8 gb or 16 gb

[Coolharmony2]

8 gb ram is it enought for the next years ?

The processor will be I5-3550 and the video card will be Saphire HD 7850.

Or i should to take 16 gb ram ?

I want to play some games.

Internet.

Video.

Word, Excel.

Thank-you !

 

[Burner27]

8GB should be fine. By 'next years' do you mean in 1 years' time or longer?

 

[jacktesterson]

Im running 8GB and see no reason to move to 16GB in the immediate future.

Hell, 4GB is fine for me with my notebook

 

[Coolharmony2]

next years : at least 2 years and more later after i don't know.

 

[N4n45h1]

Should be fine as long as you're not working with anything with special needs. I've been working with neural tetrode recordings lately and file sizes are in the many hundreds of GB. The lab computers have in excess of 64GB of memory for processing this data

 

[gmaster456]

8gb is fine.

 

[MontyAC]

8 gb is more than enough for gaming. Ram is cheap, I got 16 gb and use some of the ram as a ramdisk.

 

[GotNoRice]

Here's the thing.

32-bit apps/games are by default limited to only being able to access 2GB. IF the app/game is "Large Address Aware" (most aren't), then it will be able to use up to 3GB on a 32-bit OS or up to 4GB on a 64-bit OS, but that's it. 4GB per 32-bit process is a pretty hard limit that isn't going to go away until we see more games become 64-bit.

So choosing between having double or quadruple what any game could ever use - will deliver predicable results (no benefit).

 

[hhhd1]

depends on the software being used.

for virtual machines and some media editing software, more ram is always a plus.

no one can predict what games will require in the future.

get 4+4, and leave a room for upgrade if needed.

 

[thelastjuju]

8gb is more than enough. RAM is almost never going to be more of a bottleneck than the CPU, Video Card, and hard drive will be.

I've yet to run a single game that utilized a full 3 GB. Usually they hover around 2.5gb.

Those who think they are futureproofing by going with inordinate amounts of RAM need to think again. By the time we are actually putting that much RAM to use, it won't even fit in the slots on the mobo, since they'll be on a future revision of DDR by then rendering all that RAM obsolete anyway.

 

[jhansman]

Depends on your OS and what applications you expect to run. I'm at 16GB on Win7 64-bit and run both Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4, often together, so the $50 it cost me to go from 8 to 16GB was a no brainer. Who was it that said it's better to have it and not need it than the other way round?

 

[Skott]

8GB should be fine for the rest of you PC's life as far as general use and gaming goes. The extra ram doesn't really do anything for gaming. Now if you do or plan to do serious photo editing, animation, rendering, etc., then extra ram is beneficial and makes a difference.

 

[_Rick_]

I just bought 32GB, simply because memory is currently so damn cheap (~5.30 euro/GB).
Still paid less than for the CPU, IIRC.
With quad core CPUs a lot of RAM is convenient, as you can actually load up cores with big data sets and still retain a machine that is perfectly usable.

As an aside: Just with some basic applications Windows uses 7.7 of my 8GB RAM (of which some 3GB are paged and quickly claimable) but that's without running anything stressful beyond a web browser.

So, if you run anything memory intensive getting a 2x8 kit for 75 dollars sounds not unreasonable.

 

[BFG10K]

As an aside: Just with some basic applications Windows uses 7.7 of my 8GB RAM (of which some 3GB are paged and quickly claimable) but that's without running anything stressful beyond a web browser.

That's not normal. What "basic applications" are those?

I have Access, Excel, Word and multiple IE tabs open right now, and Windows isn't even using 1.5GB.

 

[_Rick_]

Well, I think Opera (not quite a hundred tabs, I think) takes about 1.5G by itself.
There's some two dozen icons in the systray, so Steam's running, Trillian with hald a dozen IRC channels, Foobar 2k with a bunch of medium long playlists, Mahogany mail client, two terminals, a DNS server, AD server, DHCP server, a few picture viewer and explorer windows, NFS client, possibly ASUS AI suite, nvidia, realtek, asus xonar, logitech, intel storage driver front ends, daemon tools,

Pretty normal, except for some of the server stuff, I guess. Still, most of the memory is being used for caching, (around 2.5GB) so I don't complain. Actual "bound memory" by applications and system is probably around 2.5GB? Not at that machine right now, so can't check.

Double check the four-line summary (total/caches/available/free) on your machine. It shouldn't have more than 500MB free or something is wrong. The amount of 'available' memory is what makes your machine feel fast. The more memory is available, the more memory is used by applications while also being in the page file. Once you request more memory than is 'free' some of the stuff from the 'available' pool will be dropped, and if you resume the other application will have to be loaded from disk. That's what often slows down a machine. Not as noticeably as when you completely run out of memory, but depending on the severity it can still be pretty bad.

 

[BFG10K]

Pretty normal, except for some of the server stuff, I guess. Still, most of the memory is being used for caching, (around 2.5GB) so I don't complain. Actual "bound memory" by applications and system is probably around 2.5GB? Not at that machine right now, so can't check.

Sorry, but that’s not normal, and neither is 7.7GB used out of 8GB.

You have a massively loaded system that always operates that way, even when idle.

Furthermore, you seem to be mixing cached RAM with used RAM, which creates even more confusion with your values.

Double check the four-line summary (total/caches/available/free) on your machine. It shouldn't have more than 500MB free or something is wrong.

Uh no, there’s nothing wrong at all. I haven’t opened enough stuff to trigger a bigger disk cache yet, and everything else I need is in the RAM already.

Even then, the size of the disk cache is always included with the available RAM anyway, so it won't lower the value.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I want to play some games.

Internet.

Video.

Word, Excel.

Thank-you !

Don't confuse him. I'm certain 4GB would actually be plenty for this usage.

 

[Aikouka]

I kept having issues with Firefox using ridiculous amounts of memory (2-3GB -- I've seen over 90% actual memory use), so I upgraded from 8GB to 32GB. Memory's so ridiculously cheap now that it only cost a little more than $100 to do that.

 

[thelastjuju]

I kept having issues with Firefox using ridiculous amounts of memory (2-3GB -- I've seen over 90% actual memory use), so I upgraded from 8GB to 32GB. Memory's so ridiculously cheap now that it only cost a little more than $100 to do that.

Obviously, in cases like this something is going horribly wrong. Instead of looking into the underlying problem, you simply put a giant, $100 band-aid over whatever is clogging your system up so badly.

Probably some sort of poorly made extension or add-on, or even some sort of nasty malware is incorporated into your browser.

I have firefox opened now with a dozen tabs opened, a few essential add-ons, even an audio stream going, and its taking up a mere 0.2 GB of my RAM.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I kept having issues with Firefox using ridiculous amounts of memory (2-3GB -- I've seen over 90% actual memory use), so I upgraded from 8GB to 32GB. Memory's so ridiculously cheap now that it only cost a little more than $100 to do that.

Yes, you have another problem. And besides I don't understand the reasoning. There are plenty of ridiculously cheap things you don't really need, do you buy all of them too?

 

[Smoblikat]

I just bought 32GB, simply because memory is currently so damn cheap (~5.30 euro/GB).
Still paid less than for the CPU, IIRC.
With quad core CPUs a lot of RAM is convenient, as you can actually load up cores with big data sets and still retain a machine that is perfectly usable.

As an aside: Just with some basic applications Windows uses 7.7 of my 8GB RAM (of which some 3GB are paged and quickly claimable) but that's without running anything stressful beyond a web browser.

So, if you run anything memory intensive getting a 2x8 kit for 75 dollars sounds not unreasonable.

Even if I run GTA IV/BFBC2 I still have never passed 4gb out of my 16gb, somthings not right with your system.

 

[bryanW1995]

Depends on your OS and what applications you expect to run. I'm at 16GB on Win7 64-bit and run both Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4, often together, so the $50 it cost me to go from 8 to 16GB was a no brainer. Who was it that said it's better to have it and not need it than the other way round?

Lot's of people have said that over the years, though I think that a few people said that in my RAM thread a few months ago.

@OP: get the 16gb if you can afford the extra $50. RAMdisk = winnning.

 

[Aikouka]

Yes, you have another problem. And besides I don't understand the reasoning. There are plenty of ridiculously cheap things you don't really need, do you buy all of them too?

I put off buying more RAM for quite awhile, but I grew tired of my RAM use getting to 75%+ on numerous occasions. I use a ton of tabs at home in Firefox, and what annoys me is how much it likes to cache. Firefox caches everything. Whether it's memory or your hard drive, Firefox loves to get its grubby paws on everything.

I used to move its cache folder to a mechanical HDD instead of my SSD. I didn't think that I needed to waste the write cycles on Firefox's silly need to cache. However, Firefox is awful when it comes to clean up. There were times when I closed Firefox where it sat churning at 25% CPU utilization (one core at 100%). I checked my disk activity (because the HDD indicator stayed solid for quite awhile and I could hear the HDD), and Firefox was workin' like crazy on that cache. I would just close it and manually delete the cache.

Now, it's back on my SSD!

 

[tweakboy]

For a Gamer or a high performance user 8GB is enough. However if you do Video Editing or run a DAW 16GB wouldnt still be enough. For me 64GB is perfect I can pre load samples and what not.

My dad has a Sandy 2600k A-DATA 120gb ssd and 8GB. He uses ton of apps he uses Photoshop He uses Adobe Premiere and makes DVD's. But no out of memory message yet. I told him to go to 16GB, I would tell you the same thing if you do the stuff my dad does on Premiere.

gl

 

[tweakboy]

The a-data wasnt my choice LOL he bought it fixed already, with OS on it and everything. cheap company cyberpower ,, the CPU fan is soo loud and doesnt have a controller its a JET, cuz he choose for them to OC the chip a little. They gave him this whack loud fan. anyhow.. gg and gl