1 year later: We really need 8gb for next gen?

With the release of new consoles with 8gb of RAM many people looked at their PCs and saw them as underpowered, the 8gb of RAM is still one of the main argumets of console fans for the strenght of their systems compared to many PCS

of course many things have to put in the right perspective like the 3gb of RAM reserved for OS and the fact that this remaining 5gb pool has to be splited by Vram and System RAM, but in theory console games could use 4gb for Vram and only 1gb for system RAM making a PC version of the game require a 4gb graphics card to run the game as good as the console version

because of this we saw in the last year a lot of new expensive graphics cards with far more than the common 2gb Vram and new games system requirements claiming to need 3,4 or even 6gb of Vram, the best example is Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, but many other games like Watchdogs, COD ghosts, Dead Rising 3 also appeared with high RAM or Vram requirements

in theory that would mean that a cheap PC with 4gb RAM + 2gb Vram would be outdated and uncapable of running games as good as a console, but what about real life? what ive found out is that all those games with no exception have fake RAM or Vram requirements, i could run all those games that require more than 4gb of RAM and more than 2gb of Vram with no limitations, and had worse performance only games that are clearly terrible console to PC ports or tottaly unoptmizaed on PC like COD ghosts or watchdogs, but there is also games that are the oposite, run well on PC and run like crap on console, but thats not PC or console faults but lazy developer's

in the case o Mordor check the numbers i get with the ingame becnhmark:

high textures + all else on ultra, 1080p

40fps avg

console settings i got from digital foundry

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-shadow-of-mordor-face-off

PS4 settings: texture high, mesh medium, lighting model high, shadow quality high, vegetation density medium, 1080p

48fps avg

Xbox One settings: texture high, mesh medium, lighting high, shadow quality medium, vegetation density low, 900p

68fps avg

not only the 3gb minimum requirement for Vram is fake, because i can run for hours with only 2gb on high textures 1080p and it never consumes more than 2000mb of my 2048mb Vram, while on 900p it dont even get to use more than 1500mb, i can also do it with far superior performance and settings than the consoles, also the 8gb system RAM requirement for this game like in many others is absurd, the game never uses more than 1gb of system ram, why would i need 8gb?

so for now, 1 year after the release of new consoles with "8gb RAM!!!!" im still trying to find a single game that my 4gb ram + 2gb Vram peasant PC cant run with console settings

I only have 640kb

I'm going with whatever Wasdie says here.

Not now, but we will probably need it

that pc you built is doing really well

Decided not to read due to excessive length and the failure of the education system in the US.

Too early to tell I suppose. Honestly though, I'm certain it will be put to good use. Developers always feel like they have plenty of leg room early on, but by the end of the gen they're squeezing every last drop. All we're seeing so far are crossgen titles and 1st round 'next gen' titles.

This isn't like Blu Ray all over again, which was somewhat overkill at the time. More ram is always a good thing as far as I know.

The recently released Advanced Warfare has issues if you only have 4GB of system RAM

Dead Rising 3 is the only current gen only title you mentioned and it was a rushed game to meet the xbone launch.

CoD AW for example uses almost 4gb of system ram so 6gb really is the true min req.

yeah, and for a game that totally looks past gen thats a real shame on those developers

the best game ive seen so far (graphics wise) is Ryse, it looks better than any PC game so far, but its recommended settings is 2gb Vram and the game uses 1gb of system RAM, dead rising 3 dont look nothing like next gen, i would count bf4 and watchdogs like next gen only titles because their past gen versions are simply not the same game

8 gb seems like enough for this gen. don't forget games will become more dmeanding as the gen progresses.

VRAM and just basic hardware efficiency is much more important. And by that I mean that maybe these consoles should have had better gpus, as opposed to the 8gb ram that isn't even being used.

Personally (I'm not sure how consoles manage their RAM), on PC a game has NEVER surpassed 3 gb of RAM usage. I'm talking some really demanding games here; Alien Isolation, Crysis, Wolfenstein TNO, Star Citizen, Evolve. None of them use more than 3gb RAM.

That's entirely irrelevant

I would figure that NBA 2k15 would cause it to. At max settings, it was eating up 2.7GB of vram on my 970 and that was at 1080.
Although the game isn't demanding, it used about 30% of my gpu. I'm surprised to see it use so much vram.

It will help later in gen when devs can gain experience with the hardware.

Whats to stop you putting in another 8GB or even 16GB? Oh wait.... consoles..... lulz.

PC gamers with rigs from years back before RAM got cheaper, also I don't really see how games such as Advance WarFare or even Watch Dogs need 6-8GB of ram

yeah, thats the advantage of PC, the other advantage is that you dont even really need to

I've had 24gb since late 2010. I rarely put it to use, but when I need it I'm glad it's there.

@leandrro: Have you noticed any stutter? Can you do a frametime benchmark even if with FRAPS comparring medium and high textures and post it here? People usually just boast about framerates but in situations like this with limited VRAM you can sometimes see the real stress more clearly with frametimes.

When do you need it? o.O

@parkurtommo: ram disk for quick access to his porn

My biggest thing is that developers can't seem to achieve 1080p60 on these new consoles without a struggle. That was supposed to be the standard last gen (the PS3 was touted to do dual 1080p @ 120 fps in 4D) and they still can't achieve it. Either that says something about the hardware being underpowered, or the developers being lazy or having ridiculous priorities.

The standard for system RAM on PC's now seems to be at about 8GB (that's what all pre-builts seem to come with) and video cards tend to ship with 1-2 GB's of on-board RAM. Top-of-the-line gaming rigs, tend to sport 16 GB of system RAM and now there are video cards shipping with 8 GB's of on-board RAM.

The consoles of this generation are going to be severely underpowered very soon.

Consoles have 8gb of unified ram, which at least 2 are reserved for os, that leaves them with 6gb of working ram, most gamers alreaady have 8gb ram + 2gb of vram, no pc game is coded in the way that uses so much vram, usually they are still kmore dependent on ram, using vram mostly for textures, so pc should have no problem at all.Should be noted since pc doesn't have an unified memory structure the size of ram needed should be a bit higher, id say a pc with 8gb ram and 3gb of vram should be ok for the gen, or at least big part of it.

yeah, a single 4GB stick costs 70 euros for me. Even if RAM requirements got bigger, slapping more of it in there would be easy and cheap.

I'd say 'ts teh VRAM req. that might cause some issues in the future.

For now, 2GB are fine. WD and Shadow of Morfor with high textures that require 3GB of VRAM run fine on my 2GB 760. Well, WD suffered a great degree of stuterring, mainly at first.

And the answer is....

^This.

...

No. I do a lot of multimedia contracting. Don't get me wrong, I'm not actually good at anything. I just know a wide array of software and I can talk the pants off of anyone. So I get good work.

It's usually video editing that eats ram alive, you'd be surprised, 24gb is considered chump change these days. Most guys I know work with 36gb minimum. 64gb seems to be the average. Massive PSB files (essentially Photoshop files that are too big to save as PSDs) can get pretty crazy too. A few weeks ago I was working with over 100 layers of 4k images. And on rare occasion I process 3d scan data which just like video editing, will utilize all the ram you have on board. And then there is texture painting in Mari.... That shit will bring any machine to its knees.

Compared to most gaming machines, my rig is a monster, but the sad truth is I actually need to upgrade.

4GB is perfectly sufficient for PC gaming at 1080p. 8GB is enough for gaming at higher resolutions, including 4K. You should only go above 8GB if you need to use the computer for memory-intensive tasks (aka. not gaming) like video editing.

For a gaming PC, it's better to have smaller but faster RAM than larger but slower RAM. It's also better to have RAM of lower latency and lower frequency (C9 1866Mhz), as opposed to higher latency and higher frequency (C11 2400Mhz).

The new consoles are struggling because of the choices made for the CPU and GPU. RAM isn't everything. You could put 64 GB of RAM in the PS4 and Xbox One and it wouldn't make much of a difference. 1080p is tough to achieve because of GPU choices and the developers unwillingness to turn some things down. And 60fps will be out the window because of the cell phone CPU in the new machines.

RAM speeds have little to no impact on gaming. Less than 1 frame on average between the top end and bottom end. The only application where I've seen RAM speeds actually have performance impact is Folding At Home and even though you have to be doing the seriously big beta units.

Beta tested in the future.

8gb of DDR3 is like $75 now.

Why does this thread exist?

So stutters and freezes are perfectly fine in graphic heavy games? Yeah **** 64-bit.

I guess his PC doesnt run any services, or programs in the background as well.

TC does realize that this is the first year new consoles have been on the market? Furthermore, most of the games that have come out for them have only been cross gen titles or either first gen attempts at their current systems?

PC will always have the advantage of being modded to a specific fit, however trying to scoff at what the consoles have at minimum is very short sighted and that will become very clear next year when true current generation titles start to coming out for these systems.

I thought most PC gamers had 16 GB just because it's relatively cheap and convenient; not to mention that Windows uses it for caching. My Windows 8.1 uses about 3GB and a further 7GB on Standby, leaving me with 5 GB doing absolutely nothing.

In other words, my games never really need to interfer with Windows Memory Management. It's also nice for SSDs like the Samsung 840 Evo, which can automatically handle a RAMDisk for caching.

So far we haven't seen any scenarios where the consoles beat a more powerful a pc with 2 GB vram, quite the opposite. But there could of course be cases where 2 GB vram simply isn't enough to run games at the same level as the consoles. My bet is that a 2 GB graphics card with much more power than the consoles will more often than not outperform the them. And a more powerful gpu with at least 3 GB vram will always outperform the consoles.

all i know is that when you try to use the internet browser while playing a game it gives the 'not enough system memory' and crashes my browser often. So those 8gb aren't enough or Sony doesn't even know how to incorporate a browser into their 2013 console properly

I thought both of the twins have 3 GB of that 8 GB dedicated to their OS functionality. Doesn't this mean that both machines are pretty much functioning with 5 GB of RAM? Its really not that next gen if that's the case.

Pretty much this, there's games out there that are 4gb+ already and they don't actually need that 4gb+ of ram (AW looks almost as worse as a 2011 game aka BF3). I know Star Citizen is gonna require at least 6gb, which is a given cause that game is gonna be a memory hog.

• complaining about too much power

only on system wars...

Next generation consoles currently seem to have absolutely nothing to do with progressive game-play and everything to do with attempting to integrate the freemium model from tablets as standard for a $90 game.

This seems to have been primarily push from publishers above all else. That and trying to turn it into a media player to wrangle in non gamers, so they can also be scammed shitless.

no sttuter in medium or high, from medium 900p to high textures 1080p i see no memory leak into system ram and no stutter,

im having a weird stutter when on menus and ingame screen messages appear, but its there no matter if on low 720p or high 1080p so i guess its not about memory, but again if not on menus or no messagens on screen it runs flawlessly with 35-55 fps on almost all ultra settings + high textures

thtas the reason for the name os the topic, at least for now all those 8gb!!!! look like PR BS