64-Bit: Memory-Hungry Graphics Cards?

[Skurge]

I've never heard of this before, could someone shed some light on it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-6.html

 

[toyota]

I certainly have never heard this before.

In a 64-bit system with a powerful graphics card, 8 GB of RAM really is a must if you're going to play demanding games. This is the case regardless of whether you're using 32-bit or 64-bit applications. However, even more than 8 GB of RAM can be subjectively noticed while playing. There is no real need for 16 GB of RAM, though. Going with 8 GB is quite enough unless you're running some taxing application in the background. We’ll comment more on this subject later, because the problem is often overestimated, as shown in our 64-bit gaming benchmarks.

 

[BFG10K]

A lot of that article didn’t sit right with me. Especially the GTA4 artifacts with “only” 4 GB system RAM suddenly vanishing when another 4 GB is installed.

 

[Skurge]

A lot of that article didn’t sit right with me. Especially the GTA4 artifacts with “only” 4 GB system RAM suddenly vanishing when another 4 GB is installed.

It was a bizarre article. I don't remember GTA didn't have artifacts with me. Also the thing about higher textures as well.

 

[Mistwalker]

A lot of that article didn’t sit right with me. Especially the GTA4 artifacts with “only” 4 GB system RAM suddenly vanishing when another 4 GB is installed.

While I can actually understand that happening in GTA4 depending on the settings, recommending 8GB as a minimum for gamers based solely on GTA4 (a console port with horrifically unoptimized texture management) and a Half Life 2 mod specifically designed to use massive amounts of memory is what doesn't sit right with me.

None of the other games' performance budged at all with higher RAM amounts, and I'd bet you could bench any other dozen games with next to zero benefits as well.

I like the concept behind the article, but the very specific cases highlighted in the gaming section made it seem written to sell memory. I know it's pretty cheap these days, but they really need to provide more information.

 

[Jacky60]

A lot of that article didn’t sit right with me. Especially the GTA4 artifacts with “only” 4 GB system RAM suddenly vanishing when another 4 GB is installed.

Well I can say for sure that when one stick of my Corsair 1600mhz (that can only run at 1200mhz on my overclocked i7) failed the pop ups and slow texture drawing in Arma2 became really problematic. When I replaced the 4gb (yes I know it needed trichannel 6g) with 6gb on Kingston 1800 Mhz ram that WILL run at 1600Mhz at my overclocked settings the game feels MUCH better-no waiting for textures to draw which did occur even when 6gb of corsair was working at 1200mhz.

So I reluctantly conclude that more -preferable much more and faster memory actually does make a big difference in games requiring lots of textures to be streamed from HD or memory.

 

[Seero]

I am guessing it has something to do with superfetch.

 

[tyl998]

I have 6GB of ram and my system ahs never used even above 70% of the ram outside of stress/stability tests. This is with multiple youtube videos loaded into memory and a game running and Windows7

 

[Wizlem]

I don't think I'd take that articles advice and run out and upgrade from the 4GB I have in my home computer but if I was building new now, I'd say 4GB sticks are so cheap now it would be worthwhile to just spend the extra money and have a machine that isn't going to be ram limited at any point in the future. As for the machine I'm typing this on, it's 5 years old and has 8GB and I max that out all the time.

 

[darckhart]

so to be sure i'm reading this correctly, they say that this applies for 32 bit games running in the 64 bit OS? afaik, there's very few games that even ship with a true 64 bit version.

 

[happy medium]

Thats a bunch of crap, sounds like there trying to sell ram.

 

[Cerb]

Thats a bunch of crap, sounds like there trying to sell ram.

*nods*

I have 8GB and I'm not going back to less. But, if you aren't swapping applications all the time, and either forcing a very small swap, or no swap (badly designed programs that need swap can DIAF), then...meh. Only HL2 with a hi-res mod gets a hefty improvement.