Why is it so heavy

[_galaxy]

This is not a critique. I just never saw a 32gb game besides the last of us part 2 on high configs.

I don't mind games breaking the 16gb barrier but like, what's up here? Surely they could have used 24gb (maybe they went all the way to 32 because it's 2!) why they need 32gb? 16gb is the minimum 32gb is to give the room to breathe for the game but why?

Also if that's the case, is it gonna release on consoles? Not only the RAM but let alone the CPU, the console CPU's are extremely weak!

[NaRf]

Hmmm...

[Robzilla]

probably assets that aren't yet used.

[NaRf]

Originally posted by Robzilla:

probably assets that aren't yet used.

LOl.... Did you read the OP?

[necuz]

It's nowhere near done and they're just trying to manage expectations.

[Delta Dagger]

Originally posted by _galaxy:

Also if that's the case, is it gonna release on consoles? Not only the RAM but let alone the CPU, the console CPU's are extremely weak!

The answer is simple: They gut the detail.

Besides, you saw how super awesome the new PS5 is, right? Totally worth the $700.

[_galaxy]

Originally posted by F-102A Delta Dagger:

Originally posted by _galaxy:

Also if that's the case, is it gonna release on consoles? Not only the RAM but let alone the CPU, the console CPU's are extremely weak!

The answer is simple: They gut the detail.

Besides, you saw how super awesome the new PS5 is, right? Totally worth the $700.

The playstation consoles always had a comically bad CPU

[CryonicSuspension]

Star Citizen was the first game that I saw blow past the 16 GB limit.

Basically, you need enough swap space, to swap between long term storage ( like a hard drive / ssd ) and working memory ( your computer's main RAM ).

The more graphically intensive a game, the bigger the memory footprint, that's needed ( and you can see that with the ever-increasing RAM chip requirements on video cards ).

In ye olden days, video cards used to have a small amount of RAM ( 1992 = 4 MB of video card memory ), but that was because RAM chips were as expensive as Bitcoin, so to get around that limitation, game developers would use working memory ( your computer's main RAM ) as a way of extending the limitation of a tiny on-board video card memory.

Summary: Your computer's ( main memory ) RAM bridges the gap between the shortfall between your GPU's memory chips and what the game requires to run it...

Before Star Citizen, 8 GB of ( main computer ) RAM was standard in gaming.

After Star Citizen, 16 GB of ( main computer ) RAM became standard.

When you've been building computers for ... 25 years and playing video games for... 42 years, you notice that those standards only hold for so long, before they are increased.

As soon as 16 GB became the standard in gaming, you needed to start thinking about future upgrades to 32 GB.

From a programming perspective, I think that game programmers lost the ability to code into a small footprint because... the developer of Freespace 2 managed to code a universe into the world's smallest footprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeSpace_2

In the 1970's and 1980's, coders would code in low level languages like assembly language and machine code, but those languages were phased out in favour of high level languages ( that's my take on it ). Machine code is coding in zeroes and ones. High level languages are closer to the English language ( easier / more convenient to code but they take up a larger footprint ).

Squishing large games into tiny memory footprints was an artform, in and of itself in the 1970's and 1980's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWoF5uVgbA

They are talking about the original Elite ( that was released in the early 1980's ):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

[mdcpaladin]

Originally posted by CryonicSuspension:

Star Citizen was the first game that I saw blow past the 16 GB limit.

Basically, you need enough swap space, to swap between long term storage ( like a hard drive / ssd ) and working memory ( your computer's main RAM ).

The more graphically intensive a game, the bigger the memory footprint, that's needed ( and you can see that with the ever-increasing RAM chip requirements on video cards ).

In ye olden days, video cards used to have a small amount of RAM ( 1992 = 4 MB of video card memory ), but that was because RAM chips were as expensive as Bitcoin, so to get around that limitation, game developers would use working memory ( your computer's main RAM ) as a way of extending the limitation of a tiny on-board video card memory.

Summary: Your computer's ( main memory ) RAM bridges the gap between the shortfall between your GPU's memory chips and what the game requires to run it...

Before Star Citizen, 8 GB of ( main computer ) RAM was standard in gaming.

After Star Citizen, 16 GB of ( main computer ) RAM became standard.

When you've been building computers for ... 25 years and playing video games for... 42 years, you notice that those standards only hold for so long, before they are increased.

As soon as 16 GB became the standard in gaming, you needed to start thinking about future upgrades to 32 GB.

From a programming perspective, I think that game programmers lost the ability to code into a small footprint because... the developer of Freespace 2 managed to code a universe into the world's smallest footprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeSpace_2

In the 1970's and 1980's, coders would code in low level languages like assembly language and machine code, but those languages were phased out in favour of high level languages ( that's my take on it ). Machine code is coding in zeroes and ones. High level languages are closer to the English language ( easier / more convenient to code but they take up a larger footprint ).

Squishing large games into tiny memory footprints was an artform, in and of itself in the 1970's and 1980's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWoF5uVgbA

They are talking about the original Elite ( that was released in the early 1980's ):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

Easily the best comment on the entire forums for this game. Great read

[_galaxy]

Originally posted by CryonicSuspension:

Star Citizen was the first game that I saw blow past the 16 GB limit.

Basically, you need enough swap space, to swap between long term storage ( like a hard drive / ssd ) and working memory ( your computer's main RAM ).

The more graphically intensive a game, the bigger the memory footprint, that's needed ( and you can see that with the ever-increasing RAM chip requirements on video cards ).

In ye olden days, video cards used to have a small amount of RAM ( 1992 = 4 MB of video card memory ), but that was because RAM chips were as expensive as Bitcoin, so to get around that limitation, game developers would use working memory ( your computer's main RAM ) as a way of extending the limitation of a tiny on-board video card memory.

Summary: Your computer's ( main memory ) RAM bridges the gap between the shortfall between your GPU's memory chips and what the game requires to run it...

Before Star Citizen, 8 GB of ( main computer ) RAM was standard in gaming.

After Star Citizen, 16 GB of ( main computer ) RAM became standard.

When you've been building computers for ... 25 years and playing video games for... 42 years, you notice that those standards only hold for so long, before they are increased.

As soon as 16 GB became the standard in gaming, you needed to start thinking about future upgrades to 32 GB.

From a programming perspective, I think that game programmers lost the ability to code into a small footprint because... the developer of Freespace 2 managed to code a universe into the world's smallest footprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeSpace_2

In the 1970's and 1980's, coders would code in low level languages like assembly language and machine code, but those languages were phased out in favour of high level languages ( that's my take on it ). Machine code is coding in zeroes and ones. High level languages are closer to the English language ( easier / more convenient to code but they take up a larger footprint ).

Squishing large games into tiny memory footprints was an artform, in and of itself in the 1970's and 1980's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWoF5uVgbA

They are talking about the original Elite ( that was released in the early 1980's ):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

So it's fair to say games are gonna be 32gb once people start buying 32gb to futureproof after games being 16gb

Also it's funny how long 16gb is being held as the standard for so damn long? Almost 2 console generations? Upgrades gotta happen!

[CryonicSuspension]

Originally posted by _galaxy:

So it's fair to say games are gonna be 32gb once people start buying 32gb to futureproof after games being 16gb

Also it's funny how long 16gb is being held as the standard for so damn long? Almost 2 console generations? Upgrades gotta happen!

Ultimately, the future is in the hands of the next creative developer, who wants to try and create something that's never been done, or seen before.

Specific movies like "Terminator 2", "Predator 2", "Dark City", "The Matrix" come to mind.

Terminator 1: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/
Terminator 2: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/

Predator 1: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/
Predator 2: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100403/

Dark City: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/
The Matrix: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/


Artists from H.G. Wells' in 1897, with the book, "The Invisible Man", all the way up to the Japanese animation movie, "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) painted worlds in which invisibility was a possibility.

https://youtu.be/cpqdYt9hw2g?si=F0DWoYTAQzn1Osss


Fast foward to 2003 and "Japanese scientist invents 'invisibility coat' ":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2777111.stm


Artists... visionaries... paint the future long before it happens in reality.

I think that creatives will create things, because of their innate love of creation, regardless of what the rest of the world is doing.

--------

Crysis 1 on CryEngine 1 wanted photo-realistic foliage. At the time, it was realistic to the point of being sometimes annoying - when you shot someone, if they fell into foliage, the jungle was so dense, that you had no idea where they fell - the wind was constantly blowing the leaves, so I was constantly playing hunt-the-body ( and you had to find the body, to get the ammo pickup ).

Star Citizen was originally built on CryEngine 3, before they changed the engine to Amazon Lumberyard.

I remember how blown away I was by the graphics. I'm trying to find decent trailers but everything looks terribly dated ( 10-20 years out of date ).

When I built my computer in quarter 1, 2021, I had read on Reddit, that specific mods for "City Skylines 1" pushed the RAM requirements to 32 GB, even though the main game ( unmodded ) only required 8-16 GB ( I thought that it was odd, because I had never heard of a modded game requiring significantly more RAM. It was something to do with the increased texture sizes in the mod ).

The other thing to keep in mind is that Windows might report that 32 GB of RAM are in use, but that's not necessarily true, there's an error/ discrepency in the way that Windows10 reports RAM usage.

[Fractured Zaku]

i was getting 7gb memory on the first map you play. Ima be honest, its not great but 16gb is also really bad for modern gaming nowadays too. I mean, im sitting at 8.1gb of memory usage with nothing running or any application running in the background on win11. 32 really is the new 16.

[_galaxy]

Originally posted by Fractured Zaku:

i was getting 7gb memory on the first map you play. Ima be honest, its not great but 16gb is also really bad for modern gaming nowadays too. I mean, im sitting at 8.1gb of memory usage with nothing running or any application running in the background on win11. 32 really is the new 16.

I mean, what are the modern games that actually take advantage of this? I only saw this one, but this is a indie title.

Resident Evil 4 and Last of us part 1 comes to mind, but on higher resolution modes (RE4 even has large VRAM req). Now funnily enough those are remakes! New games nothing really

My first generation ryzen processor can still tank the stuff sony releases because the ps5 cpu is a joke

[CryonicSuspension]

1) It's easier to use a search engine. Copy and paste the following into Google:

"how much ram do you need for gaming 2024?"

Reddit is good for advice.


2) Make an account on an overclocker's website and make a thread with the same title.

I used to spend a lot of time on an overclocker website called HardOCP

https://hardocp.com/

( it was a famous website, but the owner of the website was offered a job at a big company - Intel / NVIDIA / AMD - I can't remember. ), so the site was mothballed. They still have discussion forums, but they don't post about current tech news.

You could make a thread, and create a poll. You could read people's replies and take a look at the shape of the bell curve ( the bar chart's bell curve ).

This is an overview of the forum:

https://hardforum.com/


If anyone has a hardware question, they post the question the "General Hardware" section:

https://hardforum.com/forums/general-hardware.40/


Other famous overclocker websites are:

https://www.overclockers.com/welcome-to-overclockers/


I would have recommended Anandtech but it's closing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnandTech
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21542/end-of-the-road-an-anandtech-farewell


Tom's hardware is good, but there was controversy about Tom's hardware fudging the numbers to make an Intel product look better than it was ( I don't know the details ).

https://www.tomshardware.com/


3) I wonder what Chat GPT would say?


Me: How much R.A.M. do you need for for a gaming computer in 2024?


Chat GPT GPT-4o-mini:

"For a gaming computer in 2024, it's generally recommended to have at least 16 GB of RAM for a smooth gaming experience. This amount allows for most modern games to run effectively, along with multitasking capabilities. However, if you're looking to future-proof your setup or plan to run more demanding games or applications, 32 GB of RAM would be ideal. Always consider your specific gaming and usage needs when deciding on the RAM capacity."


Me: Give me a more detailed answer

Chat GPT GPT-4o-mini:

"Sure! Here's a more detailed overview of RAM requirements for a gaming computer in 2024:

Minimum RAM Requirements
In 2024, the minimum recommended RAM for a gaming computer is still around 16 GB. This amount of RAM allows you to effectively run most contemporary games, which typically require between 8 GB and 12 GB of memory. With 16 GB, you can expect:


Smooth gameplay: Most modern titles will run without significant stuttering or lag.

Multitasking: You can run background applications such as web browsers, streaming software, or voice chat programs while gaming without experiencing performance drops.

Recommended RAM
For gamers who want a more robust experience, 32 GB of RAM is increasingly becoming the standard recommendation. This is particularly beneficial for:


High-end gaming: Many AAA titles and resource-intensive games can utilize more than 16 GB, especially when settings are maxed out.

Future-proofing: As games continue to evolve and require more memory, having 32 GB will help ensure that your system remains capable of handling new releases without needing an upgrade.

Content creation: If you also plan to use your gaming rig for video editing, 3D rendering, or other demanding applications, 32 GB of RAM is almost essential.

Considerations for High-Performance Gaming
If you're an enthusiast or a professional gamer, or if you engage in activities like streaming while gaming, consider going beyond 32 GB:


64 GB of RAM: While this is generally overkill for gaming alone, it can be beneficial for users who run multiple virtual machines, engage in heavy multitasking, or use applications that require significant memory.

Dual-channel vs. Single-channel: Opting for dual-channel RAM (using two sticks of RAM) rather than a single stick can improve performance, as it allows for increased bandwidth.

Conclusion
Ultimately, the amount of RAM you need for a gaming computer in 2024 will depend on your specific gaming habits and any additional tasks you wish to perform. While 16 GB is sufficient for most users, 32 GB is recommended for a more comfortable and future-proof setup. Always consider your usage patterns and the types of games you play to make the best decision for your needs."

[CryonicSuspension]

You could outsource the question to Jay 2 Cents and Paul's Hardware:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Jayztwocents

https://www.youtube.com/@paulshardware