What does ram do

[olliesimmonds]

So i only have 8gb of ram in my set up and i have been told to upgrade in which i will but what does it directly do and what will the benifit be if i upgrade to 16gb or 32gb. I mainly game both demanding and not demanding.

this is my set up to give you an idea:
5 4690k Devils Canyon 4.3ghz
Corsair H55 water cooling
Gigabyte Z97X-SLI
AMD 7970 OC 3GB
Corsair CX750M
2x4gb Kingston Hyper x 2400mhz dual channel
Crucial M500 SSD 256GB

I also run 3x1920/1080p monitors

 

[RCFProd]

For multitasking it would be useful. Do you leave a lot of other programs open when you play a game for example?

 

[olliesimmonds]

For multitasking it would be useful. Do you leave a lot of other programs open when you play a game for example?

not really but i would like to start recording while playing soon.

 

[RCFProd]

Not really necessary then to be fair.

For recording you can use AMD Game DVR, Dxtory, Mirillis Action, OBS and you'll be fine.

 

[olliesimmonds]

Not really necessary then to be fair.

For recording you can use AMD Game DVR, Dxtory, Mirillis Action, OBS and you'll be fine.

okay thanks. but what does it do will it speed up my pc egt

 

[reedo_43]

It will not speed up you pc. It will allow you to run more programs at once. The only time it will help is if you actually run out of memory and the system pages to disk which is very slow. I your case I do not believe it is necessary.

 

[olliesimmonds]

It will not speed up you pc. It will allow you to run more programs at once. The only time it will help is if you actually run out of memory and the system pages to disk which is very slow. I your case I do not believe it is necessary.

im wwatching a film on my third monitor and its taking 70% or memory up?

 

[Karadjgne]

Ram is a bank. All the sources of data go to the bank first, that allows the cpu to pull what it needs and apply where it needs.

Too much ram is fine, or just have a large account, so to speak, but not enough ram sucks, as data is reshuffled, told to wait, put on hold etc. This results in your cpu working harder than it has to as it now has to prioritize data usage. So a screen may move just fine by itself, but add keyboard commands, mouse movement, other variables like physX demands during explosions or rain, and you end up with loss of fps at least, and stuttering / tearing is common too. DirectX is not just gpu instructions, but also cpu instructions, and too little ram puts a squash on both.

As it stands right now, 8Gb is a recommended minimum for heavy gaming, most games not using the full @6Gb that's left over after Windows takes its share, but some games come pretty close.

Other apps like rendering can easily use 128Gb of ram as all that video data is streamed through for processing, but that's serious professional usage like used by LucasArts etc, but for the most part, everyday home users benefit most from 16Gb to 32Gb as that's common sizes that still fit in budget since it's amateur hour, not professional development.

16Gb would be fine for what you intend, more ram than that wouldn't show enough return to be worth the price unless this was a paying job based on time restraints.

 

[dorsai]

I can't see any benefit to going above 8 gig for gaming. I game all the time (BF4, TitanFall, CoD AW...etc) and frankly I very rarely see a memory footprint above 4 gig in main system memory. Having the setup you listed above I would think a GPU upgrade to drive those 3 monitors would provide more benefit than adding more ram. The new AMD 300 series should be out soon...

Photoshop is the only application I have ever run that would actually load beyond 8gig of system memory...

 

[Karadjgne]

Which is exactly why I have 16Gb for the last few years, even though it's only for when my wife uses it. I sleep better that way.