Main doubt regarding games for 2025

[Legionairie(BR)]

On Steam, are there already games that require 32Gb as minimum requirements?

I currently have 16Gb of RAM and it's running everything I want to play, but with the wave of games being released in an incomplete and poorly optimized way (practically depending on upscaling technologies), I'm afraid that in 2025 I'll be left out of NextGEN games with low optimization.

[Illusion of Progress]

What's your primary concern? Is it RAM?

RAM is always getting cheaper. Eventually, yes, newer things will (some already are) push towards "more than 16GB is more helpful" because things always go up. Usually, that first occurs not as a single thing needing that much RAM, but the collective needing it. So at first, multi-tasking less gets you by. Eventually, you will need more.

DDR5 platforms are going to be what the people buying new systems of the last couple years will be using, and due to the RAM capacities on the individual DDR5 DIMMs themselves being the way they are, 32 GB is basically the floor of capacity for that RAM generation (16 GB is possible with a single DIMM or those half-chip-count DIMMs, but those both hurt performance, so it's only the minority of the DIY or even gaming prebuilts that will go with that amount on DDR5). And the late DDR4 platforms have a massive sea of cheap RAM for upgrade options. DDR3? Well... if the concern is 2024/2025+ games, maybe after more than a decade, it's time to consider platform upgrades (but even then, you can get 32 GB of DDR3 rather "cheap").

In other words, RAM is the lowest barrier to complain about here. If you're saying that needing more RAM absolutely locks you out of the PC ecosystem, then I don't know what to suggest to you.

Upcaling has little do with RAM; that has more to do with the GPU side. The state the GPU market is in would really warrant an entire book devoted to it, but yeah, that one's a mess.

Lastly, poor optimization is never "next generation" exclusive. Notice how this has been a complaint since the dawn of time, yet the goal post keeps moving? In 2023, it's 2023 games that are poorly optimized and it was 2018 games that were great. In 2018, it was 2018 games that were poorly optimized and 2013 games were great. in 2013, it was 2013 games that were poorly optimized and 2017 games were great. And in 2007... you can guess. I was there and saw all of it. It's a constant goal post moving complaint. And yes, for the record, there are poorly optimized games. My point is, there always were and it's not exclusive to now. People simply remember the better parts of the past and forget yesterday's problems, whereas today's problems are in constant focus.

[Pocahawtness]

Legionairie lähetti viestin:

On Steam, are there already games that require 32Gb as minimum requirements?

I currently have 16Gb of RAM and it's running everything I want to play, but with the wave of games being released in an incomplete and poorly optimized way (practically depending on upscaling technologies), I'm afraid that in 2025 I'll be left out of NextGEN games with low optimization.

Oddly enough I watched a video about this the other day.

There are some games that use more than 16GB, but not many. There wasn't one that suffered any major performance drop when used with 16GB. There was no game that used more than 20GB.

[nullable]

Legionairie lähetti viestin:

On Steam, are there already games that require 32Gb as minimum requirements?

I currently have 16Gb of RAM and it's running everything I want to play, but with the wave of games being released in an incomplete and poorly optimized way (practically depending on upscaling technologies), I'm afraid that in 2025 I'll be left out of NextGEN games with low optimization.

Well.... you can cry optimization all you want. If your PC can't run newer games, it might just mean it's reached end of life. I'd be curious about your specs and how long you've been running them.

No amount of optimization is going to negate progress and power demands forever, or make dated hardware viable perpetually.


IE "optimization" is a grossly overused term. And most people who claim is casually never bothered to find out why a particular game might be so demanding. Although I expect they'd just dismiss the reasons and claim the game should really just be built like it's 2014 instead. At a certain point that's what mindless crying optimization really means.

[Viking2121]

Well I mean, if your system is still running DDR4, look around on the used market, can get pretty good deals on used 32gb kits, even 64gb kits, just make sure you don't mix and match, that can be problematic.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

If you have DDR4 RAM then 2x16 GB kits are pretty damn cheap and there is no reason really not to upgrade if you want to feel safe about it.
Though currently I don`t think there is any games that would not work with 16 GB, unless you are into some heavy modding.

[wesnef]

Rumpelcrutchskin lähetti viestin:

If you have DDR4 RAM then 2x16 GB kits are pretty damn cheap and there is no reason really not to upgrade if you want to feel safe about it.

Yeah, looking at the 2x8GB set I bought for my build in 2020. . . it was $57 then, it's 33 now.
And a 2x16GB set of the same type is $51.


Question - B550 AM4 mobo, Ryzen 5 3600. Would it be better to swap to 2x16GB, or add another 2x8GB to the other two ram slots?
(DDR4 3200 C16)

[Viking2121]

wesnef lähetti viestin:

Rumpelcrutchskin lähetti viestin:

If you have DDR4 RAM then 2x16 GB kits are pretty damn cheap and there is no reason really not to upgrade if you want to feel safe about it.

Yeah, looking at the 2x8GB set I bought for my build in 2020. . . it was $57 then, it's 33 now.
And a 2x16GB set of the same type is $51.


Question - B550 AM4 mobo, Ryzen 5 3600. Would it be better to swap to 2x16GB, or add another 2x8GB to the other two ram slots?
(DDR4 3200 C16)

Well if you buy another kit if you can find the same one and fill the other slots, you'll have 32GB of ram, but if you can find a 32GB kit with 2x16GB sticks, it would leave you room for 64GB later on.

Technically 4 sticks of ram is harder on the memory controller potentially preventing the ram from running at its advertised speeds, but other than that, there is no real performance difference between 2 vs 4 sticks at the same speed and latency.

[Illusion of Progress]

wesnef lähetti viestin:

Rumpelcrutchskin lähetti viestin:

If you have DDR4 RAM then 2x16 GB kits are pretty damn cheap and there is no reason really not to upgrade if you want to feel safe about it.

Yeah, looking at the 2x8GB set I bought for my build in 2020. . . it was $57 then, it's 33 now.
And a 2x16GB set of the same type is $51.


Question - B550 AM4 mobo, Ryzen 5 3600. Would it be better to swap to 2x16GB, or add another 2x8GB to the other two ram slots?
(DDR4 3200 C16)

The big issue with adding RAM is hoping the motherboard and CPU IMC will handle it without requiring you to drop RAM speeds to low levels. On DDR5 platforms, this is often a far bigger problem. On a late AM4 board though with a Zen 2 (3000 series) or Zen 3 (5000 series) CPU, you shouldn't have any issues getting four DIMMs to run at 3,200 MHz.

The only potential roadblock is that some profiles might use timings that are set expecting there to only be two DIMMs, whereas on configurations where there are multiple DIMMs per channel, the setting may need loosened (TRFC or whatever comes to mind, it needs to be higher/looser for multiple DIMMs per channel than for one). This usually doesn't stop mismatched RAM from actually working together, but it might prevent it from being plug and play with the sold profile settings, so you may need to manually configure something on the RAM to get both profiles working together. And whether you want to do that versus a simpler two DIM kit replacement is up to you.

Also, some RAM kits have two seemingly identical profiles, and often, one of those profiles has those secondary/tertiary things preset (often for two DIMM configuration), and the other leaves them blank so the motherboard will try and fill in the gaps. So sometimes with mixed four DIMM setups, one profile may work where the other may not.

[WTF]

z

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

Legionairie lähetti viestin:

On Steam, are there already games that require 32Gb as minimum requirements?

I currently have 16Gb of RAM and it's running everything I want to play, but with the wave of games being released in an incomplete and poorly optimized way (practically depending on upscaling technologies), I'm afraid that in 2025 I'll be left out of NextGEN games with low optimization.

I wouldn't worry because the newer games coming out aren't even good. The best games are the older ones.

Everything is about Ray tracing trash now and things like characters, writing, art style, optimization, value... it's all gone because now all you get is lesson on how to act.

new games also flop hard in sales because the quality is trash. I know I'm sick and tired of lesbian simulators.

[Guydodge]

Viking2121 lähetti viestin:

wesnef lähetti viestin:

Yeah, looking at the 2x8GB set I bought for my build in 2020. . . it was $57 then, it's 33 now.
And a 2x16GB set of the same type is $51.


Question - B550 AM4 mobo, Ryzen 5 3600. Would it be better to swap to 2x16GB, or add another 2x8GB to the other two ram slots?
(DDR4 3200 C16)

Well if you buy another kit if you can find the same one and fill the other slots, you'll have 32GB of ram, but if you can find a 32GB kit with 2x16GB sticks, it would leave you room for 64GB later on.

Technically 4 sticks of ram is harder on the memory controller potentially preventing the ram from running at its advertised speeds, but other than that, there is no real performance difference between 2 vs 4 sticks at the same speed and latency.

well the problem with that is running xmp with 4 sticks.alot of motherboards will not
perform xmp properly with 4 sticks of ram.so check your m.b compatibility before you take
this path.and if you choose to anyway be prepared to tweak the bios for stability.most
likely lowering the rams MT/s

[Viking2121]

Guydodge lähetti viestin:

Viking2121 lähetti viestin:

Well if you buy another kit if you can find the same one and fill the other slots, you'll have 32GB of ram, but if you can find a 32GB kit with 2x16GB sticks, it would leave you room for 64GB later on.

Technically 4 sticks of ram is harder on the memory controller potentially preventing the ram from running at its advertised speeds, but other than that, there is no real performance difference between 2 vs 4 sticks at the same speed and latency.

well the problem with that is running xmp with 4 sticks.alot of motherboards will not
perform xmp properly with 4 sticks of ram.so check your m.b compatibility before you take
this path.and if you choose to anyway be prepared to tweak the bios for stability.most
likely lowering its MT/s

Thats why I said what I said??? Like thanks for repeating it...

[wesnef]

Hmm. Well, thanks everyone. Sounds potentially annoying. Like "just spend $18 more for 2x16 sticks" annoying. :D


(my old build, I added two additional sticks eventually, without any problems. But that was a 2011 build with DDR3 and none of this XMP stuff. Simpler times.)