Do any games use 4gb

[Dreamweavernoob]

I have brought new ram for my pc (4gb) but am wondering the necessity of having 4gb. Do any games actually use it?

cheers

[LordJuanlo]

Maybe 3 gb if you add the OS load (Vista), but I don't think any game uses 4 gb (maybe some mods like Cinematic for Half Life 2). However 4+ gb are nice if you like to do stuff like burning dvds and having several internet browsers open while gaming for a quick alt-tab to have a look at cheats

[Scendore]

Kinda curious... Why would you play the game if you're going to look up cheats? Sorta a waste of the game and time right?

4gigs isn't really being utilized by all that much these days but that could be changing. I know FSX will use all of it. That much memory tends to help games that have very large environments with lots of objects. Flight Sims are a good example.

Shooters typically don't represent large areas with lots of objects. Crysis is one of the first to open up shooters to a much larger map.

All the others don't really take advantage of viewing a lot of area so memory above 2 gig isn't really being used at the moment.

[a12ctic]

Originally Posted by Scendore

Kinda curious... Why would you play the game if you're going to look up cheats? Sorta a waste of the game and time right?

To add playability value? Or just to have more fun. In GTA for example, the game is not so great without an arsenal of amazing weapons, and sometimes the story is a drag. If you wanna just go on a rampage you basically need the cheats.

[nemecb]

I thought I would never use my 4 GB, but then the other night I was doing some image processing on a 2048^2 image with Blender and some other stuff open and I ended up using 500 meg of swap on top of my 4 GB. So maybe not for games, but depending on what you do it's certainly possible to use 4 GB.

[CaptNKILL]

I remember load times in The Witcher improving dramatically when I upgraded to 4Gb.

[Sean_W]

64bit games WILL use more memory because they can, just like apps. 4Gb will be utilized more in your 64bit OS so it depends on how many 64bit games you have.

[Buenamos]

Yeah I have yet to really use all my RAM in games but it really comes in hand when I'm doing 3d Modeling in 3ds max or maya and have photoshop open along with a bunch of browser windows and mp3 player going and so on.

[jolle]

Originally Posted by Buenamos

Yeah I have yet to really use all my RAM in games but it really comes in hand when I'm doing 3d Modeling in 3ds max or maya and have photoshop open along with a bunch of browser windows and mp3 player going and so on.

I ran OUT of ram with 8Gb rendering a really high density mesh from mudbox in Maya.
had to use a lower division mesh and normal map, but that worked out ok.

Also, running things in 64bit, if what I´ve heard is correct, has a bit of memory overhead, so mem usage will be slightly higher.
But you generally have 4gb or more if you use a 64bit OS, so it prolly more then makes up for it..

[abcgamer]

I am not exactly sure but I read that if you have 4 gb and are trying to play Arma then it will give you lots of performance issue. I do not know whether they have fixed it or not but it is funny. 4gb is going to give you trouble in some games

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

Maybe 3 gb if you add the OS load (Vista), but I don't think any game uses 4 gb (maybe some mods like Cinematic for Half Life 2). However 4+ gb are nice if you like to do stuff like burning dvds and having several internet browsers open while gaming for a quick alt-tab to have a look at cheats

You don't really even need 4GB for that.

I've had Battle For Middle Earth minimized (not paused), IE7 open with a bunch of browsere, WMP11 open (minimized), and would be playing Oblivion (waiting for a local buddy to be ready for a match in BFME)... all the while Everest Ultimate reported me using under 3GB... continuously. I don't think there's ever been a time when I've used up 3Gb or more...

[sillyeagle]

Originally Posted by Scendore

Kinda curious... Why would you play the game if you're going to look up cheats? Sorta a waste of the game and time right?

Don't be so narrow. For example, when I played Morrowind, the way I had my good time with it was to to locate high value items and targets which were deep into areas I had not yet attained the skills and power to rightly takle, yet with fore knowledge where these items were, I could go on special missions with the sole purpose of pushing into the area and snatching my prize. With the leveling system in Oblivion, that style couldn't be done, but nevertheless using a third party source of information and tips was not only very fun, but plausible, becuase as a freelance adventurer I could and did have access to information on where the goods were, but getting there and back without being killed was the challenge. If I didn't have the power to get what I wanted, then I would chase what I could until the right time arrived. So in one sense I "cheated" the entite time, but it was probably the best gaming experience I've ever had. Total freedom to be me.

As to 4GB, I've heard the more video RAM you have the more system RAM you need, as the video RAM needs to reserve its own address space in RAM. Not sure if thats entirely true though.