Although many think that "better than not missing", it is often absurd to spend extra money on RAM … An upgrade to 32GB is a good idea for enthusiasts and the average workstation user. While creating and editing documents is generally a low-resource task, office productivity gets much more demanding as you open multiple files in multiple programs. You need to make sure that your motherboard actually supports the memory speed your modules are rated for and that it supports XMP (most modern motherboards do). We chose Resource Monitor because it provides more granular information than Windows Task Manager, but both tools are helpful for getting an idea of how memory is used as you run processes and programs. That means that you need some minimum amount of memory just to get your PC up and running. With something like the iPad, which touts 2GB of RAM, its design is more focused on its vibrant display and long battery life. We look at how gaming impacts memory use, what the requirements are for various current titles, and whether or not it’s worth getting memory that is optimized for gaming. If all of this sounds confusing, rest assured that most manufacturers are very good at identifying RAM clearly so consumers know what’s what. Want to edit photos, but you’re not much of a gamer? When we tried to reopen the still-running game, the system locked up and refused to cooperate. However, as multi-tab browsers and more complex software continue to make the transition, tablet needs are becoming more and more similar to laptop needs. There’s not much you can do to make Windows or MacOS use less memory, but more RAM in your computer means that you can open more browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and so on. New York, The 8GB system did better, providing good support for photo editing in addition to a healthy number of browser tabs and simultaneous media streams, while the 16GB system supported dozens of tabs, an unreasonable number of concurrent media streams and even offered usable gaming right up to the end. For something like a Chromebook, which mostly relies on cloud-based apps and provides very little storage space, you won’t need much in the way of RAM. Hard drives are more like the drawers underneath the desk, capable of storing papers you’re currently not using. Even the low-end 6.6GB is … Once these baseline tests were running, we proceed to ratchet up the memory demands incrementally, first by adding another 10 browser tabs, then another 2 audio streams, followed by an additional 10 photos in Photoshop. You’ll need more RAM for playing the latest PC games, running virtual machines, and editing 4K videos. For basic, day-to-day computing, 8GB of memory should be sufficient. 8GB if you plan to use a tablet as your primary PC. On our 4GB system, this was enough to overwhelm the laptop, causing the system to slow to a crawl, and basic functionality to become inconsistent. The long answer is a bit more complicated. Buy what you actually need, and spend the remaining budget on more important components like the CPU or graphics card. Most people don’t use a laptop for such tasks, but if you do, buying enough RAM is crucial. How much RAM do you actually need? The number at the end notes the memory’s speed. Or even 32? You’d only need to go past that if you perform certain tasks, like editing huge video or photo files — the kind of thing you’d normally do on a desktop. As for the performance benefit of faster memory, it really depends. Most laptops come with 8GB of RAM, with entry-level offerings sporting 4GB and top-tier machines packing 16GB — even up to 32GB for the most powerful gaming notebooks. At that point, you’re streaming an unenjoyable cacophony of sight and sound, but you can add more if you want. Visit our corporate site. Anything beyond that is the realm of extreme specialty rigs equipped to handle huge datasets, staggeringly large video files, or niche programs designed for researchers, corporations, or government. While you won’t see any performance improvement by adding more RAM to your system if you already have what you need, the same cannot be said when it comes to RAM speed. Still, Microsoft sells Windows 10 … System RAM shouldn’t be confused with the dedicated memory used by discrete graphic cards. Mid-range gaming may require a GPU to handle the visuals, but titles like Tacoma or Dragon Ball FighterZ don’t demand an upgrade to the latest Nvidia or AMD offerings. The best Cyber Monday MacBook deals: MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, The best Cyber Monday Chromebook deals for 2020, The best Cyber Monday laptop deals for 2020, Laptop buying guide: What to look for in 2020, and what to avoid. Today’s most common operating systems are Windows 10, macOS, and Chrome OS. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. These are games built to make the most of current hardware, and a tricked out system will need a decent amount of RAM to accompany the high-end graphics and processing hardware. Essentially, RAM is the memory that actually lets you work with the data needed to run programs and open files. [Don’t worry… few, if any, games require 32 GB of RAM … Whether looking at a single text file or a handful of documents (Word Docs, PDF, Text files) and larger Excel files (multiple sheets, each with 100+ columns of data), the memory usage ranged between 3,283 and 3,971 MB. Click System. Please refresh the page and try again. People tend to keep their desktop computers around longer than tablets or laptops, so planning for the future is worthwhile. This level of RAM will be a great starting point for most users, and leave them with enough RAM to multitask on any platform. Single audio or video streams from Spotify or YouTube used less than 3GB of memory (2,747 MB and 2,532 MB, respectively), and you had to bump that up to 4 or more simultaneous streams to get above the 3GB mark. Most of the latest high-end or AAA games require 8GB of RAM. Laptops with 16 GB of RAM are expensive than lower end machines, so, do your research if you really need this amount of RAM. If you’re wondering how much RAM you need in your phone, we have a guide for that, too. How Much RAM Do I Need? It's enough to juggle several tasks at once without slowdown, and is sufficient for gaming too. Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks.Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. If you intend to use more than 4 GB of memory on a Windows-based computer, you must have a 64-bit operating system to get past the 4 GB barrier. You’ll be forced to frequently dig into the drawers to store what won’t fit on top of the desk and retrieve the papers you need. Tablets are not expected to deal with heavy-duty software tasks, so their RAM needs tend to be pretty low — similar to a lot of smartphones. The Arctis 7P White Wireless Gaming Headset is 50% off for Cyber Monday, Lenovo Cyber Monday deals 2020: Save $2,000 on ThinkPad X1 Carbon and more, Best Cyber Monday tablet deals: Save on iPad, Galaxy Tab and more. If you’re using applications like Premiere or Pro Tools, though, it’s a good idea to upgrade to 32GB (similar applications can actually take advantage of all of that RAM). We will never want to fall short or spend and spend extra money, so we will give you a series of tips so you can choose the right amount for your PC. While opting for more RAM is always good advice, it doesn’t answer the more specific questions of how much RAM is needed for specific uses, or what you can reasonably expect to do with the RAM your laptop already has. If you are doing a lot of graphic design work or are planning on dabbling in some higher-end gaming, you may want to consider increasing that to 16GB. You can check how much RAM you have in … Different applications react differently to faster memory, and there even differences between Intel and AMD. These games can generally run on 4GB of memory (sometimes less), and don’t require discrete graphics card. We’re here to fix that. The short answer is that you should look for a baseline of at least 4GB for a phone. Windows popped in and out of view of their own accord, and our clicking and typing lagged considerably. We broke down each of our five use cases, finding the memory demands for both basic and heavy use, and matched that to common allotments of RAM. If you want to do things like stream to Twitch, we’d recommend opting for the 32GB options offered on many gaming PCs. Let’s start with the most basic elements of the question. Basic web browsing can be done on almost any connected device, but loading up multiple browser tabs will use up your memory. First, we tested how much memory was used opening and running a game. Although 8 GB of RAM sounds like enough, one-quarter of this is used by the operating system, leaving only 6 GB for you video editor. The 4GB laptop hit that limit after simple opening some documents and a handful of browser tabs. Remember, buying more RAM than you need doesn’t net you any performance benefit — it’s effectively wasted money. What is a Chromebook, and should you buy one? Key takeaway: If you’re a heavy web user, you can get by with 4GB of RAM, but will definitely see a benefit from a larger allotment, such as 8GB. DDR6 is currently in development but not readily available. To answer these questions we performed some testing, looking at specific use cases, identifying the basic memory requirements for each and providing some hard numbers to back our advice. 16GB: This is when things start getting good. With 13,625 MB of memory in use and 2,562 MB in standby, we had reached the limits of our 16GB of RAM. Devices like Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 has a default 16GB because it’s more laptop than tablet — even if its fancy hinge lets you convert it into a light and portable tablet. A desk is a useful analogy to consider the difference between memory and storage. To test multitasking we started by simple adding one use case on top of another, and ran the same test on three different systems: An inexpensive Dell Inspiron 11 2-in-1 with 4GB of RAM, a mid-range Dell Inspiron 17 5767 with 8GB of RAM and the Alienware 15 R3 with 16GB of memory. For this particular game, we’d echo the recommendation to have 8GB of memory or more, and think our 16GB system probably hits the sweet spot for playing demanding AAA titles. For our tests we assumed that normal browsing behavior included the use of multiple browser tabs, with no additional measures taken to cut down on data usage; meaning no ad blockers, no special permissions for media, and no other data-saving measures. Key takeaway: You can do a lot of work with only 4GB of memory, but if you need to work with extremely large files, you’ll want to bump up to 8GB or more. Think of the desk again. Streaming music or binging on videos is a slightly different use case than simple web browsing, putting its own stresses on memory. However, we’d recommend you get a computer with 4GB RAM so your computer can handle anything you throw at it, and is somewhat future-proofed if more intensive updates of the applications you use are released. If you’re a professional photographer, graphics designer, or work at a printing firm, however, you might need to work in batches, opening up 10 to 50 photos at one time. Everything was holding thus far. While your overall performance will largely be dictated by the capabilities of your processor and graphics hardware, your memory allotment will directly impact how well you can take advantage of that performance. For use case testing we used an Alienware 15 R3, equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700HQ, 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX970M graphics card. The problem is that doing so will severely slow your system down. Low-end gaming doesn’t require much in the way of hardware, letting you play games like Cuphead, Minecraft or Overwatch without investing in a purpose-built machine. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors? By testing a variety of use cases on different amounts of RAM, we can get a very good idea what sort of uses can be comfortably done with how much RAM, and even give you an idea of how you can stretch the RAM you’ve got. Then give yourself a little bit of extra space so you’ve got some wiggle-room. Simply running the game uses an additional 2GB of memory, but with little difference in memory load between running and actively playing the game, we simply left it running for the duration of testing. For obvious reasons, editing 4K video isn’t something you can do on an entry-level machine with next to no RAM or video RAM. Windows 10, for example, consumes around 2GB of RAM before you even open an application. The question in many cases is: how much RAM should I buy? RAM stands for Random Access Memory, and it consists of dynamic memory chips that can be written and rewritten with data very quickly. If you want a quick way to upgrade your laptop, adding a stick of RAM is a great place to start, and is something even a novice can do in very little time. All rights reserved. 4GB is a better fit in most tablet cases. For Windows and MacOS, however, you should think about bumping that number up to a standard 8GB. Those 4GB of standby memory held throughout testing, but every additional 10 tabs used roughly a full GB of memory. At this point, on both the 8GB Dell Inspiron 178 and the 16GB Alienware 15, you’ll notice that the amount of standby memory changes, reprioritizing things to briefly open up additional free space. Each DDR generation has a range of speeds, with DDR4 starting with DDR4-1600 and ending with DDR4-3200. How much RAM do I need for 4K video editing? It’s one of the first questions buyers ask when shopping for a new gaming PC: “How much RAM do I need?” Is the 4 GB of system memory on many budget-priced laptops enough to play the games I like? We repeated the increasing demands, stepping up to 40 Chrome tabs, 8 media streams and 40 photos in Photoshop. On a 16GB system, that’s a sizable chunk of memory to dedicate to a single program. Key takeaway: Multitaskers should really opt for 8 GB of RAM when possible, and those running multiple applications along with a ton of tabs should opt for 16 GB. Large documents were another matter. But not everything is quite so demanding, and you can find games that will run on nearly any laptop out there. Whenever your computer loads a program or opens a file, it opens up that data in RAM. That presents a problem if you, say, bought memory rated for 3200MHz. © How to Check How Much RAM You Have on Windows. You’ll want more in a laptop or desktop. The bottom line is that RAM is essential to the smooth operating of your computer, particularly for things like multitasking and accessing multiple files at one time. The 8GB Dell Inspiron 17 continued with normal functioning. Photo editing is far more demanding than basic office or web functionality, and is usually right on the cusp of what an affordable system can do well. Of these, Chrome OS is the least demanding, but even it will benefit from having enough RAM. Meanwhile, system RAM is identified with DDR3 or DDR4, with the number identifying the generation. How much RAM does your VPS need? Meanwhile, Apple’s latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro has 6GB of RAM to accommodate the 2-in-1 crowd. If you want to make the most of your multitasking, these are the tests to look at. Phones like an Android One/Android Go phone can get away with 1.5 - … The initial 10-tab test used 3,333 MB of memory, with an additional 3,963 MB in standby. This sort of flexibility is where you’ll get the very most out of your memory, as larger allotments of RAM facilitate exactly this sort of behavior. So, how much RAM do I need? Most current generation graphics cards use GDDR5, GDDR6, and HBM, or similar. In particular, video editing applications like Adobe Premiere and digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Pro Tools are memory hungry. Unless you plan on doing a huge amount of multitasking while gaming, there’s little reason for most gaming rigs to go beyond 16GB of memory. The moral of this story is pretty straight forward; you want to have more memory than you’ll actually use. We recommend opting for 4GB of RAM when buying a Chromebook, especially since you can now use the Google Play Store to download Android apps directly on your machine. While these five use cases are all common, they’re also relatively simple in the sense that the testing focused on one or two specific uses at a time. But what about those times you need to jump back and forth between programs, flipping back and forth between files and tools? You might need 8-16 GB of RAM or more if you do lots of multitasking or use intensive programs. We tested with a number of documents with upward of 1,000 pages. Whether listening to multiple audio streams or watching multiple videos, the overall memory use didn’t change much. Ultimately, this gives us a guideline for choosing tablet RAM: Remember, tablets are generally complementary devices that reside between your smartphone and your PC. Those numbers held fairly steady throughout actual gameplay, so there’s no appreciable difference between running the game and playing the game that we could see. While most people won’t be doing much photo editing in the middle of their next battle royale, it’s not uncommon to chat with friends or pull up a YouTube tutorial. You can stay up to date on what to expect with our guide to DDR5. Key takeaway: Opt for 8GB of RAM if you want decent performance on less demanding titles, but go for 16GB if you want to play the latest and most resource intensive hits. Having a big desk doesn’t help you if you’re just working with a few pieces of paper. Outside of games and general browsing, professional applications tend to hog the most RAM. There was a problem. We started with smaller files in multiple programs, opening Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files and photos. Although 8GB of RAM will work, 16GB is the sweet spot for streaming and will allow you to stream quality gameplay. So, how much RAM do you need? If you're wondering 'How much RAM do I need?' Return to normal open an application VRAM, to temporarily store image data, like textures to cooperate meanwhile Apple. To see programs slow down, and HBM, or office workers for... 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