Ram - how much do you really need?

Fuiosg

This always throws me off because I know that some programs like Zbrush (32-bit) can only use something like 4 gb of ram.

I'm just wondering what the sweet spot is for artists, where it's not overkill but just enough to work smoothly without any kind of bottle-necking on your workflow. I have 8 GB now with the option to upgrade.

SuperFranky

8gb at the least. It's really sweet to be able to run 3ds Max+Photoshop+Marmoset 2 and work with high res textures and also procrastinate in web browser. 3ds Max likes to eat a lot of RAM if your project has millions of polygons in it. So yeah, if you can - buy as much as your motherboard supports You can see how much that is in specifications of your motherboard (see the official site for details)

LMP

More RAM can do more things, at the same time. I have 16GB. I can run Maya, Unreal Engine 4, Photoshop, and Substance Designer 4 at the same time.

skyline5gtr

8Gb for now, doing basic stuff. 16-32gb if you plan to do some renders in VRray or such

Visceral

I cant wait until someone posts that "download moore ram" link. Really it depends. For me 8gb works out fine. But moore is usually better. With that i mean that moore cant hurt, but increasing ram has diminishing returns.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajyzZ-zaq0o[/ame]

AtticusMars

I'd agree that 8 is probably as low as you want to go. Realistically you're probably not going to see as much improvement going higher than 16 depending on what you're doing.

Worth pointing out, Zbrush 4R7 comes with an x64 version, for anyone who is lucky enough to be able to get to the download page that is -___-

Even for those continuing to use 4R6, ZBrush might only be able to use 4 gigs on its own but Windows is probably going to be using a gig by itself, so at a minimum you're going to need more than 4 if you want ZBrush to operate at its max memory usage.

I can't think of any other applications that are still 32 bit.

WarrenM

As much as your computer can hold. That's my philosophy.

AtticusMars

WarrenM wrote: »

As much as your computer can hold. That's my philosophy.

This is a good policy IMO

S_ource

I have 16 but want to have 32, 16 works just fine but its nice to stay over the line.

throttlekitty

WarrenM wrote: »

As much as your computer can hold. That's my philosophy.

Just dump it all the case, right?

ZacD

Well Zbrush has a 64 bit version coming out very soon, it'll be interesting to see how much better it performs with the extra ram usage. 8 gigs with room to expand seems to be the ideal starting place, but if you know you are going to use a lot, just get 16 gigs.

SnowInChina

throttlekitty wrote: »

Just dump it all the case, right?

if it fits, it belongs there

skyline5gtr

SnowInChina wrote: »

if it fits, it belongs there

exactly lol :poly124:

oglu

32 gigs here... and could need even more if i need to do heavy fluid sims or renderings...
alos on heavy mudbox scenes 16gig is the minimum...

Goeddy

SnowInChina wrote: »

if it fits, it belongs there

mhm i gues


seriously though you wil be fine with 8 for now but 16 or 32 are nicer and safer for the future.

unit187

I have 10 gigs, sometimes it is not enough when I run Maya, PS, browser and some minor stuff.

Finalhart

I have 16 and i haven't experience lag since a year. But for me the worst scenario is having UE4, photoshpo, zbrush and 3ds max open and it works really nice. I'd say get 8gb at minimun and 16 if you can afford it.

Axi5

I've posted this before but sometimes I don't understand how people can need so much.

I currently only have 6GB with an SSD for page file. When I'm at full workload I'll have open: Photoshop with Quixel Suite, 3ds Max, Xnormal, Unreal Engine 4 or Marmoset TB2, probably ZBrush and handplane and a few extras if necessary not to mention non-work apps Chrome, Spotify and much more.

Remember that Windows bloats it's RAM usage if you've got more to spare. I've occasionally had lag switching from most apps to Photoshop, but it's only Photoshop that lags which leads me to believe it's the programs fault that it uses memory weirdly, not my hardware.

Other than that switching is fast, I've extremely rarely had a program throw a hissy and nor has Windows reported "not enough memory for operation" which I used to see commonly on my ol' 2GB RAM machine.

Sure it would be nice to step up to 16GB just for piece of mind but I would set 6GB as your lower bound, not 8. My PC is far from a behemoth and I'm perfectly content with this "limitation" right now. My PC does need a shiny new processor and maybe a GPU in the near future though, I don't see RAM being worth the investment.

EDIT: Maybe my PC is a working miracle somehow. **pats case**

WarrenM

RAM is always a worthwhile investment. The more RAM you have, the less swapping to hard drive there is, the faster you can work. SSDs have mitigated this to some degree, but it's still one of the best upgrades you can do.

Axi5

WarrenM wrote: »

RAM is always a worthwhile investment. The more RAM you have, the less swapping to hard drive there is, the faster you can work. SSDs have mitigated this to some degree, but it's still one of the best upgrades you can do.

I'd agree if I was seeing issues on my system, but I'm not. Maybe I'm not stressing it enough or something.

I obviously see the use for some people having lots of RAM but I would say that they're exceptional most of the time (like you, I know you Warren ). Most modern day systems shouldn't prevent anyone from producing imo.

I haven't put much thought into upgrading from 6GB because quite frankly I haven't felt the need to. As long as I don't see a bottleneck I'm perfectly fine with it.

WarrenM

Eh, maybe I'm wrong ... I get tons of RAM in every machine I buy. Maybe it's not relevant anymore.

unit187

Axi5 wrote: »

I'd agree if I was seeing issues on my system, but I'm not. Maybe I'm not stressing it enough or something.

I obviously see the use for some people having lots of RAM but I would say that they're exceptional most of the time (like you, I know you Warren ). Most modern day systems shouldn't prevent anyone from producing imo.

I haven't put much thought into upgrading from 6GB because quite frankly I haven't felt the need to. As long as I don't see a bottleneck I'm perfectly fine with it.

If I am not mistaken, RAM and SSD are very similar in terms of of tech. So basically having page file on your SSD you are using it as RAM instead of just using RAM.

AtticusMars

I run out of memory frequently with 8gb just doing illustrations in photoshop, even if you have history states set to the default of 20, flipping the canvas a few times while working at conservative print resolutions will rapidly absorb all your available memory.

Axi5

unit187 wrote: »

If I am not mistaken, RAM and SSD are very similar in terms of of tech. So basically having page file on your SSD you are using it as RAM instead of just using RAM.

It's not really, RAM is still much faster hence why RAM disks are still popular. That said an SSD is obviously a gazillion times faster than a standard hard drive.

AtticusMars wrote: »

I run out of memory frequently with 8gb just doing illustrations in photoshop, even if you have history states set to the default of 20, flipping the canvas a few times while working at conservative print resolutions will rapidly absorb all your available memory.

I'll give that a go sometime, I rarely work anywhere near 300DPI. I've noticed that Photoshop can be infinitely more intensive than any of the other apps I concurrently have open, it's also the only app I'd consider getting more ram for using. However, it's still the only app that does cripple my PC, so I think adobe could optimise it. I know Krita isn't as fully featured nor polished but I've considered switching to it purely because it doesn't have such a presence.

Neox

right now my machine is at 45 of 64 gig ram, soooo i think 8 might not cut it ^^

WarrenM

Neox

Well, as mentioned, Windows will expand to fill available space so it's very possible it doesn't NEED that much RAM. It's just grabbed it because it's there.

Marshkin

I currently have 32, but for the most part, that's overkill. I tend to run Maya, unreal 4, zBrush and photoshop at the same time, which I did when I had at 16 with not very much lag until I added Unreal to the mix. (I really hate closing down programs and waiting for them to open!).
At min, you'd want 8, at 16 if you want to multitask and switch back and forth between programs.

Neox

WarrenM wrote: »

Neox

Well, as mentioned, Windows will expand to fill available space so it's very possible it doesn't NEED that much RAM. It's just grabbed it because it's there.

i'd say yes, but constantly running 4 instances of maya with a couple gig files each, few max instances, zbrush, photoshop with huge files and unreal4... it sums up pretty quickly. sure i could close some instances. but i have to check so many files a day. i just keep em running.

JedTheKrampus

8 gb is fine, wouldn't go less than 6 gb for game art. Depends on what you can afford and what you're using your computer for. If you want to compile UE4 on a machine with 4gb of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard drive you're going to have a bad time.

Deathstick

Ram is probably the cheapest upgrade you can get for a PC, so might as well go full throttle on it

Mstankow

I went from 12 GB to 24 GB and didn't notice a difference. But now all the ram slots are filled so I am happy.

Add3r

Really circumstantial, as with any computer build. I have found myself using 32gb easily when editing large skybox panorama images in photoshop, and as little as like 6-8gb when just doing regular 3D work. I bet I could fill up 64gb of RAM if I was being lazy and just kept all my apps open all the time, while editing some large map files and stuff.

unit187

Axi5 wrote: »

It's not really, RAM is still much faster hence why RAM disks are still popular. That said an SSD is obviously a gazillion times faster than a standard hard drive.

ye, I'm just saying that having SSD for page file seems to be enough for some people to avoid any problems

my 7200 hard drive, for instance, is too slow, so if I run out of memory, page file does not help all

ghaztehschmexeh

I have 12, and I have actually capped that out a couple of times recently. Most of the time it's fine, and wouldn't be an issue if you don't run basically everything at once like me.

Lamont

I`ve had 16GB for the past 4 years. Seems fine for me.

Axi5

unit187 wrote: »

ye, I'm just saying that having SSD for page file seems to be enough for some people to avoid any problems

my 7200 hard drive, for instance, is too slow, so if I run out of memory, page file does not help all

Yeah of course bonus is all my programs load really quick. When I switched back to a PC with no SSD I forgot how long Max took to load.

Still an SSD shouldn't really be competing with RAM. If I had any less than 6GB I'm sure I'd be having loads of issues, SSD or not.

rino

i have 16 gigs now, but i'll probably go to 32. mari and photoshop together can be heavy.

JonathanLambert

I have 32GB.
I routinely ran out of memory when I only had 16GB but it was almost always when working with huge CAD files in 3dsMax or baking lightmaps in a wonky Unreal build. 90% of the time 16GB is plenty but the other 10% can be very frustrating and time consuming and worth a little extra money in my opinion.

Punio

I've recently upgraded from 8 to 32GB. I used to get many issues with large Photoshop files, so if I were to say, a minimum of 16GB would be better.

SnowInChina

Punio wrote: »

I've recently upgraded from 8 to 32GB. I used to get many issues with large Photoshop files, so if I were to say, a minimum of 16GB would be better.

if you´re doing heavy work in photoshop 32gb would be recommended.
i still run out of ram sometimes with my 16gb, with only photoshop open

ysalex

Maxing out 16 so went to 32, it makes a difference when I've got a lot going on, or I'm rendering, but I could get by without it, I'd just have to work harder at trying to manage my resources.

With zbrush r7 out now though, 64 bit gives me something to do with all that extra ram.

Biggest improvement I've ever made though is ssd, amazing boot time for windows and programs, photoshop opens in under a second now.