Re: Computer Build

Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think I know any game which demands 16GB yet, much less 32GB,
so maybe less RAM?

One game that demands 16GB is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 which has
a minimum requirement of 16GB, recommendeds 32GB and considers 64GB to
be "ideal".  There are other games like Indiana Jones and the Great
Circle and Horizon: Forbidden West that also require 16GB minimum.
We're probably not going to see many new AAA games that don't have at
least 16GB/32GB minimum/recommended requirements.

According to PC Gamer, those MSF 2024 requirements aren't exagerations:

With 16 or 32 GB of memory, Flight Simulator 2024 badly jerks and
lags as it tries to load in the world when starting a flight. Even
just moving about in the menus isn't especially smooth with those
amounts of RAM. But with 64 and 96 GB, it's almost stutter-free.

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/microsoft-says-64-gb-is-the-ideal-spec-for-flight-simulator-2024-but-ive-tested-it-with-96-gb-and-it-makes-a-big-difference/

But perhaps more importantly 32GB of RAM is so cheap these days you
don't save much by getting 16GB instead.  32GB should be the minimum
amount of RAM for all but the cheapest of builds.  It's not really about
future proofing either, it's not hard or expensive to add RAM later.
The nice thing about RAM is that it never goes to waste.  Any RAM left
unused by applications gets used as disk cache, improving loading times
even in games that only use a fraction of your RAM directly.  That "extra"
RAM will get used today.

(That's probably why the article above saw FPS improvements going from
64GB to 96GB despite the fact that the game never used more than 30GB.
Performance improved because it didn't have to load as much data from
storage.  Even the fastest SSDs aren't as fast as RAM.)

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