4gb vs. 8gb for memory intensive games

Will 8gb more memory give me better performance in memory intensive games that use more than 4GB? Been thinking about upgrading...but getting 4gb more memory is a nice $150 dent so I don't want to spend money if I don't have to

 

There are no memory intensive games that take advantage of more than 4GB.

 

Most games are written in 32-bit, so they can only use 2gb of memory for themselves anyways. A total of 4 for your operating system and whatever game you happen to be running is plenty.

 

8GB is useless, there are no games that require such monstrous amount of RAM.

 

That's simply not true.

There are games that use tons of RAM:

 

Which game is that? That looks more like a CPU/RAM stresser screenshot than a game.

 

Deep Fritz 12 running the Stockfish engine.

Any of the higher-end chess games (Deep Shredder, Deep Rybka, etc) are absolute monsters when it comes to making use of system resources.

 

These are 64-bit applications, am I correct?

 

Even Crysis in 64bit doesn't use more than 60% of 4Gb. Don't waste your money.

 

Some are, some aren't, some ship with both 32-bit and 64-bit engines and let you choose which to run.

 

GTA IV makes use of almost the entire 4GB. My Modded Stalker game with the high resolution graphics also pushes the use of RAM near the 4GB mark. I have 6GB of RAM, not 8GB though.

 

Bottom line is that 8GB will make little to no difference. Not worth the upgrade IMHO.

You're better off taking that $200 cost difference and putting it towards an SSD or get a Blu-Ray drive or whatever else.

 

The 8Gb of ram will make no noticeable difference. Go for the fastest 4gb ram, like hyperX.

 

Love the 1 in 1 Million example to disprove a fact.

 

Memory speed is an even bigger marketing gimmick and won't help you at all in real life.

 

Actually since the ram timings and speed are so S*** in notebook ram, getting some decent stuff and tuning down the timings can gain you around 5%. That's 5% extra for no extra power consumption.

 

If you want to spend your money on something that will show negligible performance in any real life setting, then that's fine. Memory speed will never be the bottleneck in a system, so even if it's 100% faster, you won't notice a difference in performance.

 

Deep Fritz, Rybka, and other Chess Programs aren't really "games." They're CPU stress tests. Seriously.

 

If I'm running other programs like anti virus, etc. while gaming, you think I might benefit from another 2gb of memory?

 

Population of people play FPS games in NBR: 90%

Population of people play chess games in NBR: You.

Unless we know what the OP is playing, we cannot assume 8GB is the answer for every of the same question someone asks in future.

Neither any FPS or any other mainstream gaming apps will even make use of 4GB now. Unless you play the chess games Tony mentioned, you already have a 5870MR and an i7 920XM setup, what more?

 

GTX480m

Actually just found out that my laptop won't be upgradeable to the 480m a couple of weeks ago. Guess I'm maxed out on upgrades.

Maybe an SSD Drive to reduce loading times in games? SSD Drives are still overpriced IMO, waiting for those to come down.

 

If you don't use your DVD drive, replace it with a small SSD. The Intel 80GB G2 drive is around $200.

 

LOL.

Same, when I saw that screenshot, I was thinking... OK MAYBE it is Supreme Commander 2 on a Gargantuan map.......

 

Some other part will be the limiting factor long before memory is.

 

One thing I'm taking away from this thread is that a correlation could be made between intensive chess game players and poor statisticians. Basically, being smart doesn't equal being wise.

What did I learn about RAM? Not too much so far.

 

Oh well, I'd say the lesson is that there are very few apps that will take full 4GB today, thus it is not a priority to get more RAM unless really needed.

 

you may or may not play buggy games with memory leaks for a bit longer. j/k

 

True, can still remember some warcraft 3 custom maps with memory leak that will crash because you ran out of memory.

 

If you can afford it and money isn't an issue for you, then by all means, 8GB won't hurt. But if you have that money, it'd be better spent elsewhere on the system. I think SSD's are way overpriced for what they offer, but still it would be a wiser choice than 8GB IMHO.

 

Well if the money is burning a hole in your pocket and you want to give it a try, there's this: Guide * Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities *

I have some virtual CD software that enables the use of RAM drives, but I only have 4GB of RAM so I've not tested it out. Not sure how practical it would be for a notebook user tho, since you would have to re-install software on your RAM drive after every power cycle. I suppose you could use drive imaging software and run a startup script to install the image file to the RAM drive during the boot process if you wanted to.

 

I'd like to see the man who could even stalemate against a chess engine that powerful.

 

I'd like to see a man so deluded he thinks a chess game is typical usage of 8gigs of memory... oh wait.

 

Tony_A has it correct. Even only GTA IV uses up all my 4GB...

 

What's with the personal attacks?
(this one and others in the thread)

I never said games using 4GB or more were typical or common.

Other posters said there were no games that used more than 4GB.

I simply pointed out several that did--with proof, then got flamed by people who didn't like the message.

 

No mainstream game is gonna take more than 4 gb of ram.

Maybe chess. Though I don't understand why would you want a chess game to take such a huge amount of resources.

 

A few games in a very specific class of application is not "several", and chess stress-tests are not what most users of this board are referencing when they speak about games.

If you had stated what game it was that was using all that RAM in the first place, then there wouldn't have been an issue. The issue is that you made a statement that implied that you needed 8GB of RAM for a non-trivial number of games, without qualifying that the only "game" that does this are high-end chess programs.

Guys, stop the personal attacks. Tony_A, you're not blameless. A lie by omission is still a lie, and it's not good form to be deceptive in your posting, intentional or not.

 

unless u get 8GB as standard as u do in G73 , i don't see why u need any more than 4GB for gaming.. but if u are using RAM intensive apps , extra mem always helps.. depends on case by case basis according to me.

 

Absolutely case by case. For 99.9% of games available, 4GB is more than plenty unless you run tons of stuff in the background (I'm talking a lot more than an audio player and antivirus). Sometimes laptop manufacturers make 6GB or 8GB as an affordable upgrade, so it couldn't hurt to add it.

 

I'm not into the personal attacks on your for your post, but you should have indicated in your first post that you were talking about high-end chess simulators. When you know that your counter-example is an anomaly rather than a representative example, it's only reasonable to point that out when you provide it, otherwise you look like a smart- with nothing better to do than be contrary, and that invites some elements of an internet forum to flame you.

Incidentally, how do you fare against these programs? I used to get beat by Battle Chess on DOS, so I wouldn't make it far, but I'm interested to know how close people are to being able to hang in with these programs. After all, your computer is likely much faster than Deep Blue was in 1997 when it beat Kasparov - is there any way a human could hang in with a modern chess simulator on a high-end computer?

 

I have 6GB in my desktop and tested out 12GB and noticed nothing improved in gaming. In fact several games the FPS actually dropped 5 or 6 %.

4GB is more than enough for gaming. I ended up sticking with 6GB in my desktop because I game more than I video edit and video editing was the only place the RAM helped, even then 6GB was usually fine.

My M11x has 4GB and RAM usually rarely even hits 2.5GB.