I remember 3 years agao I was asking a computer forums about is 4GB of ram is enough and they said yes and they said if you have more like 8GB or more that's for people who do photoshop or video editing and stuff. But my question is that will that always be the same meaning 4GB will be enough for notebooks and stuff? Like today is 4GB of system ram enough?
It really depends on what you want your notebook to do. If you are a gamer, it depends on what games you want to play and how much dedicated RAM your video or graphics card has. If you have 4GB RAM and 128MB dedicated RAM on the card like I do you can play most older games and some newer stuff like Skyrim, but you will have to drop the graphics pretty hard. If you had 8GB, you could handle a bit more. If you want to edit video or do heavy artwork, or use CAD software, 4GB is not enough. Get 8GB. If you mainly want to use the internet, listed to music, and watch movies, 4GB is plenty.
4GB should be enough for editing work. For games, though, it's gotten to the point where you need to have 8 if you don't want framerate issues.
I can run Skyrim on a laptop with 4GB of system RAM and an integrated card with 128 MB dedicated RAM. Sure, you won't run the most recent games, but if you go back a couple years you'll be fine. For editing, I'd say it really depends on what kind of editing. 3D graphics work may end up too demanding. I have 4GB system RAM and 512 dedicated RAM on my desktop, and I can't use the most recent software because I lack the necessary RAM.
I've noticed that Skyrim is very well-optimized though. It was designed to run on consoles, so should handily run on any decent PC. And I did forget that 3d modeling applications do tend to hog resources once in awhile. It won't crash 3ds Max to have 4 gigs of RAM, but rendering with mental ray or any other fancy lighting system may take a month. And forget about any sculpting programs like Zbrush that use subdivisions. *shudder*
When it came out on PS3 it was so bad it would slow down and stop halfway through the game due to memory issues. For months, people on PS3 couldn't even play the game until a patch came out. The game is totally different on PC to console - so much better with so many mods. I would never buy Skyrim for a console if I had a good PC.
Heh, that started with Morrowind for me. I got it first for Xbox, played the hell out of it. But once I got it on PC and started with the mods, oh man, there was no turning back. Same thing for Oblivion and Skyrim of course-- I won't ever buy an Elder Scrolls game that isn't for PC, precisely because mods add such invaluable content to the game. That brings us back on topic, actually because a lot of mods can be pretty resource-heavy. So if you use mods with low RAM, beware.
If you want to RUN Skyrim, then 4GB should suffice. If you want to run it well without lag or much lag, then 8GB. If you want to work programs such as the Adobe Creative Cloud (or Suite), I'd bump it up to 12GB at minimum. Premiere works pretty decently on my Asus with 12GB of RAM and even better on my mac with 16GB. But even my mac isn't good for games like Garry's Mod, if you want to do crazy stuff like spawn a million barrels of gasoline and then blow it all up without lag. If you want to use After Effects, I'd get something with at least 20GB of RAM, since ray-tracing (especially with effects and adjustment layers) takes up A LOT OF RAM. I mean a lot of it. One frame renders in about 5 minutes, that's how insane it is. Hopefully Adobe will make it so that you don't need an insane amount of RAM to work with ray-traced 3D.
Ok well how about if I use my computer to play older games, listen to music, watch downloaded YouTube videos, browse the web, Skype, Yahoo IM, Facebook or so. For games I play are StarCraft 2, The Sims 3, World of Warcraft, Runescape, Crysis 2. How much ram should I use for these kind of programs and games? Thanks
This is funny because I have 6GB on a computer I'm building, and I was wondering the same thing. 4GB should suffice for most lower-end games, as said previously.
Well I remember 3 years agao or even 2 years agao people said that no games will use over 2GB but is that true still? I don't think they are games that require more than 2GB right? If there are games that use more than 2GB then 4GB might be not enough since the OS will use around 1GB I think. But I' am pretty sure games today don't need more than 2GB to just run it.
That should be about enough; though you might need to turn crysis and starcraft graphics down. You can also make sure to keep other unnecessary background programs closed (spotify, for instance). However! Newer games are relying more on your GPU, also called a graphics card! So be sure to get a card with at least one or two GB of memory. Yeah. But the amount varies. TF2, for instance: Will use 1-2 GB when playing on a normal mode, dedicated server. But in Mann versus Machine, when there's alot of math to do, some calculations are moved to your processor (and therefore your RAM) from your GPU, and all the robots in MvM might just cause you to run out of memory (I clocked 3-5 GB in MvM running on med-low graphics options with a bullshit Intel integrated graphics card.).
I would say 4GB is fine for basic everyday tasks. If you plan on doing alot of gaming or hardware intensive tasks then maybe upping it to 8GB would be a better choice. For the most part though, yeah, 4GB should be fine.
I had 4GB for very long time, but upgrading to 8GB gave really big difference, especially on win 7 system.
How much multitasking you do is also a big factor. I have two displays and only have Torch (web browser), Skype, Spotify, ManyCam, and Yahoo Messenger and i'm using 4.6GB of ram. Personally I think that 6 is like the percent number for most people and video editor and photoshoppers should have 8 GB minimum. I personally have 16GB (I had 24GB but my motherboard only supported 16). People call me crazy and say that's overkill. It's not really though. When I'm editing HD Video while having chrome, photoshop, and skype open, I easily use 12GB of ram.
