December 8, 2017 at 21:09How much RAM was consumed by computer games, or In anticipation of the 16+ GB era
Hello Giktayms! Nearing the end of 2017, which gave us a lot of computer games. We will not talk about which direction the industry is moving, but at the same time we will try to find out what PC gamers are preparing for in the coming year.
It is believed that earlier games were better, and system requirements for them were not the most stringent. And now everything is supposedly done in such a way that the gamer only has time to run to the store for new iron. Especially these conversations are relevant in the period of the release of new iron, and 2017 in this regard was just such a year. In the allotted 365 days, AMD finally introduced the competitive Ryzen processors, to which Intel responded with the release of the six-core Coffee Lake i5 and Core i7. In the same year, the Reds introduced a series of Radeon RX Vega video cards, and NVIDIA released the most powerful single-chip - TITAN Xp.
But what about the RAM? While M.2-slots of motherboards are more and more actively filled with NVMe-drives, the de facto standard in a gaming computer is 8 GB. At least that's what the official Steam statistics for November-month tell us about this . It is noteworthy that in this third degree of lies, the story is completely different: as early as March of this year, 12+ GB of RAM was installed in 22.6% of the users of the blessed Gabe service. In November, there were much more such people - 31.56%, that is, we can safely say that next year the majority of gamers with such PCs and laptops will become. The turning point, it seems to us.
Summing up the peculiar outcome of 2017, we decided to see how the system requirements of PC games changed over time and how much RAM the average computer needed in the past.
We suggest you not to swarm in the "Mesozoic era" and consider the games that came out exactly 10 years ago. So, in 2007, the following cult franchises appeared: Crysis, Mass Effect, The Witcher and Assassin's Creed. Each of these AAA projects currently has several parts. The same Mass Effect Andromeda and Assassin's Creed: Origins were introduced in 2017. In general, the picture will be quite clear. Perhaps, for clarity, we add to this list the most epic (12/10) Call of Duty pipeline. In 2007, just released the fourth part - not yet bored Modern Warfare.
In 2007, for about $ 1,500 (at that rate - ~ 38,000 rubles), you could buy a system with a dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 processor (2.13 GHz, 4 MB cache), 2 GB DDR2-800, an iconic ASUS motherboard P5B Deluxe, a 500GB hard drive and a GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB graphics card. Now for 38,000 rubles you will build a PC with a dual-core Pentium G4600, 8 GB of RAM DDR4-2400, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB and 1 TB HDD, and for $ 1,500 - a computer with a six-core Core i5-8400, 16 GB of RAM, GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB, 1 TB HDD and 120-128 GB SSD. Contrastingly it turns out.
The table below shows the recommended system requirements for the games discussed in this article.
Most clearly, the growth in system requirements is demonstrated by the Call of Duty franchise. Step by step, the game slowly began to require more and more resources. The situation with the need to free up as much as 90 GB of free space for the Call of Duty: WWII installation looks especially nightmarish. It turns out that a 120-128 GB SSD is simply not enough to install this game.
Starting with Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the series began to require a lot of RAM. Yes, the recommended system requirements include 8 GB, but in fact, playing at maximum graphics quality settings requires more than 13 GB of RAM.
Black Ops III is far from the only example in the series when 8 GB of RAM is not enough for comfortable gaming. The last part of the "spell" - WWII - also "eats" more than 8 GB of RAM. In Full HD resolution with maximum graphics quality settings in a system with GeForce GTX 1080, 10 GB of RAM is required for a normal and comfortable game.
In our opinion, the release of Crysis in 2007 marked the emergence of games with next-generation graphics. In 2007, even PCs with the GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card could barely cope with “kraysis” at high graphics quality settings in HD resolution. When activating the maximum graphics quality settings, this game required 2.5 GB of RAM. Some users only after a few years were able to see Crysis in all its glory when it was time to update their PC. So, to get stable 60 FPS in Full HD resolution, you need video cards of the GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290X level, and these are very nimble game adapters even by the standards of 2017. Third and it seems
The developers of Mass Effect Andromeda recommend using a computer with 16 GB for their project. Testing shows that for maximum settings when using the GeForce GTX 1080, 8 GB of RAM in Full HD resolution is enough. Ultra HD already requires more than 12 GB of RAM.
Assassin's Creed series of games includes many projects and branches, but we selected only six to compare recommended system requirements. Parts such as Unity and Syndicate were remembered by gamers as very resource-intensive titles. At the same time, the developers of Assassin's Creed Origins significantly optimized the Anvi Next Engine. As a result, if the first part of Assassin's Creed required only 2 GB of RAM, then the last - already 8 GB.
Around 2011-2012, a gaming PC required 4 GB of RAM. Prior to that, the recommended system requirements included 2 GB of RAM. Already in 2015, igrodely began to recommend 8 GB of RAM for their products.
In 2011, for $ 1,500 (at that rate - ~ 48,000 rubles), you could purchase a system with Intel Core i5-2500K, 8 GB DDR3-1866, GeForce GTX 570, SSD 60-64 GB and a 2 TB hard drive. Now for about 50,000 rubles you can get a PC with a quad-core Core i3-8100 and a Z370 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, 1 TB HDD and a 3 GB GeForce GTX 1060.
As a result, over the past 10 years, the requirements for the amount of RAM have increased exactly 8 times. At the same time, in 2017, 8 GB of RAM is enough for a comfortable pastime, although there are games that require significantly more RAM at maximum graphics quality settings. The choice suggests itself: a modern gaming computer needs 16 GB of RAM. However, we are once again convinced of this.
In April 2017, we already conducted one small experiment, in which we determined how much RAM the modern gaming computer needs.
It has been a fair amount of time since that test. Many new games went on sale, so we decided to repeat our experiment. For its implementation, we used a system with a Core i7-7700K processor, GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB graphics cards and GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB and a set of RAM Kingston HyperX Predator HX430C15PB3K4 / 64. Measurement of RAM consumption was carried out for 15 minutes by means of the MSI Afterburner program. Games were launched at maximum graphics quality settings in Full HD and the growing popularity of Ultra HD. We used a clean Windows 10 x64 Pro operating system without running additional programs. Obviously, the launch of a Google Chrome with the subsequent opening of several dozen tabs will lead to an increase in RAM consumption by 7-10 GB. On the other hand,
In the test stand, various video cards are not just used. Many modern games consume more than 4 GB of video memory, so if VRAM is not enough for a particular project, all the data that does not fit will be stored in RAM. Therefore, the following dependence is true: the less video memory the video card has, the more RAM it needs to have in the computer.
We think this mini-test clearly showed that in 2017, not a single game was released that would consume more than 16 GB of RAM. This statement is relevant not only for Full HD resolution, but also for Ultra HD.
It should be noted that many AAA projects have been released that really need 16 GB of RAM. At the same time, games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs 2, Call of Duty, STAR WARS Battlefront II and Mass Effect Andromeda, as if hinting: a large amount of RAM (over 16 GB) in a PC no longer looks like something unusual and superfluous.
Over the past 10 years, computer games have become noticeably more voracious in terms of system requirements. In 2007, the average gaming PC was enough for 2 GB of RAM, and in 2011 - 4 GB. Now, it does not surprise anyone that a game takes 50+ GB of storage and requires more than 8 GB of RAM.
It turns out that a reasonable choice for a gaming computer at the moment is the presence of 16 GB of RAM. However, next year there will be a large number of interesting and long-awaited projects: Metro: Exodus, Far Cry 5, Darksiders 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, The Crew 2, Beyond Good & Evil 2 - this is just a small list of already announced projects. We do not exclude the possibility that in 2018 there will be games that mark the beginning of the 16+ GB era. Therefore, when assembling a computer “for the future”, you can already look towards the RAM kits with a total capacity of 32 GB.
Subscribe and stay with us - it will be interesting!
Well, for those who plan to assemble a PC on their own or buy a ready-made assembly, MSI gives an excellent New Year gift worth 10,000 rubles, which you can complement your assembly with - a 16 GB HyperX Fury DDR4 RAM kit. The number of memory modules is limited. Find out the details of the action here .
For more information on Kingston and HyperX products, visit the company's official website .
It is believed that earlier games were better, and system requirements for them were not the most stringent. And now everything is supposedly done in such a way that the gamer only has time to run to the store for new iron. Especially these conversations are relevant in the period of the release of new iron, and 2017 in this regard was just such a year. In the allotted 365 days, AMD finally introduced the competitive Ryzen processors, to which Intel responded with the release of the six-core Coffee Lake i5 and Core i7. In the same year, the Reds introduced a series of Radeon RX Vega video cards, and NVIDIA released the most powerful single-chip - TITAN Xp.
But what about the RAM? While M.2-slots of motherboards are more and more actively filled with NVMe-drives, the de facto standard in a gaming computer is 8 GB. At least that's what the official Steam statistics for November-month tell us about this . It is noteworthy that in this third degree of lies, the story is completely different: as early as March of this year, 12+ GB of RAM was installed in 22.6% of the users of the blessed Gabe service. In November, there were much more such people - 31.56%, that is, we can safely say that next year the majority of gamers with such PCs and laptops will become. The turning point, it seems to us.
Summing up the peculiar outcome of 2017, we decided to see how the system requirements of PC games changed over time and how much RAM the average computer needed in the past.
When we were young
We suggest you not to swarm in the "Mesozoic era" and consider the games that came out exactly 10 years ago. So, in 2007, the following cult franchises appeared: Crysis, Mass Effect, The Witcher and Assassin's Creed. Each of these AAA projects currently has several parts. The same Mass Effect Andromeda and Assassin's Creed: Origins were introduced in 2017. In general, the picture will be quite clear. Perhaps, for clarity, we add to this list the most epic (12/10) Call of Duty pipeline. In 2007, just released the fourth part - not yet bored Modern Warfare.
In 2007, for about $ 1,500 (at that rate - ~ 38,000 rubles), you could buy a system with a dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 processor (2.13 GHz, 4 MB cache), 2 GB DDR2-800, an iconic ASUS motherboard P5B Deluxe, a 500GB hard drive and a GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB graphics card. Now for 38,000 rubles you will build a PC with a dual-core Pentium G4600, 8 GB of RAM DDR4-2400, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB and 1 TB HDD, and for $ 1,500 - a computer with a six-core Core i5-8400, 16 GB of RAM, GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB, 1 TB HDD and 120-128 GB SSD. Contrastingly it turns out.
The table below shows the recommended system requirements for the games discussed in this article.
Most clearly, the growth in system requirements is demonstrated by the Call of Duty franchise. Step by step, the game slowly began to require more and more resources. The situation with the need to free up as much as 90 GB of free space for the Call of Duty: WWII installation looks especially nightmarish. It turns out that a 120-128 GB SSD is simply not enough to install this game.
Starting with Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the series began to require a lot of RAM. Yes, the recommended system requirements include 8 GB, but in fact, playing at maximum graphics quality settings requires more than 13 GB of RAM.
Black Ops III is far from the only example in the series when 8 GB of RAM is not enough for comfortable gaming. The last part of the "spell" - WWII - also "eats" more than 8 GB of RAM. In Full HD resolution with maximum graphics quality settings in a system with GeForce GTX 1080, 10 GB of RAM is required for a normal and comfortable game.
In our opinion, the release of Crysis in 2007 marked the emergence of games with next-generation graphics. In 2007, even PCs with the GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card could barely cope with “kraysis” at high graphics quality settings in HD resolution. When activating the maximum graphics quality settings, this game required 2.5 GB of RAM. Some users only after a few years were able to see Crysis in all its glory when it was time to update their PC. So, to get stable 60 FPS in Full HD resolution, you need video cards of the GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290X level, and these are very nimble game adapters even by the standards of 2017. Third and it seems
The developers of Mass Effect Andromeda recommend using a computer with 16 GB for their project. Testing shows that for maximum settings when using the GeForce GTX 1080, 8 GB of RAM in Full HD resolution is enough. Ultra HD already requires more than 12 GB of RAM.
Assassin's Creed series of games includes many projects and branches, but we selected only six to compare recommended system requirements. Parts such as Unity and Syndicate were remembered by gamers as very resource-intensive titles. At the same time, the developers of Assassin's Creed Origins significantly optimized the Anvi Next Engine. As a result, if the first part of Assassin's Creed required only 2 GB of RAM, then the last - already 8 GB.
Around 2011-2012, a gaming PC required 4 GB of RAM. Prior to that, the recommended system requirements included 2 GB of RAM. Already in 2015, igrodely began to recommend 8 GB of RAM for their products.
In 2011, for $ 1,500 (at that rate - ~ 48,000 rubles), you could purchase a system with Intel Core i5-2500K, 8 GB DDR3-1866, GeForce GTX 570, SSD 60-64 GB and a 2 TB hard drive. Now for about 50,000 rubles you can get a PC with a quad-core Core i3-8100 and a Z370 motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, 1 TB HDD and a 3 GB GeForce GTX 1060.
As a result, over the past 10 years, the requirements for the amount of RAM have increased exactly 8 times. At the same time, in 2017, 8 GB of RAM is enough for a comfortable pastime, although there are games that require significantly more RAM at maximum graphics quality settings. The choice suggests itself: a modern gaming computer needs 16 GB of RAM. However, we are once again convinced of this.
AAA Games 2017
In April 2017, we already conducted one small experiment, in which we determined how much RAM the modern gaming computer needs.
It has been a fair amount of time since that test. Many new games went on sale, so we decided to repeat our experiment. For its implementation, we used a system with a Core i7-7700K processor, GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB graphics cards and GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB and a set of RAM Kingston HyperX Predator HX430C15PB3K4 / 64. Measurement of RAM consumption was carried out for 15 minutes by means of the MSI Afterburner program. Games were launched at maximum graphics quality settings in Full HD and the growing popularity of Ultra HD. We used a clean Windows 10 x64 Pro operating system without running additional programs. Obviously, the launch of a Google Chrome with the subsequent opening of several dozen tabs will lead to an increase in RAM consumption by 7-10 GB. On the other hand,
In the test stand, various video cards are not just used. Many modern games consume more than 4 GB of video memory, so if VRAM is not enough for a particular project, all the data that does not fit will be stored in RAM. Therefore, the following dependence is true: the less video memory the video card has, the more RAM it needs to have in the computer.
We think this mini-test clearly showed that in 2017, not a single game was released that would consume more than 16 GB of RAM. This statement is relevant not only for Full HD resolution, but also for Ultra HD.
It should be noted that many AAA projects have been released that really need 16 GB of RAM. At the same time, games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs 2, Call of Duty, STAR WARS Battlefront II and Mass Effect Andromeda, as if hinting: a large amount of RAM (over 16 GB) in a PC no longer looks like something unusual and superfluous.
conclusions
Over the past 10 years, computer games have become noticeably more voracious in terms of system requirements. In 2007, the average gaming PC was enough for 2 GB of RAM, and in 2011 - 4 GB. Now, it does not surprise anyone that a game takes 50+ GB of storage and requires more than 8 GB of RAM.
It turns out that a reasonable choice for a gaming computer at the moment is the presence of 16 GB of RAM. However, next year there will be a large number of interesting and long-awaited projects: Metro: Exodus, Far Cry 5, Darksiders 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, The Crew 2, Beyond Good & Evil 2 - this is just a small list of already announced projects. We do not exclude the possibility that in 2018 there will be games that mark the beginning of the 16+ GB era. Therefore, when assembling a computer “for the future”, you can already look towards the RAM kits with a total capacity of 32 GB.
Subscribe and stay with us - it will be interesting!
Well, for those who plan to assemble a PC on their own or buy a ready-made assembly, MSI gives an excellent New Year gift worth 10,000 rubles, which you can complement your assembly with - a 16 GB HyperX Fury DDR4 RAM kit. The number of memory modules is limited. Find out the details of the action here .
For more information on Kingston and HyperX products, visit the company's official website .
