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How much RAM do you wish you had?

cybernettr
Superstar
Of course, more RAM is always better, and it's easy to say, "as much as possible," but within reason, (and within the limits of your current or next PC) how much are RAM do you wish you had? (for both Medium and regular VR)?  

What is the maximum capacity of your current VR PC, and if money were no object, would you max it out it today?  

If your system holds a maximum of 64, would it be wiser to go to 32 instead, knowing that in a couple of years you will be able to get 64 GB at the same cost that you can get 32 today? Will Medium almost never need 64 or will it eat it up greedily for some of the more complex sculpts and operations? 

 I asked Google about RAM and it gave this handy little list of frequently asked questions on the search page, including how much memory you need.  Knowing that computer advice can go out of date within a couple of months, this Is was what it offered from extremetech > gaming: 

"A lightweight system today can get by with 4GB of RAM. 8GB should be plenty for current and near-term future applications, 16GB gives you comfortable space for the future, and anything over 16GB is likely overkill unless you specifically know you need it (such as for video editing or audio post-production)."
www.extremetech.com › gaming › 2224...

(A Dell tech openly admitted to me that Alienware sadly underequipped it's high-end gaming systems with only 16 GB of RAM.)
54 REPLIES 54

matskatsaba
Adventurer


For most people, 16GB should be more than enough. I have 32GB on my main dev rig but honestly it barely ever goes past 16GB that I've noticed.


Yeah i wasn`t accurate enough, by "32gb is plenty" i meant "plenty for the lifetime of your current cpu", or rather, the most you can actually use without abusing ramdrive.
I went for 64gigs because i use the rig for extreme projects too (like, 4 keyboards, 4 mouses, 4 monitors for a single-machine lanparty, running beta apps from ramdrive, rendering animations, and so on).

cybereality
Grand Champion
I actually haven't tried Medium yet, so maybe the RAM is worth it for that. I was speaking more for PC gaming, as most games don't take advantage of over 16GB.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

MattHickman
Rising Star
Most of our machines on the Medium team are 32GB but my home machine is 16 and while I notice it on big complicated sculpts I don't notice it for most of my sculpts in Medium. For games 16 is plenty... for now. 🙂

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


I actually haven't tried Medium yet, so maybe the RAM is worth it for that. I was speaking more for PC gaming, as most games don't take advantage of over 16GB.


I tried Medium... but wow I suuucck. All I could do was make a foam donut, and spray it orange.

cybernettr
Superstar

matskatsaba said:

Yeah i wasn`t accurate enough, by "32gb is plenty" i meant "plenty for the lifetime of your current cpu", or rather, the most you can actually use without abusing ramdrive.


 I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me the useful life of your CPU is reflected by the upgradability of your RAM.  That is, if the manufacturer makes it upgradable  to 64GB, that's because they anticipate that the CPU will still be viable at the time that many apps or games will demand that amount of memory.  Also, how do you abuse ramdrive? 

zork2001
Heroic Explorer
there is nothing someone who is asking about ram is doing that needs anywhere close to 16 or even 8 GB. You can think of the amount of ram you have as the bigger the cup size you have. For every program you have open and running in the background you are poring more water into the cup; as long as you are not filling the cup up it does not matter how big your cup is, - most people are only using 30 to 50% anyway.

also you can easily check it is not a mystery. Ctr alt del - Task manager (processes tab) look at the Memory column to see the % of memory being used.

nalex66
MVP
MVP

zork2001 said:

there is nothing someone who is asking about ram is doing that needs anywhere close to 16 or even 8 GB.


Did you read the thread? He's asking specifically because of Medium, which is very RAM-hungry. The devs have said that for larger scenes, 32 or more GB is recommended. With 16 GB, you get "low memory" warnings pretty often. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

nosferalatu
Protege
With the latest 1.0.4 update (released today), Medium uses a lot less memory. I think this will especially help the 8 and 16 GB machines.
One trick you can do with this update: if you get the low memory warning, try saving and reloading your sculpt. The new version will filter out empty blocks when saving (meaning, if you made clay and then erased it, those empty areas are not saved to the file). The same filtering happens when you do any of the layer operations (like increase resolution).

matskatsaba
Adventurer



matskatsaba said:

Yeah i wasn`t accurate enough, by "32gb is plenty" i meant "plenty for the lifetime of your current cpu", or rather, the most you can actually use without abusing ramdrive.


 I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me the useful life of your CPU is reflected by the upgradability of your RAM.  That is, if the manufacturer makes it upgradable  to 64GB, that's because they anticipate that the CPU will still be viable at the time that many apps or games will demand that amount of memory.  Also, how do you abuse ramdrive? 


Yes and no.
I have an older xeon server and its pretty much mediorce even though there`s 32gigs in it.
Boards are cpu dependant and there are featuures you might want to upgrade for.
In my case (aside the fact that it wasn't fast enough for VR), the need to accomodate 2+1 video cards and still have enough bandwidth for the ssds, and while it wasnt really necessary, the old cpu didn't have functions that some apps were relying on for optimal performance.
Well, I imagine not many use server machines, so from a non-(end)gamer perspective, you are right.
But then again, non hardcore gamers will be fine with 32gigs for the next 8 years.
Or at least, this is how I see it.
Mind, that most of the cases you can`t install 64gigs in the first place. Well, if you use a server machine, you can buy that for relatively cheap, but an average machine has like 4 slots, and doesn`t work with server modules.
For this particular board, the maximum is 128gigs (8x16 ddr4ecc) and the chipset is okay with it up till 260 gigs should the stores start to sell 32gig modules, but even 64 was silly of me. Or megalomaniac, whatever.

By abusing ramdrive, i meant one of these scenarios:
Running os from ramdrive
running huge apps from ramdrive
using ramdrive as swap memory 
so nothing that has a real point (considering the machine itself).
I mean, after pressing the power switch, by the time the monitor disengages powersaver, I have desktop already.
Using a bunch of samsung sm951 ssd for storage and system, so just talking about miliseconds differences when playing around with ramdrive.
So in short, doing ridiculous tweaks for questionable benefit 😄

BrokenSymmetry
Heroic Explorer
16G for current gen of games. 32G for future proof. I would say.