RAM question

[Muz]

I'm considering upgrading from 4GB to 8GB RAM. My OS can handle it, my motherboard can handle it. My question here, to anyone who knows, is how many games can take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM? Is that a rare thing? Skyrim, for example, was only recently patched to use up TO 4GB.

Or, to put it another way, is it worth the money?

[Erloas]

The cost of 4GB of RAM is what... $25 right now? So thats a pretty cheap upgrade.
As for it being worth doing, most games won't see much, if any, difference in terms of framerate. The difference mostly seems to be how a system "feels" which is hard to quantify in any meaningful way.

If you're doing a lot of multi-tasking then its a lot more helpful. The rest of your system specs are important too. If you're constantly running into a processor bottleneck you might not feel much of an improvement at all. And most games become video card limited before anything else.

[thubby]

no, no game really takes advantage of more than 4 ram.
even on full settings skyrim+background stuff only seems to take up a little over 3

[Muz]

Hmm. I suppose I'd do better to upgrade my video card instead. The trouble there is all the cards worth upgrading to from my Radeon HD4770 take up two slots' worth of space, and I'm not really sure my motherboard quite has enough room for that. There's an open slot in the back, but I don't know if the components jutting up from the MB itself would get in the way of something that big, and I can't really be sure until I actually buy a card and try to fit it in there.

[factotum]

Most games are 32-bit applications and can't make use of more than 4Gb of RAM no matter what you do. Having *more* than 4Gb can be good for a 32-bit app running on a 64-bit system, because the app can make full use of 4Gb of RAM without starving the OS and potentially causing slowdowns due to disc swapping. I would say the sweet spot is around 6-8Gb.

[KillianHawkeye]

For gaming, video RAM is way more important than system RAM.

[thubby]

most places list the dimensions of the videocard.

also, if your motherboard and graphics card support it, 2 weaker cards outstrip most single big cards.

[Anxe]

If you have two monitors this would allow you to play Skyrim while you play Skyrim.

In a less ridiculous advice category: You could open a guide to one of your games on the other monitor without the game slowing down. Or a chat program. Or a website to read during the teeny-tiny loading times. But, as has been said, games are far more often limited by video card RAM than system RAM.