A question regarding RAM

[footballvideosofficial]

Hey guys, I have a question about RAM.

Let's say there are two PCs. They have the same components, only difference is one has 4gb RAM and the other has 8gb ram. Same speed.

If let's say they play a game that uses around 2gb of ram whilst running and they have all background tasks closed.

Will they both have the same fps/perfomance assuming none of them is using their RAM fully? Does it work like that or not at all?

 

[Doctor Rob]

The one with 8GB of ram will run smoother 100% sure.. and higher fps / performance. Just simply because if you have less ram it will use the hard drive more often and so that requires some extra time to process. Now if you have 8GB vs 16GB of ram you will not notice / not really have any difference when playing games 99% of the time. But with 4GB you will notice its a lot slower then 8GB in just about 99% of games. (maybe if you were using like XP or something like that you may not notice the difference. but with Widows 8 and above you will for sure (IF you are on Mac then I have no idea).

 

[geofelt]

They will perform the same assuming they both are either in single channel or dual channel mode.
The assumption that they only use 2gb may be suspect.

I would not today buy anything less than 8gb.

 

[clutchc]

I agree with geofelt. But the 2GB RAM scenario might not be that easy to verify. RAM usage is dynamic and can change.

 

[littleleo]

By both being equal I assume they are both using a 64bit O/S. The model with the larger RAM has more resources, so it should run the game a better.

 

[derekullo]

The previous posts are correct in saying that 8 gigabyte system would perform better than the 4 gigabyte system.

But I don't feel it was answered completely.

The reason 8 gigabytes of ram is faster than 4 gigabytes of ram when running a game that only uses 2 gigabytes of ram is because Windows itself takes up ram.

Even with all programs closed and all non-essential services stopped you would be hard pressed to reduce Windows 10 or even Windows 7 to below 2 gigabytes.

While typing this on my Windows 10 laptop with a single chrome tab open I am using 2.9 gigabytes.

8 gigabytes of ram is a sweet spot due to allowing windows to use 3-4 gigabytes of ram with the remaining 4 gigabytes being used for gaming.

Having said that compared to the cost of the rest of the system ram is cheap.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232476 $155
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231886 $70

A difference of $85 for the top rated DDR4 kits on newegg.

8 gigabytes may seem like alot until you have a game open that is using 3 gigabytes of ram by itself but then you need to open 5 tabs in chrome for game related information.