🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 23:59:12 -0000, "Trimble Bracegirdle"
<no-spam@never.spam> wrote:

>With Windows 7 & (just starting to use) Windows 10 .
>My i7 has 16GB RAM in Dual Channel -
>The Pagefile is set to fixed 512MB
>
>Question; Is that 16GB in fact of any use re. 8GB ?
>
>My system monitor rarely shows any usage greater than around 5.5 GB
>
>I loaded COD Advanced Warfare which uses 6 GB , started a game save
>then ALT Tab'ed out & started Fallout 4  game running , TABBED out
>& started a Deadfall Adventures game (a silly but fun modern FPS)
>I could have started up another 1 or 2.
>
>ALT TAB'd out to desktop with these 3 running.
>I can TAB switch between them with each appearing instantly.
>Monitor showed 11.5 GB RAM in use .
>I haven't compared Win 7 to Win 10 with this - I suspect same result.
>I copied a 6 GB game folder to another disc & RAM usage went from 2 GB to 
>4.5 GB.
>
>Running multiple games is not something I need.
>Is there any use for that 16 RAM in normal usage ?

I don't think there is really such a thing as "normal" usage, there is
only how each individual uses their computer.  For someone that
regularly uses Photoshop, does video editing, etc. then 16GB might be
the bare minimum.  

If by normal usage, do you mean does a single game benefit from it?
Highly unlikely, except that many gamers (myself included) tend to not
shut down every app or process before they launch a game.  If your
system is truly only a dedicated gaming system then your mileage may
vary with regard to how many apps you typically have open at once.

The main benefit of lots of RAM usually involves caching or just
prevention of disk I/O in general.  If the OS has to resort to disk
rather than RAM for any reason, slowdowns occur, obviously.  If you
don't run lots of various apps, are the type that reboots frequently
(I sometimes go weeks without a reboot or shutdown), then you might
not benefit as much from having those apps already in memory.

I've always found that most folks' perspective of the value of RAM is
simplistic and flawed, i.e. "I haven't gotten any out of memory
messages, therefore I don't benefit from more than _GB".  Running out
of memory is one thing and enjoying performance benefits is another.
Alt-tabbing between running applications as you mentioned in your
experiment is one example (though as you said, running multiple games
at once may not be particularly useful to most unless someone has some
game running as a point-farming exercise).

In terms of my own usage, the gaming PC I bought in 2008 had 8GB
initially.  A couple of years in, I started noticing that under
certain conditions, particularly after the move to Win7 64bit
(remember 64 bit gobbles more RAM), the system would start to get
sluggish.  Task Mgr showed I wasn't fully depleting RAM but reguarly
using a good portion of it at peak.  The slowdown would only occur
after some period of time, and would go away after a reboot.  So I
dropped another 4GB in just to see what would happen, problem solved.
For the life of the machine I never needed more than 12GB total.  I
still have that machine that I use as an experimental dual boot Server
and Win10 machine, it still runs great for general use even if its a
bit outdated for my current gaming standards.  

So, beyond 12GB is probably just future proofing for me, but less than
12GB is not enough for how I use my system without feeling some
occasional pain.  There are times when I probably make use of the
additional RAM, as I routinely run virtual machines with a minimum of
4GB allocated to them each (running one at a time).  I recently added
a new Mac to the endless computer collection and would not have
settled for less than 16GB.  I run VMs on that one too.

Could a gamer get by with 8GB?  I'm sure many can and do.  But, the
more RAM you have, the better your OS will treat you (up to a point)
and right now that sweetspot is probably 16GB for the average gamer
that's doing more with their machine than just gaming.