Did not expect RAM to increase performance this much

[T1-M4T]

Made a post a while back which was just me complaining about the horrible performance I was getting in this game on all fronts. I really felt my FPS should have been higher with a gtx 1060 than the constant 15-35 fps I was getting on high settings at only 1080p.

I was basically told that my GPU and CPU sucked. Fair enough I suppose. I saved up some money and then bought an i7 8700k and a gtx 1070ti. To my absolute horror, my FPS didn't really go up nearly as much as I thought it would, maybe only 10 or so.

All my computer gaming life, I've been told that RAM would never increase performance, and that as long as you aren't crashing due to running out of memory, prioritize a CPU/GPU upgrade for a performance boost, and I always took this to heart because it made sense to me. I never really felt like I needed more than 8 gb anyways, I mean what game does right? And then I read a post somewhere on reddit about someone who has better specs than what I upgraded to and was getting the same performance I was getting. The top post mentioned something about running out of RAM and switching to using hard drive memory which was seriously screwing things up. This definately raised an eyebrow for me.

I bought another 8 gb ram stick today and stuck that on my motherboard when I got home (16 gb total now.) My FPS in this game shot up to infinity and beyond. So much so, in fact, that it now runs at 70+ FPS in ultra settings (SSAO, 4x AA)for the 20 v 20 land battles, and around 50-70 or so in really hectic fights with 40 or more units or tons of magic everywhere. Safe to say I'm extremely pleased now, such a small investment for a much better experience.

So yeah, cool story I know. Don't skimp on RAM for this game, it definately needs it.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Huh. This explains why I'm able to get by without a graphics card, as I've got 16 GB of RAM.


Also, if you're interested in modding, it's very helpful to have more than 8 GB as running an instance of WH2TW, the data.pack, and a couple of other applications will hit 9 GB of used memory or more.

[Lady MacBeth]

Don't know who told you 8 gigs of ram was enough. Though I think I remember your post as far as the weak cpu and gpu combo. A modern gaming rig needs 16gigs of ram imo. Preferably something with low Cas timings and high memory speed as well assuming budget and motherboard support.

[Gamefever]

Makes since to me...A lot of computers were packaged and sold for several years with only 8GB which is like barely enough RAM.
You need more than that to be running several applications and enjoying good pacing with everything all at once so I have had quite a bit more than 8 for a while.

[TheAlmightyProo]

But 16 Gb RAM is the base limit for AAA gaming these days, even for games that state 8 Gb will do, no matter what anybody tries to tell you or sell you. 16 might be more than enough for a well maintained rig but 8 won't cut it at the sharp end.

[Xenos]

Well, RAM will not increase performance, but its lack will *decrease* it.

[Pimpin Pippin]

I forget which game it was but the highest i saw in use by a single game was 12GB of RAM.

So yea 16 GB is the standard for today's games, especially since Windows and antivirus take up to 2 GB from that amount.

[Toaster Maximus]

People always under rate ram and always go for the min, if ytour not rolling with at-least 16 gbs now a-days things suffer

[Talos]

Ok guys thanks a lot this topic is helpful

[Hilm]

8 gb of ram used to be enough to comfortably run games, but for the past 2-4 years 4x (I think that is the technical term for these games?) have really pushed ram requirements. I wouldn't play with less than 16 gbs and I definitely prefer my 32 gbs.

[Cacomistle]

Games tend to take a lot of memory. If your computer needs more than 8GB, it goes into swap (which is hard drive memory). The hard drive loads a lot slower, especially if you don't have an ssd, so your performance will drop.

I think whoever you got the thing about memory from had the misconception that it will crash if it runs out of memory. If nothing is going into swap then ram won't increase performance, but the computer doesn't pop up some alert telling you that you're using swap memory or crash or anything.

[Erikkustrife]

yea having over 40 gbs of ram is nice and isnt reall expensive at all.

[gachi is manly]

Only having 8 gigs of ram with that video card would've undoubtedly caused problems, yes.

8 Gig video card with only 8 gigs of ram... That's a bottleneck.

[Lady MacBeth]

Originally posted by Lyle Ugleman:

Only having 8 gigs of ram with that video card would've undoubtedly caused problems, yes.

8 Gig video card with only 8 gigs of ram... That's a bottleneck.

You sound a bit confused on things. You do know a 1070ti has 8 gigs of DDR5 in it, and doesn't need any of the 8gigs of sysystem memory right? Of course 8gigs of system memory is too low for most gaming now days. But still the way you phrased it makes it sound like you think the video card uses the system memory. Which it doesn't if you were unaware.

[gachi is manly]

Originally posted by Ming:

Originally posted by Lyle Ugleman:

Only having 8 gigs of ram with that video card would've undoubtedly caused problems, yes.

8 Gig video card with only 8 gigs of ram... That's a bottleneck.

You sound a bit confused on things. You do know a 1070ti has 8 gigs of DDR5 in it, and doesn't need any of the 8gigs of sysystem memory right? Of course 8gigs of system memory is too low for most gaming now days. But still the way you phrased it makes it sound like you think the video card uses the system memory. Which it doesn't if you were unaware.

I know, but 8 gigs of ram with such a powerful system is a bottleneck. It will be what causes issues when trying to push games to the max (which other than not having enough RAM, the system is capable of.)

[Thrax]

Very interessting ! Thank you very much for the Info ! Nice weekend