There are lots of factors to consider when determining whether 4GB of RAM is good enough for gaming or not. However, to give a short answer, 4GB of RAM is generally not considered enough for gaming, especially if you’re planning on playing games that are resource-intensive.
Generally, games that are more demanding on resources will require more RAM than less demanding games.
To have a better understanding, let me explain a bit about how RAM works. RAM is used by your computer to store data that is currently being used.
When you open a program, it loads into your RAM so that it can be accessed quickly. The more RAM you have, the more programs you can have open at the same time without your computer starting to lag.
So, if you’re planning on playing games that are demanding on resources, you may want to consider getting more than 4GB of RAM. 8GB is a good amount of RAM for gaming, and 16GB is even better.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that the amount of RAM you need will also depend on other factors, such as the type of games you’re playing, the resolution you’re playing at, and your graphics card.
Is 4GB RAM Good for Gaming?
4GB of RAM is good for gaming if you are running at 1080p resolution and are willing to sacrifice some graphical fidelity for performance. If you are looking to game at higher resolutions or with higher graphical settings, you will likely need more than 4GB of RAM. For example, 8GB of RAM would be better for gaming at 1440p resolution or 4K resolution.
One of the major issues you are likely to encounter with 4GB of RAM is that you will start to see stuttering and frame rate drops as you try to play more demanding games. This is because your system will start to run out of memory as it tries to load all the game data into RAM. This can be alleviated by closing other programs that are running in the background, but it is not a perfect solution.
Another issue you may encounter is that some games will simply not run with 4GB of RAM. This is because they are designed to require more memory in order to run properly. If you are looking to play games that are resource intensive, you will need to upgrade to 8GB of RAM or more.
So Then, How Does This Process Affect Gaming?
Well, the things it does and doesn’t. When a game is booting up, RAM will be the one to run the boot-up of a game or at least allow the game to be accessed by the CPU and then images are then produced to varying quality depending on your settings on the GPU. So they all work hand in hand to produce a good outcome.
Although if you are looking for what to upgrade on your system, then maybe the CPU or GPU should be where you go first before you start upgrading your RAM to improve your gaming experience.
Think of RAM as a house party; the RAM is the actual house, and the party’s what is being read or written on for you to access because, just like a party, whatever is stored on the RAM is temporary, and once the party is over everybody goes home just as once your system goes off or an app is no-longer run it automatically stops taking up space on the RAM. This is because RAM allows you to access data that is stored somewhere else so it can be run.
So just like a house party, 4GB ram is a really small house with only 4GB of space, and just like any house party, there are permanent fixtures like you and your family who live in the house and all your stuff in it.
You guys are the OS that already takes up a certain amount of space in the RAM constantly to keep the system running. An OS, on average, will take anywhere from 1.2GB – to 2.2GB of space on RAM at all times, and that’s just a rough estimate; then, all the apps that run in the background also take up a certain amount of space.
Any other app will take up some space, but so long as it doesn’t have any background capabilities, it won’t take up any more space. Only when it’s running, once it’s off, then that space freed up for other things.
Disadvantages of Having 4GB RAM for Gaming
The problem is that you are working with limited space, and games of nowadays require large amounts of RAM space to work due to their equally large amounts of storage space required. So the RAM space it’s taking is a continuous cycle to keep the game running. Such games like CSGO run very well because they only require 2GB of RAM space to work, and on a 4GB RAM, that’s fine because, after your OS, there’s still space to work with.
Even a game with a minimum RAM requirement of 6GB will run on a 4GB RAM device. However, the problem with this is that the gaming experience will not be smooth as there is less space on the RAM to run the game.
What then happens is that the game would begin to have significant dips in frame rates, making it unplayable even with a good GPU.
This occurs because the RAM has to compensate for the lack of available space by page filing. This is a process where the RAM begins to write data onto the hard drive, and this is a slower process and thus causes those dips in frame rates.
Is 8GB RAM Better than 4GB of RAM, and what are the Benefits?
The more space on the RAM, the more things you can run on the system, and that always makes for a smoother experience when opening and swapping between applications and playing games; as such, the space on the RAM, the less likely it is to page file.
So, in this case, the more, the merrier. However, anything upwards of 16GB of RAM will not make for significant differences in performance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, 4GB of RAM is not the best amount of space for newer games with larger system requirements. If you really want to enjoy the game to the fullest, you should get at least 16GB of RAM as the minimum industry standard for gaming.
Image Gallery – Is 4GB RAM Good for Gaming?
References: RAM.
