News Steam gamers hurry to upgrade to 32GB RAM, and Linux breaks above 2% user share milestone, in latest survey

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Well, yeah.

Windows by itself takes up what, 5 to 10gb? The most common way to solve this problem is to throw hardware(DRAM sticks) at it.

Games are naturally getting larger over time as well.
 
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I really doubt that more than 1% of users are upgrading their memory to utilize Microsoft's AI Moneygrab.
It's actually half the reason why I'm in the Linux percentile, now. The other half being that I hate ads in my OS, and I hate forced upgrades, and I hate how broken their software's become.
 
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I mean I don't know if I was responsible for that entire 0.02% of less than 4GB? But I had someone give me a mega-potato Core 2 Duo notebook with 2GB in it (and I ended up with a second one with 3GB). Yes, I got the message on them to submit the info to the Steam Hardware Survey! No I'm not crazy enough to actually try to RUN any Steam games on there... OK I admit I did (edited Proton settings to disable Vulkan use and use the OpenGL-based WineD3D instead..), and it was horrible. But it has a REALLY nice keyboard, trackpad, and screen, and the Steam Remote Play on it is silky smooth!

When I have a friend over and we both want to game (often Deep Rock Galactic, highly recommended!), instead of being holed up in front of my desktop, I can play on the couch on one notebook remote play and he can play a game directly on the newer notebook.

My real gaming systems, my modern notebook has a 11th gen Intel CPU with "Intel Xe" graphics and 20GB RAM. Mesa driver for it is very good, full OpenGL, Vulkan, and so full DX9/10/11/12 (except raytracing I think) for Windows games. My desktop has a Coffee Lake i7-8700, 32GB RAM, and Nvidia GTX1650. Those both have Ubuntu 22.04, haven't ugpraded them to 24.04 yet.

(With stock Ubuntu 24.04 it booted to desktop with about 500MB RAM free; with KDE (I didn't reinstall Kubuntu, just installed the kubuntu-desktop package) about 1GB.) So barely enough to run Steam, let alone Steam AND a game. Besides the GPU having virtually no 3D capabilities (OpenGL 2.1/DirectX9 with almost no shader capability.. shader model 1?).

Shockingly, this 18-year-old GPU in this thing isn't just "still supported" by some driver they didn't remove yet, it's supported by the fully modern Mesa Gallium 3D drivers written from scratch within the last 4-5 years. Which doesn't affect it having virtually no 3D capability by modern standards but is still remarkable that support extends back THAT far.
 
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Just received the survey for my first time lol. I always wondered how they collected the data, I looked through Steam if there was a page to submit PC info lol
 
diminishedfifth said:
Just received the survey for my first time lol. I always wondered how they collected the data, I looked through Steam if there was a page to submit PC info lol
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You can't make Valve include your hardware info. That would open the doors to skewed survey results on account of biased users, which is against Valve's policy of skewing survey results using their in-house methods. /s

You can always compare your hardware in Help -> System information.
 
hotaru251 said:
i mean the people going to 32gb are likely older ppl buying new machines and modern machines use ddr5 which most common module is 16gb and you want to run 2 modules for peak performance so not a shock.
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I recently put 64 GB and 32 GB of DDR4 into two old machines, Comet and Skylake. Because it was pretty cheap. About $70 for the 32 GB, and a year later, $90 for the 64 GB.

Looks like most DDR5 is at least $90 for 32 GB right now. That's probably worth aiming for. When 48/64 GB reaches ~$100, aim for that instead.
 
usertests said:
I recently put 64 GB and 32 GB of DDR4 into two old machines, Comet and Skylake. Because it was pretty cheap. About $70 for the 32 GB, and a year later, $90 for the 64 GB.

Looks like most DDR5 is at least $90 for 32 GB right now. That's probably worth aiming for. When 48/64 GB reaches ~$100, aim for that instead.
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16 Gb is just barely enough, 32Gb is more than enough, and 48 and 64 is wasted RAM. If you know you will put it to use, then by all means buy it. But right now 32Gb is both fast and future-proof enough.

Don't ignore that 48 and 64 DDR5 kits currently offer lower speed and higher latency. On top of not using the extra RAM, the RAM that you do use will be slower.
There are fast, large kits but they cost a fortune.

For a new machine, 16Gb is not recommended unless it's a more humble system. 32 Gb is the sweet spot right now unless the PC is going to be doing serious video editing or rendering. For gaming it's the ideal.

DDR4 kits suffer less from latency issues and i've seen more 64/96/128 kits than DDR5. This will change, but right now it's something to consider. DDR4 is far from obsolete.
 
hotaru251 said:
i mean the people going to 32gb are likely older ppl buying new machines and modern machines use ddr5 which most common module is 16gb and you want to run 2 modules for peak performance so not a shock.
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Or, people that use their system for more than just gaming.

My main box has 64GB, due to large CAD models.
But would be counted as 64GB in Steam.
 
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35below0 said:
16 Gb is just barely enough, 32Gb is more than enough, and 48 and 64 is wasted RAM. If you know you will put it to use, then by all means buy it. But right now 32Gb is both fast and future-proof enough.

Don't ignore that 48 and 64 DDR5 kits currently offer lower speed and higher latency. On top of not using the extra RAM, the RAM that you do use will be slower.
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Windows can "fill" 32 GB with cached standby data easily, no trouble at all. My 64 GB system doesn't get filled (only had it for a while and have not done anything big on it) but some more does get used.

I'm arguing that people should plan to spend a fixed amount of money on the RAM. So if 48/64 GB becomes as cheap as 32 GB was, go for it, especially if it is cheaper per gigabyte. I don't care if it's overkill. If RAM becomes $0.10/GB in the future, I'll probably buy a terabyte of it.

Latency/speed shouldn't be ignored, but most people aren't going to notice it, with the possible exception of an APU user.
 
For the past 2-3 years I've been installing 32GB for all office desktop PC builds, and laptop users as well, because I've seen cases where users go over 16GB of RAM when opening lots of tabs and running multiple programs, and I always want my clients to be happy. For gaming builds I've been installing 32GB since like DDR4 because available.
 
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A year ago I upgraded my RAM from 16GB to 32GB for around 85 Euros. Today you can get the same kit for 65. It could be a lot of people don't need the upgrade, but are doing it anyway because RAM prices are low.
 
usertests said:
Latency/speed shouldn't be ignored, but most people aren't going to notice it, with the possible exception of an APU user.
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Gamers and to a certain extent AMD CPU users will notice it. DDR5 comes as high as CL40 or 44. A 32Gb kit that is say, 6000 mhz CL30 isn't very expensive, but 64? That will cost money. If it's cheap, yeah why not but it isn't.

I don't see Windows filling 32 Gb with cache data or anything else. Do you have something specific in mind? Haven't seen it use more than 16 though i haven't tried very hard to use up as much RAM as possible.
I agree that 16 is too low for a new PC unless the budget is hella tight, but my whole point is that double that is more or less the only option as i don't think 24 Gb is a sensible choice.

32 isn't going to be filled up in a hurry but it's what a new system should have. In a few years, memory usage approaching 24-32 may become more common but we're not there yet.

64 is double that. And it comes with a latency penalty unless you're willing to fork over more than $200. If it's needed, there is no question. But if 64 is not going to be used or even stressed for 4-5 years, then spend the money elsewhere and enjoy a fast 32 Gb kit.

Some people do need 128 or more, but those are very rare cases. The vast majority is only now moving to 32.

If the price is right, or if it's something you really want by all means. Hell, i do have 64 Gb but i don't care about latency and run it stock. I also haven't used 16 Gb of the 64 so i know i didn't need to buy that kit. *shrug*

I don't want to make anyone's mind up about this, i just want to discourage people from believing that having 64 Gb is neccessary or useful "future-proofing" because it is neither. What they choose to do is up to them.
 
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Admin said:
Steam Hardware Survey results show gamers moving up from 16GB to 32GB. Linux also a big winner, jumping up to more than 2% of Steam users.

Steam gamers hurry to upgrade to 32GB RAM, and Linux breaks above 2% user share milestone, in latest survey : Read more
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NedSmelly said:
Probably Steam Deck.
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Yes, probably, but I recently left Windows for Linux and I can't imagine that after the news about Recall and all the general BS from Microsoft lately that I'm the only one.

In any case, the author of the article can't math. He said going from 1.9 to 2.32% is a 0.42% increase. The school system has failed him. That is actually an increase of over 22% and if he had the gumption to graph it he'd see quite a spike.
 
Aleax23805 said:
Yes, probably, but I recently left Windows for Linux and I can't imagine that after the news about Recall and all the general BS from Microsoft lately that I'm the only one.
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Understand this sentiment - I'm going to migrate all my non-Win11 compliant machines to Mint LMDE next year when Win10 gets rug pulled.
Aleax23805 said:
In any case, the author of the article can't math. He said going from 1.9 to 2.32% is a 0.42% increase. The school system has failed him. That is actually an increase of over 22% and if he had the gumption to graph it he'd see quite a spike.
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They're half-right. Absolute increase of 0.42%, relative increase of 22%. Yay for biostatistics classes :)
 
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