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rinshun
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Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:15 pm

Hello,

I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna settle for 2x4GB or 2x8GB for a new system I'll build. (For gaming)
All tests shows that 8gb is enough and upgrading to 16gb will not give a decent advantage. But I can only find FPS based tests, not frametime based ones. And, as we at techreport know, sometimes it may give you unsatisfying results.

Going for 16GB would increase the system cost considerably, and I could use that money to buy a better GPU or Monitor. So, 16Gb just for future proofing does not look like a good deal. I would only consider it if it severely reduce stutters or other undesireable things.

So, do you guys know anywhere I can find a good comparison benchmark between 8GB and 16GB?

If not, what are your opinions about 8 vs 16GB?

Thanks!
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:23 pm

These days I consider 16GB to be the bare minimum for a "power user" system (my desktop currently has 32GB). But I occasionally run VMs, where the extra RAM really helps. And RAM prices are still kind of stupid, so I can see why you're reluctant to shell out for 16GB.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:33 pm

Prices have gone down enough that I would go with 16 gb ram even if budget was somewhat of a concern. Here is an article that covers parts of this. It's not complete, but it does give you an idea. It does matter in some games.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1770-h ... pc-gaming/
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 6:08 pm

Based on that pretty good review, if the 8GB would pay for the jump from the 570 to the 580 then absolutely do it.
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 7:24 pm

I don't know if this counts, but I hopped from 16 GB to 32 GB in the past week. It may be totally placebo effect, but games seem smoother than before.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 7:28 pm

Waco wrote:
I don't know if this counts, but I hopped from 16 GB to 32 GB in the past week. It may be totally placebo effect, but games seem smoother than before.

Is that with the R7?
 
rinshun
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:04 pm

The budget is very tight; I'm considering a 150~250USD for each part: CPU, GPU and monitor. Probably I'll stick on the lower end for the CPU ~150 and in the middle range for the GPU and monitor ~200 each.

Is adding extra 8GB of RAM going to give me increased marginal performance per dollar compared to upgrading the other stuff? I still don't know. I'm looking for more info. The jump from the 570 to the 580 definetly looks better on paper. But can extra ram reduce time beyond 50ms more than the GPU upgrade? I'ts hard to compare =(

Also, all the benchmarks were tested in the highest quality, can settings be lowered to reduce ram usage? Wich ones? I thought view distance, for example, was tied to the VRAM...
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:10 pm

rinshun wrote:
But can extra ram reduce time beyond 50ms more than the GPU upgrade?

Probably gonna depend on the game. But in general, I'd say "probably not".
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:14 pm

Resolution is the biggest one, but texture quality would be up there too.
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:46 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Waco wrote:
I don't know if this counts, but I hopped from 16 GB to 32 GB in the past week. It may be totally placebo effect, but games seem smoother than before.

Is that with the R7?

Yeah. It bugged me that my desktop had the same DRAM as my GPU (and I scored a sweet deal on DDR4-3000).
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:48 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Based on that pretty good review, if the 8GB would pay for the jump from the 570 to the 580 then absolutely do it.

This. Skimping on everything but the GPU is usually best for gaming on a budget.

I'm on a system with an almost decade old CPU and 8 GB of RAM. When I upgraded from a Radeon 7870 to an RX 580 I noticed a huge change in performance.

When it comes to RAM, why buy 16 GB now if you don't think you'll need it? A lot of motherboards have 4 DIMM slots, so just buy 8 GB now and get 8 GB more in the future if needed.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:10 pm

With 16GB of DDR4-3000 sitting at about $84 right now, I know what I would do.
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rinshun
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:16 pm

TurtlePerson2 wrote:
Usacomp2k3 wrote:
When it comes to RAM, why buy 16 GB now if you don't think you'll need it? A lot of motherboards have 4 DIMM slots, so just buy 8 GB now and get 8 GB more in the future if needed.

I'm gonna take an entry level MB; so only 2 DIMM slots, so if I want to upgrade I'd be in a bad spot. Unless I used only one 8GB stick but that means no Dual Channel =X

Im leaning towards 2x8GB; If it gets really bad, maybe I'll try to sell it and upgrade to 16GB. I need to set the priorities, and at the moment they are:

1. GPU
2. Monitor
3. CPU
4. RAM

So if it's reasonable to spend 70USD for extra RAM it should also be reasonable to spend more 70 to get a better GPU and a better screen first? Also a better CPU? In the end, that totals to 280USD.
I know it looks like I'm being stingy but I just want to min/max the config so I can sleep well at night. x)

Also, why don't they make 5 or 6GB Memory sticks? That would be a no brainer for me, at least.

Thank you all for the answers! =)
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:57 pm

rinshun wrote:
TurtlePerson2 wrote:
Usacomp2k3 wrote:
When it comes to RAM, why buy 16 GB now if you don't think you'll need it? A lot of motherboards have 4 DIMM slots, so just buy 8 GB now and get 8 GB more in the future if needed.

I'm gonna take an entry level MB; so only 2 DIMM slots, so if I want to upgrade I'd be in a bad spot. Unless I used only one 8GB stick but that means no Dual Channel =X


I believe you'd still have dual-channel for 8 GiB of that RAM, but the second 8 GiB would be running in 'flex' mode (single channel).
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:45 am

rinshun wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna settle for 2x4GB or 2x8GB for a new system I'll build. (For gaming)
All tests shows that 8gb is enough and upgrading to 16gb will not give a decent advantage. But I can only find FPS based tests, not frametime based ones. And, as we at techreport know, sometimes it may give you unsatisfying results.

Going for 16GB would increase the system cost considerably, and I could use that money to buy a better GPU or Monitor. So, 16Gb just for future proofing does not look like a good deal. I would only consider it if it severely reduce stutters or other undesireable things.


There are two more things to consider:
1. RAM prices are going down from a very long period of very high prices. A 32GB kit used to cost $200, went up to $400 and is now back to about $240. And I am using the exact same kit (Corsair 3000C15 LPX) as an example. So, you won't be buying RAM at a very bad time and it might even be worth waiting a little bit.
2. Lack of RAM does not scale gracefully. A GPU that is 10% slower will be 10% slower. But 10% less RAM than absolutely necessary will be a stuttery mess. "Absolutely necessary" in that context is not easy to define for every game, but you'll definitely feel it if you start swapping to disk.

You can get away with 8GB for most current games but you will need to carefully manage your system. My advice is to look for the specific 4-5 games that you plan to play and see what people are saying in the forums. For example no big difference in BF V: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOFONB13rBE

BTW: There appears to be a sort of minor price war between mid-tier GPUs with the launch of the 1660. I found an RX580 at $169 and the RX570 is lower than that. Both are definitely enough for very comfortable 1080p gaming.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:49 am

rinshun wrote:
I'm gonna take an entry level MB; so only 2 DIMM slots, so if I want to upgrade I'd be in a bad spot. Unless I used only one 8GB stick but that means no Dual Channel =X
Thank you all for the answers! =)


If you want to save both on the MB and the RAM then indeed you WILL be in a tight spot in a couple of years, maybe earlier if some game absolutely needs >8GB. Not a good combo. Either get a MB with 4 DIMM slots or get 2x8GB.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 9:26 am

Personally I would upgrade to 16gb ram this will give you room for the future.

I also upgraded from a 7870 to rx580 8gb and the gaming performance difference was definitely noticable.

You can skimp a little bit on cpu but not on ram and GPU when playing games.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 9:49 am

ptsant wrote:
1. RAM prices are going down from a very long period of very high prices. A 32GB kit used to cost $200, went up to $400 and is now back to about $240. And I am using the exact same kit (Corsair 3000C15 LPX) as an example. So, you won't be buying RAM at a very bad time and it might even be worth waiting a little bit.

Yeah, I'd noticed that unbuffered non-ECC is finally coming back down. But for some reason unbuffered ECC hasn't, and in some cases has even risen slightly. WTF. It's the same damn chips; ECC modules just have them in multiples of 9 instead of 8.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:11 am

just brew it! wrote:
ptsant wrote:
1. RAM prices are going down from a very long period of very high prices. A 32GB kit used to cost $200, went up to $400 and is now back to about $240. And I am using the exact same kit (Corsair 3000C15 LPX) as an example. So, you won't be buying RAM at a very bad time and it might even be worth waiting a little bit.

Yeah, I'd noticed that unbuffered non-ECC is finally coming back down. But for some reason unbuffered ECC hasn't, and in some cases has even risen slightly. WTF. It's the same damn chips; ECC modules just have them in multiples of 9 instead of 8.


It is probably due to a recent, unexpected demand due to influx of Ryzen/Threadripper users who wanted to setup a workstation build on the relative cheap.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:15 am

If you're building a new system for gaming, definitely get 16GB. If you're getting a motherboard with only two RAM slots, it should be even less of a question.


I've actually been considering dropping another 16 into my main rig, as it'd only cost me about $100. Not much benefit right now, but if I keep the system as long as my 2500k, it could be useful towards the end of it's life.
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:20 am

Aranarth wrote:
Personally I would upgrade to 16gb ram this will give you room for the future.

The Egg wrote:
If you're building a new system for gaming, definitely get 16GB. If you're getting a motherboard with only two RAM slots, it should be even less of a question.

Both of ya'll are saying that 16GB + RX570 would give better gaming performance than 8GB + RX580? That's ridiculous.
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:15 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Aranarth wrote:
Personally I would upgrade to 16gb ram this will give you room for the future.

The Egg wrote:
If you're building a new system for gaming, definitely get 16GB. If you're getting a motherboard with only two RAM slots, it should be even less of a question.

Both of ya'll are saying that 16GB + RX570 would give better gaming performance than 8GB + RX580? That's ridiculous.

It's probably in your best interest not to put words in people's mouths like that in person. Not only did I not say anything resembling that, I never even mentioned videocards. You're completely full of it.
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:19 am

Krogoth wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Yeah, I'd noticed that unbuffered non-ECC is finally coming back down. But for some reason unbuffered ECC hasn't, and in some cases has even risen slightly. WTF. It's the same damn chips; ECC modules just have them in multiples of 9 instead of 8.

It is probably due to a recent, unexpected demand due to influx of Ryzen/Threadripper users who wanted to setup a workstation build on the relative cheap.

I find it somewhat hard to believe that this represents a large enough slice of the market to dramatically shift the supply/demand equation. I guess it's possible though. And registered ECC is actually cheaper than unregistered right now, which supports your theory (since it makes no sense unless supply/demand is currently out of whack).
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:26 am

just brew it! wrote:
Krogoth wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Yeah, I'd noticed that unbuffered non-ECC is finally coming back down. But for some reason unbuffered ECC hasn't, and in some cases has even risen slightly. WTF. It's the same damn chips; ECC modules just have them in multiples of 9 instead of 8.

It is probably due to a recent, unexpected demand due to influx of Ryzen/Threadripper users who wanted to setup a workstation build on the relative cheap.

I find it somewhat hard to believe that this represents a large enough slice of the market to dramatically shift the supply/demand equation. I guess it's possible though. And registered ECC is actually cheaper than unregistered right now, which supports your theory (since it makes no sense unless supply/demand is currently out of whack).

There is almost zero possibility this is the actual reason.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:35 am

The Egg wrote:
Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Aranarth wrote:
Personally I would upgrade to 16gb ram this will give you room for the future.

The Egg wrote:
If you're building a new system for gaming, definitely get 16GB. If you're getting a motherboard with only two RAM slots, it should be even less of a question.

Both of ya'll are saying that 16GB + RX570 would give better gaming performance than 8GB + RX580? That's ridiculous.

It's probably in your best interest not to put words in people's mouths like that in person. Not only did I not say anything resembling that, I never even mentioned videocards. You're completely full of it.

Then the only other option is that he should do it even though it would give worse performance? The OP was very clear that the budget is a hard number so any extra spent on RAM would have to be taken from another item.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be antagonistic, so sorry if it came across a little blunt. I'd like to hear your logic and recommendations on a better trade-off. Maybe a cheaper monitor?
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:40 am

DancinJack wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Krogoth wrote:
It is probably due to a recent, unexpected demand due to influx of Ryzen/Threadripper users who wanted to setup a workstation build on the relative cheap.

I find it somewhat hard to believe that this represents a large enough slice of the market to dramatically shift the supply/demand equation. I guess it's possible though. And registered ECC is actually cheaper than unregistered right now, which supports your theory (since it makes no sense unless supply/demand is currently out of whack).

There is almost zero possibility this is the actual reason.


No, it is the most likely the reason. Before Ryzen/Threadripper came into the market. The demand for unbuffered ECC DIMMs was practically stagnant for almost a decade. The only buyers were NAS hobbyists and a small niche of workstation users that need clockspeed of regular desktop-based Xeons and ECC support. It is all due to Intel's market segmentation silliness and AMD having no competitive solution. Memory manufacturers adjusted production more towards registered ECC DIMMs and unbuffered non-ECC DIMMs.
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:44 am

Do your thing, Krogoth!
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:54 am

DancinJack wrote:
Do your thing, Krogoth!


Care to explain any other possible reasons? Otherwise, it is just lowbrow troll-baiting.
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rinshun
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:26 pm

So 8GB is a risky move. Like, 8GB and investing the difference on other stuff will give me +10% performance for sure right now. But in the future I can experience -20% performance loss because of ram shortage, or not and win those 10%. While 16GB is the safe bet, I get +0% performance but also have no risk being RAMdicapped.

The majority here seems to favor 16GB; but I see it's not an unanimous opinion. Most people like to play it safe, but is this a cognitive bias related to loss aversion? It's hard to put a price on risk, specially when it's unknown. Also, there is some proof that more ram is beneficial. But is that benefit correctly priced?

Also RAM prices are lowering. I heard it should be 10~20% cheaper by the end of 2019, so no rush... things will only get better =)

Thanks for the insights!
 
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Re: Frametime 8gb vs 16gb ram benchmarks?

Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:50 pm

rinshun wrote:
The majority here seems to favor 16GB; but I see it's not an unanimous opinion. Most people like to play it safe, but is this a cognitive bias related to loss aversion? It's hard to put a price on risk, specially when it's unknown. Also, there is some proof that more ram is beneficial. But is that benefit correctly priced?


The opportunity cost of going from 8GB to 16GB is low, less than $100 at today's prices.

The potential damage from having too little RAM is high -- as soon as you start hitting the swap file your performance drops off a cliff, even if it's on a fast NVME drive. Any gains you get from moving to a higher level GPU will be completely obliterated the moment the game starts paging to SSD (and that would be exponentially worse if you have the game or the swap file on a HDD -- don't, just don't).

How likely you are to hit that risk depends on the games you play, the settings you use, and the memory usage of other software on your system (Windows itself, anti-virus, and any other software you may have running). And of course, the extra consumed by Windows etc. may increase over time (it used to be you could run Windows in 2GB, whereas today it runs like a dog on anything less than 8 before you've even gotten to running a game).

So yeah, I'd say going with 8GB is risky.
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