RAMs effect on game streaming

TKTheBoss

Honorable
Mar 1, 2013
1
0
10,510
Hello, I am looking into a gaming desktop and my friend has suggested the Dell xps 8500. He plays a lot of PC games like Star Wars the old republic and said that it would meet all of my gaming needs.

When I told him I might acquire the same PC, he told me that if I wanted to stream games in high resolution, I would need more than the 8GB that comes standard on this PC, so I thought I might upgrade to 12. It would be 12GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz - 4 DIMMs.

I think he might have mixed up streaming with video rendering, so I just wanted some clarification on whether I should get the extra 4gigs or stick with 8.
 
If you only for games then 8GB RAM is more than enough, you are better to use the money to upgrade the GPU, if you buy the HD7770 GPU xps8500 version, to the HD7870 one. If you like your friend doing video rendering too, get the total 16GB instead of 12GB. And make sure get two of the RAM kit (like 2X4GB) to run dual channel mode. Even there is not much difference between dual and single channel mode performance.

Read the review for how much ram you need for the games. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-8.html
Dual and single channel performances. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PARALLEL-PROCESSING,1705-11.html