standard for multitasking or gaming at 1440p with newer titles like vram i think demands in ram have gone up over time
I don't even pay attention lately to how much RAM is enough... I game on a Workstation with 128 GB... on Linux. With used server ECC DDR4 only running about a dollar per GB, I am thinking about doubling up.
I bought 2x8GB 3200Mhz CL16 for £115 in 2017, last month I bought another 2x8GB to go with it for £29. I wouldn't suggest getting 2x8GB DDR5 in 2024, 2x16GB costs less than double, for double the RAM. If you buy good speed 2x16GB RAM now such as 6000Mhz CL30 or CL32, then it may last you until DDR6 is released, if you buy another identical 2x16GB in future for cheap to go with it, if you have a 4x RAM slot motherboard. AM5 support for 4x Sticks is a bit bad at the moment, but should improve with future AM5 CPUs. For example my Ryzen 1600 could only run 2x8GB 3200Mhz at 2666Mhz, but Ryzen 3600 and 5800X3D can run 4x8GB at 3200Mhz in the same motherboard. The memory controller is on the CPU, so when you upgrade the CPU you also upgrade the memory controller, Ryzen 9000 looks promising in this regard, Great video by the way, thanks.
This video would make me look like a complete idiot if I wasn't upgrading from 2400 to 3200 memory. Your caveat about clock speeds and latency are what I will cling to desperately to avoid buyer's remorse, so thank you so much for that.
I did pretty much the same thing you did. I had a 2666 Mhz 16 GB kit, upgraded to 32 GB 3200 Mhz. Saw a really nice FPS boost in CP2077 and I don't think I've ever used all my RAM. But it feels good to know it's there for the future.
16gb was the amount I targeted like 6-7yrs ago. I’m constantly showing 12-16gb of use. Sometimes 20gb with modern games. 32gb is clearly minimum for modern gamers.
It's science: the more RAM there is, the more chance that the bits will get lost in the vast expanse, thus leading to long times to lead the poor lost bits to the promised land.
DDR5-5600 2x8GB is great for people who are doing their first build and don't want to go through BIOS, but for anybody on their 2nd build, or doing an upgrade, DDR5-6000 2x16GB is the way to go. Also can't forget about memory timings!
This might seem a bit counterintuitive but the way I would it, if I know for a fact that I am required to rely on integrated graphics, I would be getting a 32 GB kit and set the UMA buffer to a number that most games would expect as vram to avoid any potential problems. If I do have a GPU, I can cut back on the system RAM since the GPU has its own vRAM to use anyways. This works most of the time because getting more RAM is far cheaper than having to get a GPU.
One thing that turned out to really matter for me is VRAM, the 6gb with the 3060 mobile really struggles with anything more than a game and a browser open
will say, since I didn't see it come up in the testing, having at least 32GB of ram is HUGE for performance in Tarkov, upgraded from 16GB recently and I can run the streets map comfortably now, and the game stutters less in general, especially when I have a map and discord call sharing in the RAM with the game otherwise, I had been comfortable at 16, but I like having the extra headroom since I like using clipping software and hanging out in Discord while playing most games
Some of those games taking 13GB of RAM. That's a red alert for virtual memory (and swap file being used...). I just hope he didn't make a mistake not to check if system takes more than 3GB of ram, at the time being tested. Fingers crossed.
It's enough for me, but only because my computer's VRAM-System memory overflow function is broken, so half of my 32Gb kit is essentially doing nothing under load. 15.9 GB of shared GPU memory that it impossibly _cannot_ use for some voodoo-cursed reason.
I've been using 32GB on my laptop and desktop for over 3 years. While 16GB is fine in most games, I've definitely had several games spike over 16GB even a few years back. It's probably due to a lack of Vram though as my laptop has a 3080M 8GB. If you can afford 32GB, it's a no brainier to be safe.
If not for one game I was interested in recommending 16 as base and 32 for best results. I'd still be on 16. Grabbed a 32GB kit of 3600, CL15 memory. Along with the 5800X3D and the 7900XT. I've yet to reach the limits of the systems capabilities. It eats everything I throw at it, like nothing.
Just started watching this, and I messed with a BUNCH of computers...ONE had 16GB of RAM the others had 32GB of ram....I compared a 3300x with 32GB of Ram and a 3600x with 16GB of RAM...the 3300x machine felt much smoother when using the machine, despite having less cores. Games also started faster on the 3300x and loaded faster. I recommend at least 32GB at this point.
If it’s just RAM without virtual memory, then 16gb is enough for any game on Linux-based systems but on Windows you’re gonna have a bad time. Cyberpunk randomly crashed for me on 11 with 16gb until I increased the swap file to like 20gb.
I also have an RX 7900 XT except mine is the XFX Speedster MERC 310 RX 7900 XT paired with an i9 10900KF and 64GB DDR4-3200mhz ram. I would also love to see you test dual channel vs quad channel ram to see if there is any performance differences.
16 gigs are still totally fine for the vast majority of gamers. Some games (specially heavily modded ones) might be happy with more, but they won´t become unplayable with 16 gigs. The one golden exception, if you use integrated graphics. As that way you loose like 4gigs + to your build in gpu and that may set you up to struggle here and there. Normally you could say "well in that case you struggle anyways as integrated graphics are bad" but specially amd apu´s came quite a long way and are pretty decent for casual gaming. It´s just that with 16gigs installed, 4gigs taken by gpu and another chunk reserved by the OS there isn´t that much more left for whatever game you run.
Me with 8gb 2666mhz random Chinese ram mmm yes very interesting
same brotha,im eyeing for 32gb ddr4 .and it will be another 4-5 years till i get ddr5 upgrade ;/
Me who using 3x8gb 1600mhz ddr3:
Mine won't boot on XMP. So I had to run them @2100.
I mean the only person holding yourself back is you at this point. 32gb of ram is less than 55 dollars
@@kale280 it's like 62$ minimum where I'm from and even reaches 100$ I'll upgrade next year since 60$ is a lot for me for just a ram upgrade
I’ve been using 16gbs for a while, I only started to have problems with gaming within the last year
Problems with gaming usually tends to be related to Game Companies screwing over the customers in my case. No matter how much RAM you throw at them it doesn't fix the issue :(
Hogwarts Legacy and The Last of Us Part 1 pretty much started the whole thing
@@bulutcagdas1071 Yeah like how some games use 14+ GB of VRAM now. Utterly absurd. People complain that nvidia and AMD don't put enough VRAM in their cards, sure I agree with that, now how about asking devs wtf they're doing that makes their games demand 3x as much VRAM as slightly older (but still graphically impressive) games? That's not normal technological progress that's just bad code, sorry not sorry.
I have 16GB of ddr5 6000mhz and it doesn't really have any issues but my brother who was using 16gb ddr4 3000mhz and he was having issues and upgraded to 32gb sadly things are getting obsolete again
Latest big AAA games use just about 5-8GB of RAM. Aside from a single one example - Hogwarts Legacy. This game uses 14-16GB, so it runs fine on a PC with 16GB of RAM only if you use optimised Windows build w/o any unnecessary background apps/processes. All other modern AAA/AA games run perfectly fine.
Modern games actually prefer to use more VRAM than RAM. For example HFW needs 10-14GB of VRAM at max settings (depending on the resolution), but utilizes just about 5-7GB of RAM.
So you'd better upgrade your GPU, rather than RAM. 16GB of VRAM + 16GB of RAM is a perfect combination for 99% of games, excluding some rare titles that always stay at "Beta" state (Escape from Tarkov, for example).
"Is an RTX 4090 and 128gb ram enough for our garbage unoptimized game?"
No
(Cries in memory leaks)
I have a work PC with fast 32gb ram yet i game on my miyoo mini plus which has 128 mb, I realised I can play old 90s systems like Sega CD
UE5 Non shader compilated DX12 titles with spaghetti code and poorly implemented ray tracing: *Screams loudly*
People have lost the plot with modern gaming. Like, you shouldn't need to spend thousands upgrading your PC every year for the privilege of playing an unoptimized dumpster fire. The games are the problem, not the hardware.
@@Grandmaster-Kush get a life.
I think 16 gb is the minimum. It gets the job done, but more is better.
me with 8gb playing doesn't hurt me
@ourchicken It's not that it can't work. Just that if you added more ram. Your fps would go up. You can get the job done with less but performance drops.
It clearly doesn’t get better if your only concern is gaming. Did you watch the video before commenting?
Yeah doubling it doesn't really cost that much more. It's crazy
@rotaxt5411 Several, actually, you act this is the first time someone has done a video on ram. Hardware unboxed did one not too long ago. Along with other youtuber. The conclusion for most youtubers is that you need more than 16gb
One important note of RAM consumption, which you thankfully tested properly, is that idle RAM consumption of systems with different total amounts is incompatible.
This as unused RAM is wasted RAM, so as the system gets used it should cache more if more space is available.
If this extra memory gets freed again as another memory intensive app needs it, this is not only more than fine but the best and only sensible approach to memory management.
Which is inarguable, unless considering excessive pre-caching or inefficient actual use of RAM, in which case the offending program is at fault, unless it has good reason for the usage.
That's why I don't understand people using intelligent standby list cleaner. Windows caching stuff Id a good thing. Especially if you have ram to spare
i find all this precaching and always use more ram to completely freeze up the system so i turned it all off, ram if not used is wasted then why does this method make my pc freeze?
@@Micecheese because that implementation uses too much resources or is prioritised too highly by the system.
Background updates similarly take more resources than they could and bog down the system too much.
Neither issues should be the case, but no amount of caching will help with a bad implementation that wastes resources.
The implementation I am referring to doesn't pre-cache, but keeps all opened applications and files cached so they load quicker a second time, as long as there is RAM to spare.
By the way
Ddr5 8gb sticks have half rhe bandwidth of 16gb because manufacturers disable half the die to make them.
This will significantly impact their performance in games, video editing, modelling etc as a consequence more so than simply being less ram
Yes, if you don't have a zillion apps open at the same time.
Only one game needs above 16gb (24gb (1x8gb 1x16gb)) and that's Hogwarts legacy everything else runs well on 16gigs
@@Hi_Im_o2 Rust ark Cities Skylines
@@Hi_Im_o2 wrong, microsoft flight simulator needs 18gb
Anno 1800
Cyberpunk 2077
Total war
And there are a lot more games that need more than 16Gb for max settings and all situations
@@nebsi4202 ok I was quite wrong I only watched the hwu video but most strategy games and rt games
I noticed a big difference in stuttering going from 16gb to 32gb, especially in Callisto Protocol. With 16gb it was using 10gb with occasional stutters. With 32gb it was using 13gb and zero stutters at all.
I'm felling some stuttering too mate. Is your gpu AMD or NVIDIA?
If you have a gpu with less vram the vram can spill over into system ram in some cases which may also have an impact in some cases.
if you have a vram bottleneck i think upgrading ram, is the least of your priorities @olnnn
This is where ram overclocking really comes handy, thought it's dosen't make any sense to upgrade your ram instead of getting gpu with more vram
When it comes to that you lower graphics settings or get a higher vram GPU
@@Psyden5757 thistbh
@donaldnemesis393 heat, big vram cards are huge and hot. Extra ram sticks tiny and cool
Like...download and share more RAM...
Keep repeating the joke for another 15 years and it will become funny I promise
@@namecannotbeblank8920 The joke must live on.
@@namecannotbeblank8920 who hurt you mr. lil squeegee?
@@namecannotbeblank8920 It is and always will be funny
@@namecannotbeblank8920Install a sense of humour for yourself my guy.😬
Just upgraded to 32gb ram. i can finally run 2 tabs in chrome
Wait until Google makes ad blocking impossible on Chrome and then you’ll need another 8GB of RAM, that’s why I’m pro Firefox. Almost every other browser uses the Chromium engine so they’re not real options.
lol
As somebody with 64gb, I can cofirm that running 3 tabs in chrome is also possible.
@@legend131000 As somebody with 128gb, I can confirm that running 6 tabs in chrome is barely possible.
@@kefler187really? I have 128GB and i can barely do 5 tabs did you do something different than me?
It would be awesome to see the impact of ram capacity between DDR3,4 and 5 because of the nature of latency and frequency
That One Million resident city is renowned for barely running on anything.
The CPU usage is 80% and above, that's insane for a 7900X3D. I didn't think that game could use that much of a 24 thread CPU
One danger of buying the second stick separately is that it might contain different memory chips, which might not reach a high clock when put together.
With quantity of RAM, as long as you have enough the performance will be near perfect.
But once you run out the performance completely tanks, if the system continues to function at all that is.
Frequency and especially latency (actual number to compare by is latency divided by latency) is what matters most otherwise.
The 16 GB vs 32 GB debate feels eerily similar to 8 GB vs 16 GB debate that was happening when I built my PC in 2017. Generally, the lower amount of ram will be fine in the vast majority of games but you should definitely get more if you're doing heavier workloads like video editing and whatnot.
16gb sticks can have memory on both sides of sticks, so they are a bit better... Probably it made a difference.
OHHH, you used DDR5. DDR5 is weaker when using less than 16GB sticks....
Oh baby, look at that sponsor!
That's the big boys!
Weird how long 16 GB of RAM have been enough for gaming. It's been like 10-ish years or so of 2x8 GB being the minimum standard for any gaming PC. I guess Windows memory management has gotten really optimized.
If you have a laptop or a pre-built with tons of bloatware 16 gb isn't enough lol.
Nah, 10ish years ago 8GB was still recommended and 16GB was considered a bit overkill. I clearly remember those conversations when I was researching what to get for my 2013 build. Tho at that time we were seeing the same transition with 8GB vs 16GB as we are seeing today with 16GB vs 32GB. So there were a few people saying that it might be wise to get the bigger amount if more and more games took advantage of it.
@@takuma7812Nowadays most games tend to use more VRAM. Thus VRAM capacity became more important than RAM capacity for gaming.
A few years ago most games needed 6-8GB of RAM and 6-8GB of VRAM. In 2024 VRAM requirements increased by quite a bit, while RAM requirements barely increased. Lately I usually see that games utilize just about 5-8GB of RAM. Recently I played A Plague Tale 2, Horizon FW, Ratchet & Clank RA and Banishers GoNE. These 4 games never used more 8GB of RAM. While some of then utilized up to 11GB of VRAM (at 1440p/maxed out).
I have 8gb ram have had it for 7 years i only this week got another 8gb stick to add to my pc now it will last another 7 years 😂
@@takuma7812 Hmm yeah maybe I'm misremembering a bit then. I've had 2x8GB in my rig since 2014. Still seems like a fairly long time for RAM requirements. IIRC RAM requirements used to increase more rapidly back in the 90s and 00s. But maybe that's because as stangamer says, games mostly need more VRAM these days than they used to.
I'd like to see a comparison on VRAM heavy games. I've heard that in some extreme cases like Tarkov on the Streets of Tarkov map having 64GB of RAM is basically required if you wish to play with high textures
I upgraded from 16gb to 32gb because of Forza horizon 5. While I was playing it started to statter and a warning of low ram popped up. Right there I ordered a 32gb kit and installed the day after. Since then I've always went for 32gb in my other systems
Just a note about City Skylines 2: a 1 million population city is HUGE and takes a ton of time to ever get to that point.
I've been playing the series for years and have never had a city get that big.
The game actually simulates every citizen individually. They have names, relationships, addresses, daily routines, work places, etc.
Love this kind of benchmarks. thanks for high quality content!
Long time viewer, first-time commenter here. In the efforts of transparency, I want to point out that the neglible performance increases in some titles could also be due to the decreased latency from the 2x8gb SKHynix kit to the Corsair Vengeance 2x16gb kit and not just the increased capacity. CAS latency and memory rank configuration can have a huge impact on performance.
I am surprised by the performance of the single stick vs 2 sticks. The single stick performed better than I thought it would. Now I wonder if having quad channel memory on either AMD or Intels HEDT platforms makes a difference.
having 128gb octa channel ram at only 1333mhz felt just immaculate for system responsiveness on a server tower pc, but don't expect it to load games fast as the og asus ally extreme
@@Micecheese What platform supported 8 channel memory on ddr3?
More memory means less garbage collection/reliance on the page file, which means less overhead.
It makes sense that having more RAM smooths things out.
If you heavily debloat the OS, the 16GB is mostly manageable. On top of that the OS uses memory compression and paging (SSD helps a lot there), and if the GPU has enough VRAM (so that textures doesn't go into RAM), then most games should be doing okay
How would you recommend debloating to get that kind of result?
@@syedsakifrahman3021I am using a separate OS for gaming, installed on a separate SSD. There are a lot of "optimized (custom) Windows builds", like Tiny 11. The creators of these builds remove all unnecessary apps and processes (including auto updates, etc.). So such a Windows build does literally nothing while you are gaming. Thus it uses just about 1,5-2GB of RAM for it's own needs. And games can use up to 14,5GB of RAM, if they need to. It is plenty for 99% of games.
@@syedsakifrahman3021 I installed the Windows N version then downloaded anything I needed.
@@m8x425 windows N is literally normal windows without media player - because they cant do that in EU if i remember correctly.
“James Cameron’s, the blue man group”
LMAOOO
Yeah the game is pretty but it sucks. Story is horrible, dialog is horrible, no character is memorable it just sucks.
I recently upgraded my 5900X to a 7800X3D and ended up putting 2x48gb of 6400MHz CL32 with it. I'm surprised by how little some games actually use still, but shocked as to how much Windows will use if you have more, on average I have 16-22gb total system usage with any modern game open, some games are so light on Ram that it doesn't get that high, without anything open I have 9gb for all the background processes Windows has going. I would have been fine on 32gb still, but I had 64gb for a while until my motherboard/CPU started rejecting the extra two sticks. I just feel better with more, knowing games with mods or memory leaks won't affect me, and Windows and any apps can use as much as they want without it ever affecting how I use my PC. Tech Deals once said, "do you want your PC to work for you, or do you want to work for your PC?"
I’m rocking 4x8gb sticks running at 3200MT/s, a 7700K running at 5GHz, and a Z270 motherboard with a modded bios to support Resizable bar, and coffee lake cpus. I got rebar working so that I could use an arc card.
that's incredibly based on multiple levels
@@thomaslayman9487 And the best part is I just ordered an open box A750 for $130 through offerup. It should get here tomorrow.
it's needed to to say, that 16 gb of ddr5 ram performs noticeably slower than 32 gb ddr5 and it's not about the capacity per se, it's just how this type of RAM works.
Love the content, I hope you're not getting burnt out and overworked doing all these videos! 6:18 shows Last of Us instead of Allen Wake 2.
Please do this test with GPUs without enough ram like 8GB or 12GB to see if 32GB helps when vram is not enough, this would be great too.
pretty much the reason to upgrade from 16 to 32 is depends on how much is background or applications on 2nd or 3rd screen is taking
I ran into a memory bottleneck while playing shadow of the erdtree with discord and one chrome tab open. 16gb here, it was 100% utilized and my windows started lagging
Thanks for the video, it answers a lot of questions about ram capacity and dual stick usage
As I'm currently slowly paying off the debts i accrued from my final project in university, it HAS to be.
I know this video was formed around the system received from the sponsor but the answer was always going to be "yes, 16GB of DDR5 is going to be fine." The video would have perhaps been more relevant if it had been 16GB RAM results from DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5.
16 is beginning to be the minimum, with some games demanding 32 (or 24, if you still use a triple-channel 1156 board). Dual vs Single channel for the 780M iGPUs would be an interesting test, given that RAM speed alone is never the bottleneck if you have a dGPU. Most gamers use a few apps in the background (stream, chat, p0r*...), so above 16 is desirable.
19:40 In my experience if a game takes up more then 16gig as a whole it usually runs bad as the engine chokes on itself, you can add more ram but the underlying issue isn´t solved so the fps won´t really improve.
At a certain point in these builder/sandbox games do you run the engine against a wall, nothing you can really do about that.
I think your conclusion is a bit off, as the increase from 16GB to 32GB showed a clear improvement to .1% lows in several of your benchmarks. That matter, as bad .1% lows cause perceptible stutter.
I reckon 32gb is the sweet spot, 16gb and lower is the sweat spot, as you may start sweating when you see your ram usage. I guess it all comes down to what you using your pc for. But for AAA gaming minimum, The sweat minimum SPOT 16GBs... dual channel yalllll
Are these sticks single or dual rank? Some of the performance difference between the 2x8 and 2x16 might be due to ranks and not capacity. Was this accounted for?
an important question
Am on 48gb but I have a lot of kits around with less. I remember swapping a 6gb one, that was a good idea. A lot of DDR3 kits were swapped for 16gb. DDR4 kits have 16 and 32. DDR5 is when I went for 32-48gb kits.
Before I i watch this video: I upgraded my system last year with 32gb ddr4 3600mhz and a 7800xt. Im easily using 15-20 gb of ram when gaming with my new gpu, even before then I was at max usage with 16.
Games can load more ram for just in case situation to save on bandwidth....
Good job on the sponsors
instead of the GB numbers, wonder how much difference there is between something like 16gb of ddr 3 1800 - ddr4 3200 - ddr5 5600
while the cpu itself could be a huge difference (4th gen i7 vs 12th gen i3 is about the closest we could get) it would be pretty fun how much ram speeds and latencies make in gaming instead of just sheer gigabyte numbers
more interesting would be ddr4 vs ddr5 u cant use ddr3 on modern cpu - yet u can get same cpu on intel side use both, and i think 4400mhz vs 8000mhz would be much more intresting aka maxout
Thanks for this video. I was thinking about change my modules :D
I picked up a 64gb kit because at the time it was only a few dollars more than the same rated 32gb kit. So no worries for me on ram probably for longer than the pc is usable.
i cant decide about 64 vs 32gb. Sadly on ddr4 64gb are mainly 3200/3600 so they are painfuly slow
I had 16gb. Dropped in 16 more, and it's probably come in handy for streaming, but I haven't noticed a big difference otherwise.
When I made the upgrade I was just looking to "future proof" but that can be a fool's errand. We'll see how it is in a couple years, but by that time I'll probably be building a new system with 64gb, so ehhh
If you want to run a bunch of apps in the background, it's always more taxing on the CPU, so instead of upgrading RAM, invest the money on a CPU you are sure can run games and lots of apps at the same time
I would be interested in a benchmark of balders gate 3 running with HDD mode enabled, as I believe it would store more of the data to ram to work around the slower HDD.
Loving your new benchmark build. Wishing you gave more vds on the Xeons. The e5-16** series is interesting for me cause I plan on getting one.
me looking at my ram usage in rivatuner overlay in minecraft seeing it approaching 50+gb💀
"My name isn't really Iceberg"... I knew it.
Ram is basically just for stability in games. It's a different story on productivity. Also on igpu users, always get two rams
I have an incredible amount of stuttering within the last 5-6 months of gaming on my pc, I saw that it was a cause of multiple factors such as CPU bottleneck and high RAM usage, while I can lock frames and use frame gen to bypass CPU bottleneck, I can't do anything much about RAM, so I am very much considering upgrading to a 32GB kit
The shocker to me is that his name isn't actually Iceberg. I'm crushed!
Tarkov Streets would’ve loved this test
I couldn’t even load in until I went from 16GB to 32GB (DDR4 for both, 32GB had higher clock speeds though)
This is a jank way to compare ddr5.
8gb sticks are single 32bit channel. 16gb sticks are dual 32bit channel. 2x16 runs in quad channel while 2x8 runs in dual channel and 1x16 runs in dual channel. so 1x16 and 2x8 are effectively the same address layers and striping.
regardless what you may think of ddr5 "quad channel" at half-width vs ddr4 dual channel, those 4 channels do allow 4 simultaneous accesses vs 2, which matters to things like games a great deal even if the channel width is halved.
100% exact and the most important thing in this conversation
its dual channel those cpus arent quad chanel, then u get double sided/4 sticks u get 2 channels and 2 ranks not quad. If they would be quad channel there would be 8 slot mobos not 4
@@erisium6988 you never had 2 16gb ddr5 sticks installed and looked at hwinfo or cpuz
@@erisium6988 DDR5 is 16 bit channels.
One stick of 16gb or 32gb is 2x 16 bit channels.
2 sticks is 4x 16 bit channels.
one stick of 8gb is just 1x 16bit channel, however.
Upgraded to 32GB already 3 years ago, yet my 2nd PC still kicks with 16GB as it runs games just at 1080p.
@@RuruFIN Ram has nothing to do with resolution. Just a heads up.
@@Jumsut_ It kinda does, tbh. Higher resolutions need higher textures and if your GPU doesn't have enough VRAM, then your RAM will be used.
@@TheInquisitor If you’re going over your VRAM, you will inevitably get stutters. Which you don’t want.
First time seeing Alan Wake 2 run properly in a while on this channel.
Me with 128 GB of ddr5 vengeance ram lol couldn't relate
I would love to see this test on an 8GB GPU, thats when ram usage gets interesting
Good quality video as usual! 👍 Hope that DDR5 ram will be even more cheaper closer to Autumn...
8:24 unfortunate frame
Would love to see this kind of testing but at 4K.
Ive staaaarted to see 90%+ usage lately. So ive got another 16 on the radar
I have a couple people who play things like star citizen and tarkov now i know there outliers but i do think 32 gig is the new standard for multitasking or gaming at 1440p with newer titles like vram i think demands in ram have gone up over time
Testing flight sim in Manhattan THAT CLOSE to the World Trade Center was pretty bold of you 😂😂😂
love your vids m8
Even at same transfer rates the memory timings can also differ and thereby have different performance.
I don't even pay attention lately to how much RAM is enough... I game on a Workstation with 128 GB... on Linux.
With used server ECC DDR4 only running about a dollar per GB, I am thinking about doubling up.
I bought 2x8GB 3200Mhz CL16 for £115 in 2017, last month I bought another 2x8GB to go with it for £29.
I wouldn't suggest getting 2x8GB DDR5 in 2024, 2x16GB costs less than double, for double the RAM. If you buy good speed 2x16GB RAM now such as 6000Mhz CL30 or CL32, then it may last you until DDR6 is released, if you buy another identical 2x16GB in future for cheap to go with it, if you have a 4x RAM slot motherboard.
AM5 support for 4x Sticks is a bit bad at the moment, but should improve with future AM5 CPUs. For example my Ryzen 1600 could only run 2x8GB 3200Mhz at 2666Mhz, but Ryzen 3600 and 5800X3D can run 4x8GB at 3200Mhz in the same motherboard. The memory controller is on the CPU, so when you upgrade the CPU you also upgrade the memory controller, Ryzen 9000 looks promising in this regard,
Great video by the way, thanks.
Now I'm curious about 4 x 8gb sticks
16gb wasnt enough for me on a P55 chipset system in 2019 playing mw2019 and BL3, idk how you guys are still managing
Alan Wake II chart is mistitled as Last of Us. Great video either way, Iceberg!
This video would make me look like a complete idiot if I wasn't upgrading from 2400 to 3200 memory. Your caveat about clock speeds and latency are what I will cling to desperately to avoid buyer's remorse, so thank you so much for that.
I did pretty much the same thing you did. I had a 2666 Mhz 16 GB kit, upgraded to 32 GB 3200 Mhz. Saw a really nice FPS boost in CP2077 and I don't think I've ever used all my RAM. But it feels good to know it's there for the future.
16gb was the amount I targeted like 6-7yrs ago. I’m constantly showing 12-16gb of use. Sometimes 20gb with modern games. 32gb is clearly minimum for modern gamers.
u guys have problem with word minimum, u can see in vid everything works fine
It's science: the more RAM there is, the more chance that the bits will get lost in the vast expanse, thus leading to long times to lead the poor lost bits to the promised land.
DDR5-5600 2x8GB is great for people who are doing their first build and don't want to go through BIOS, but for anybody on their 2nd build, or doing an upgrade, DDR5-6000 2x16GB is the way to go. Also can't forget about memory timings!
This might seem a bit counterintuitive but the way I would it, if I know for a fact that I am required to rely on integrated graphics, I would be getting a 32 GB kit and set the UMA buffer to a number that most games would expect as vram to avoid any potential problems. If I do have a GPU, I can cut back on the system RAM since the GPU has its own vRAM to use anyways.
This works most of the time because getting more RAM is far cheaper than having to get a GPU.
This is hugely different than DDR4 when it comes to single stick vs two. DDR5 has built in dual channel (basically).
Has to be, because that's all I've got.
Great vid Iceberg Tech !! What program are you using for audio? You have one of the best moc quality compared to many other YTbers.
And me closing programs to gain game performance when i had 16GB of RAM, just to see now that isnt that big of an issue 😅.
One thing that turned out to really matter for me is VRAM, the 6gb with the 3060 mobile really struggles with anything more than a game and a browser open
will say, since I didn't see it come up in the testing, having at least 32GB of ram is HUGE for performance in Tarkov, upgraded from 16GB recently and I can run the streets map comfortably now, and the game stutters less in general, especially when I have a map and discord call sharing in the RAM with the game
otherwise, I had been comfortable at 16, but I like having the extra headroom since I like using clipping software and hanging out in Discord while playing most games
i play quite large modpacks in minecraft, and i've started to see my 16gb get really close to being maxed out, yesterday i had 15.8gb usage
Some of those games taking 13GB of RAM. That's a red alert for virtual memory (and swap file being used...). I just hope he didn't make a mistake not to check if system takes more than 3GB of ram, at the time being tested. Fingers crossed.
how would it be mistake
It's enough for me, but only because my computer's VRAM-System memory overflow function is broken, so half of my 32Gb kit is essentially doing nothing under load. 15.9 GB of shared GPU memory that it impossibly _cannot_ use for some voodoo-cursed reason.
I've been using 32GB on my laptop and desktop for over 3 years. While 16GB is fine in most games, I've definitely had several games spike over 16GB even a few years back. It's probably due to a lack of Vram though as my laptop has a 3080M 8GB. If you can afford 32GB, it's a no brainier to be safe.
It would be fun to see you trying to upgrade an old laptop
Never had much luck with laptop videos. Maybe one day?
If not for one game I was interested in recommending 16 as base and 32 for best results. I'd still be on 16. Grabbed a 32GB kit of 3600, CL15 memory.
Along with the 5800X3D and the 7900XT. I've yet to reach the limits of the systems capabilities. It eats everything I throw at it, like nothing.
Just started watching this, and I messed with a BUNCH of computers...ONE had 16GB of RAM the others had 32GB of ram....I compared a 3300x with 32GB of Ram and a 3600x with 16GB of RAM...the 3300x machine felt much smoother when using the machine, despite having less cores. Games also started faster on the 3300x and loaded faster. I recommend at least 32GB at this point.
If it’s just RAM without virtual memory, then 16gb is enough for any game on Linux-based systems but on Windows you’re gonna have a bad time. Cyberpunk randomly crashed for me on 11 with 16gb until I increased the swap file to like 20gb.
Good video. I play a lot of Beam NG Drive multiplayer mod and it can use up to 28 GB's system memory.
I also have an RX 7900 XT except mine is the XFX Speedster MERC 310 RX 7900 XT paired with an i9 10900KF and 64GB DDR4-3200mhz ram. I would also love to see you test dual channel vs quad channel ram to see if there is any performance differences.
I think you should have tried these tests with a more modest cpu . I think there were will see the big differences
has to be because my kingston memory that I just bought decided that only 1 one of the modules is enough!
16 gigs are still totally fine for the vast majority of gamers.
Some games (specially heavily modded ones) might be happy with more, but they won´t become unplayable with 16 gigs.
The one golden exception, if you use integrated graphics. As that way you loose like 4gigs + to your build in gpu and that may set you up to struggle here and there. Normally you could say "well in that case you struggle anyways as integrated graphics are bad" but specially amd apu´s came quite a long way and are pretty decent for casual gaming. It´s just that with 16gigs installed, 4gigs taken by gpu and another chunk reserved by the OS there isn´t that much more left for whatever game you run.
Can I suggest you test 48GB (2x24) next ?