There's a quote often attributed to Bill Gates that goes something like,
no one would ever need more than 640 kilobytes of memory in their computer.
Well, turns out he never actually said that, but it got us wondering,
how much RAM do you actually need in modern times?
Well, let's start with the kind of RAM that most of us are familiar with,
the main system memory living inside your desktop or laptop PC.
It's quickly becoming common for budget computers to come with
4 gigabytes of RAM, while mid-range machines often have 8.
On the higher end, 16 gigs or even 32 gigs of memory is easy to find,
but is it worth paying a premium for that? Here's the deal.
Unless you're seriously cash-strapped, it's worth getting at least 8 gigabytes,
even if you're not planning to do anything with your computer beyond basic productivity,
web browsing, and watching fine YouTube videos like this one.
Many common tasks are quickly becoming memory hogs.
Even Google Chrome can eat into your memory very quickly
and take up a few gigs if you've got a lot of tabs open.
And while the browser does use a technique called tab discarding,
which removes unused tabs from memory and then reloads them when you access them,
you'll still get a noticeably smoother experience for everyday tasks
if you don't skimp too hard on your RAM. But what if you're gaming?
Well, the answer becomes a little more complicated. You see, many big-budget titles these days recommend 16 gigs of memory.
But the thing to keep in mind is that system requirements for games
often are not validated well, which you can learn more about right up here.
It turns out that many games that ask you to use a system with 16 gigs of RAM
can actually get by just fine on 8 with only a very marginal performance drop, if any.
However, as games get more complex, this may not be the case in the near future,
especially as some games actively do make use of more than 8 gigs of system memory
and only having 8 gigs can also hinder your ability to do anything else
while you're playing a game, such as streaming. So we'd recommend 16 gigs as a sweet spot for gamers and especially streamers,
unless you're playing less resource-heavy titles. Of course, many other boards have 4 RAM slots,
which makes upgrading to 32 gigs a cinch if you've got the money.
But investing in this much is probably only worth it
if you're working with lots of data at once, such as large photo sets
or editing high-resolution video, and especially if you're multitasking, creating high-resolution video
with edited photos in it. Furthermore, with how long it takes certain kinds of media files to render,
you'll probably want to use your rig for other things while your content renders in the background.
And this is where having 32 gigs of memory or more,
if you're into that whole 8K thing, can really come in handy.
As for 3D modelers, animators or scientists,
well, their memory requirements are basically limited
only by the size of the scenes or the data sets that they're working with.
Sounds expensive. But what if you're trying to figure out how much graphics memory
or VRAM you need on your graphics card? Even if two cards have the same graphics processing unit or GPU,
they can actually have different amounts of VRAM, and benchmarks often focus more on the GPU itself
than on how it performs across its various memory configurations.
So remember that the primary purpose of VRAM is to hold the graphics information that the GPU acts upon,
meaning that higher-resolution gaming and higher-resolution textures
will require more VRAM. This is also the case if you're using certain types of anti-aliasing
that involve rendering at effectively higher resolutions,
such as supersampling anti-aliasing. Many mid-range cards come with 4GB of VRAM,
which as a general rule should do you fine for 1080p gaming as of filming this video.
But you'll want at least 6 for 1440p and about 8 or more for 4K.
Just be sure to read reviews for the titles you want to play because some particularly demanding games,
or especially third-party mods like high-resolution texture packs,
might mean that a card with slightly more VRAM would be a great investment if you want to play at high quality.
Running out of VRAM can render no pun intended.
Certain games completely unplayable if you try to bump the resolution up too much,
meaning that 4K monitor you just shelled out a bunch of money for
won't be living up to its full potential. Kind of like that gym membership that you only use twice per year.
Or not at all right now.
Hand sanitizer, quick. Thank you.
We didn't even stage that. He just had hand sanitizer on hand.
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