Is 16GB ram needed for 8GB GPU OR i7 8700k?

[Praviin Samuel]

I have read in many forums as i7 8700k or a 8GB VRAM GPU needs 16GB of ram to perform its best? or its a recommended thing? is it true?

I have i7 8700k with Asus R9 390X 8GB STRIX OC

 

[atomicWAR]

No but sorta if you are gaming. It is not 100% necessary but I would urge anyone doing a gaming build in this day and age to have at least 16GB of ram unless a super strict budget dictate otherwise. Many games now require 12-16Gb of ram under either minimum spec or at the least recommended spec. So Do with that what you will.

 

[atomicWAR]

The performance reasons have to do with windows using your swap file on your hard drive. When you play a game that needs that 16GB of ram on a 8GB system...your consistently using your swap file slowing things way way down. Between the latency of going so far from the CPU/Ram and the bandwidth limitations of SATA it can bring your processing power to a crawl. So basically yes to all three of your questions is the short answer.

 

[Praviin Samuel]

The performance reasons have to do with windows using your swap file on your hard drive. When you play a game that needs that 16GB of ram on a 8GB system...your consistently using your swap file slowing things way way down. Between the latency of going so far from the CPU/Ram and the bandwidth limitations of SATA it can bring your processing power to a crawl. So basically yes to all three of your questions is the short answer.

thats deep but thankyou

 

[boju]

Vram and system ram is continuously swapping between them and it's increasing as games become bigger especially open world. How much vram you use reflects also how much ram is recommended to reduce pagefile usage. There will always be some pagefile usage but if you can keep majority of game + graphic data within memory the better overall performance.

When 2GB vram cards were the norm 8GB ram was enough with games at the time. Games have increasingly gotten bigger and so has vram capacity. The OS already consumes 2GB of ram so that doesn't leave much and when ram runs out the next destination is the drive and with that brings potential for stutters.

An ssd would be a significant help with pagefile speeds on 8GB systems

16GB ram is recommended..for now.

 

[collin3000]

Also important is it will be better to do 2 8gb sticks for dual channel vs a single 16gb stick while will only run single channel

 

[mjbn1977]

16GB is recommended but not needed. It really depends how many programs and content you run at a time. But yes, some games benefit from 16GB.