Is 12GB RAM enough ???

[moizurrehman4]

Just want to know if 12GB ram is enough to run the latest and upcoming AAA titles on 1080p at highest settings without having to close every single chrome tab and a few applications running in the background. :/

Specs are:
CPU: Core I5 7600
GPU: GTX 1060 6GB
Ram: 3x 4GB DDR4 @ 2400MHz
OS: Win 10 Pro 64-bit

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Well first off, why have a bunch of stuff running in the background while gaming? specifically a web browser like chrome with a bunch of tabs open?

Secondly, pretty much every single AAA title out right now only requires that your system have 8GB recommended and this is because the game is not expected to use more than 6GB (because about 2GB on average is used by the OS)

Thirdly, I wouldn't expect your system to perform as well as it should/could because you have three sticks of RAM which means that the first two (assuming they are in the proper A1/B1 or A2/B2 slots) are going to run in dual channel mode making them twice as fast collectively. the third single stick will run at it's rated speeds. In a perfect world, the game you are playing would load everything up onto the first two sticks and perform as it should with everything else you are doing on the system at the same time running off of the third single stick. but alas, this is not the case since the sticks work together to give you a total amount of memory, all of the data that is written to them is written wherever the system feels like it and this could mean that the data from your game is split up across the three sticks and if some of this data is on the single stick then that data will be delivered at that sticks rated speed making all of the data on the other two sticks be delivered at those speeds as well essentially making as if all of the sticks were running in single channel making things slower overall.

But yeah, I'd say that 12GB in general is enough RAM capacity. But with that lone wolf stick of RAM you could potentially run into problems down the line. I'd say don't be running a bunch of programs that you aren't even using while you are playing your games since you are playing the game and not using them. But to each their own. However, I don't expect you are going to be running the latest AAA titles at their max settings in 1080p with 60fps on a GTX 1060 6GB. Unfortunately the card isn't beefy enough to handle that. you could run the next level down of settings at about 60fps on average with the occasional fps drop and high preset which is another level down with solid 60fps across the board with the more rare fps drop that isn't much of a drop at all and would probably only last for a second or two.

So to sum things up:
GTX 1060 6GB = not playing with maxed out graphics in the first place.
12GB RAM = in general enough RAM but due to the lone wolf single stick you could experience a slow down in performance at times

So overall to answer your question: yes, it is enough RAM to run your games AND have stuff open in the background.
My recommendation? Get another identical 4GB stick of RAM and put it in, that way you can have dual channel performance per pair of sticks and you'll also have 16GB of RAM at that point so you'll be extra good to go with background tasks while gaming.