When will 4 gb of memory be recommended for PC games?

[slugg]

Well, just as the title suggests.... lets hear it

thanks

 

[Soundmanred]

When it's necessary.
/thread.

 

[Bateluer]

The way things are progressing, likely within the next 2 years.

 

[Malladine]

I agree with Bateluer, probably within a few years

 

[FerraraZ]

I'd go as far as to say next year honestly we'd see the first recommended.

 

[Chosonman]

When software developers optimize their games for 64-bit computing.

 

[chizow]

When the box recommends it? At least 2 years. I'd recommend it now though if you're running more recent titles and hardware. There's games out now that will push you over 2GB and benefit from more RAM and a 64-bit OS.

 

[ochadd]

Originally posted by: chizow
When the box recommends it? At least 2 years. I'd recommend it now though if you're running more recent titles and hardware. There's games out now that will push you over 2GB and benefit from more RAM and a 64-bit OS.

I may be spoiled by still running XP but what games push you over 2GB? My machine was briefly around 1.7GB used while playing Assassins Creed and other than that I dont recall every going over 1.5GB.

The above numbers were total memory usage which include a software firewall, IM, and Windows processes.

I'm with you on the 2 years mark. I think anyone running XP will be fine until the next Microsoft OS released.

 

[SonicIce]

What percentage of PC gamers use 64-bit?

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: ochadd
I may be spoiled by still running XP but what games push you over 2GB?

Age of Conan. Doesn't seem to directly use much more than 2GB, but if you ever alt-tab to check something in a browser or run Ventrillo etc you will want more than 2GB.

 

[KaOTiK]

Originally posted by: ochadd

Originally posted by: chizow
When the box recommends it? At least 2 years. I'd recommend it now though if you're running more recent titles and hardware. There's games out now that will push you over 2GB and benefit from more RAM and a 64-bit OS.

I may be spoiled by still running XP but what games push you over 2GB? My machine was briefly around 1.7GB used while playing Assassins Creed and other than that I dont recall every going over 1.5GB.

The above numbers were total memory usage which include a software firewall, IM, and Windows processes.

I'm with you on the 2 years mark. I think anyone running XP will be fine until the next Microsoft OS released.

I've had Supreme Commander take up around 3gigs and 2.5 quite a few times. 81km map 8 players 1000 units each

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
What percentage of PC gamers use 64-bit?

Probably the same as the percentage of general users who use 64 bit. A small percentage overall, but I'd bet the majority of the enthusiasts with 4+GB of RAM are.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ochadd

Originally posted by: chizow
When the box recommends it? At least 2 years. I'd recommend it now though if you're running more recent titles and hardware. There's games out now that will push you over 2GB and benefit from more RAM and a 64-bit OS.

I may be spoiled by still running XP but what games push you over 2GB? My machine was briefly around 1.7GB used while playing Assassins Creed and other than that I dont recall every going over 1.5GB.

The above numbers were total memory usage which include a software firewall, IM, and Windows processes.

I'm with you on the 2 years mark. I think anyone running XP will be fine until the next Microsoft OS released.

I also just use total commit although its not fully accurate in terms of how much physical memory the game itself is using. However, along with OS overhead, page file, and super fetch the extra RAM is nice.

Anyways, a few of the games I've physically observed pushing total commit over 3GB are LOTRO, AoC (Closed Beta), Witcher, SupCom, CoH, Titan's Quest, STALKER. I've also read here from user reports that Hellgate: London benefits nicely from more RAM. Pretty much any game that's /largeaddressaware now and going forward. I'm pretty much at 2-2.5GB at least with any game running, but someone running XP might not go over 2GB all else the same due to Vista's higher overhead.

The differences can be subtle in games, the biggest performance benefit imo is much faster loading times for area revisits and less HDD thrashing/throttling. For some games, it can allow you to run higher resolution textures or allocate more RAM for caching textures (AoC and LOTRO both offer this feature).

I'd say the main benefit of moving to Vista now rather than later with Windows 7 would be for DX10. Some may say its not worth it or its too performance expensive, and although the latter may be true, the former certainly is not in games I have seen with DX10. Performance concerns will continually improve as GPUs get faster and the upcoming cards this month should certainly bring DX10 performance in games to a more bearable level.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
What percentage of PC gamers use 64-bit?

According to the Steam Survey only 3%. It is interesting though to note 38% have 2GB+, so gamers certainly are keen to more RAM improving performance. Vista's low adoption rate probably has a lot to do with it, as 80% are still using XP 32-bit. But ya I'd say the % is much higher at tech sites like this one, I believe Guru3D had a poll a few months back showing ~30% using 64-bit and in this month's poll, they have around 40% DX10 users when its only ~10% in the Steam survey.

 

[bamacre]

With 4GB kits being far less than $100, the real question is, who cares?

 

[Calculator83]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: SonicIce
What percentage of PC gamers use 64-bit?

According to the Steam Survey only 3%. It is interesting though to note 38% have 2GB+, so gamers certainly are keen to more RAM improving performance. Vista's low adoption rate probably has a lot to do with it, as 80% are still using XP 32-bit. But ya I'd say the % is much higher at tech sites like this one, I believe Guru3D had a poll a few months back showing ~30% using 64-bit and in this month's poll, they have around 40% DX10 users when its only ~10% in the Steam survey.

Ah, NO? this has nothing to do with keen. Its just n00bers with cheapo 2 gig ddr2 stix

 

[manowar821]

If you run Vista, I already do recommend 4GB for gaming.

 

[jellyrole]

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-Bit with 2x2GB OCZ Platinum 1000MHz RAM. It's treating me much better in Vista than my 2GB was.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: bamacre
With 4GB kits being far less than $100, the real question is, who cares?

Because the next revision of chipsets from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD will be DDR3. And DDR3 is going to carry a price premium for a while yet.

Also, EQ2, Gothic 3 and Supreme Commander are the games that I've personally seen break the 2GB mark, with SupCom pushing 3.5 some times.

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: manowar821
If you run Vista, I already do recommend 4GB for gaming.

QFT.

DDR2 is so cheap you can get 4GB so the question is 'Why not?'. We already are seeing games like those on the UE3 engine (Bioshock, Gears of War, UT, Mass Effect) that benefit from multiple cores and extra memory.

 

[BladeVenom]

MS pushed 32 bit Vista, and not the 64 bit version. So I don't see 4 GB of memory being necessary till after Windows 7.

 

[Zenoth]

With my Oblivion and 96 mods plus custom textures at only 1280x960 I already break 2.2GB. I wouldn't say that vanilla, un-modded Oblivion does that though, perhaps it averages around 1.2 to 1.6 I'm not sure anymore I haven't played vanilla Oblivion since at least a year or more. The point is just Oblivion being one such memory-hungry game, potentially that is. Also Dark Messiah of Dark and Magic goes as high as 1.8GB after three hours of game-play or so.

There's a good number of games that can benefit from more than 2GB, but I'd say that 3GB is enough, however who sells bran new packages of 3GB of RAM? It's always a single stick or in pairs, no way people would get 3GB in pairs or just one stick of 3GB, so of course, not many choices but to jump in the 4GB wagon if you do need more than 2GB. And I agree with Vista being memory-hungry.

 

[ja1484]

Soon.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: bamacre
With 4GB kits being far less than $100, the real question is, who cares?

Because the next revision of chipsets from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD will be DDR3. And DDR3 is going to carry a price premium for a while yet.

Also, EQ2, Gothic 3 and Supreme Commander are the games that I've personally seen break the 2GB mark, with SupCom pushing 3.5 some times.

are you kidding? really?

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: bamacre
With 4GB kits being far less than $100, the real question is, who cares?

Because using XP I am capped at 3.25 or whatever the maximum for the OS is.

A game that uses 4GB would also require Vista - and that's a pretty bad selling point.