How much memory does my computer need? What is the difference between computers with 4GB, 8GB and 16GB memory? Except for some special applications, it does need a large amount of memory to run normally, but how much memory do these programs need? Please see my detailed introduction below.
How much memory do you need? (PS: all data bar charts at the bottom of this article are 16GB, 8GB and 4GB from left to right)
Many old DIY players may still vaguely remember that in the DDR2 era (about 2007), the game performance difference between 2GB and 4GB memory was not big, so for a long time at that time, the beautiful 4G capacity was often labeled as flashy. Today, memory has entered the post DDR3 era, and DDR4 is waving to us. At this moment, many players preparing to upgrade DDR4 will think about that problem again - how much memory does my computer need: 4GB, 8GB or 16GB?
Nowadays, some mainstream large-scale 3D games and many popular applications often need to consume 4GB of memory, so many players have already changed to 8GB. Do we need 16GB of memory now? Yes, it depends on the application. We know that some special applications really need a large amount of memory to run normally. So the question is, how much is the difference between 4GB, 8GB and 16GB memory for some specific applications? Today we will find the answer through actual measurement.
Common application performance test
● application performance test
By running some mainstream software applications, we can find that 4GB memory is difficult to meet the demand. For example, when several browser windows, Foxmail email client, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word / Excel, QQ client, onedrive cloud disk and 360 anti-virus software are opened on this windows 10 computer at the same time, we will find that the memory utilization rate has exceeded 70%.
At the same time, when we run these applications with 8GB memory and 16GB memory respectively, we find that 16GB memory, which seems to double its capacity, has little impact on the performance of the whole machine. Among the applications we tested, Adobe premier CC has the greatest demand for system memory:
Adobe Premier CC
We use Adobe premier CC software to load a 17 minute video file (including many video clips, picture files and audio tracks), and maximize the memory utilization of the system by minimizing the bit rate - up to 12gb in the process of video decoding.
Through the test, we found that the 16GB system takes the shortest time to load this image - 290 seconds, but surprisingly, the 8GB system with the same workload takes only 300 seconds under the same circumstances. However, the 4GB system is 38% slower than the 8GB system, and it takes 415 seconds to complete the same task.
7-ZIP
Another software that we use more is 7-Zip. 7-Zip is more efficient than WinRAR in decompressing and compressing files. 7-Zip is also a software that supports multi-threaded compression. In the 7-Zip test, we will set the dictionary size to 512MB - which will consume 24GB of system memory. At this time, the system even needs windows pagefile virtual memory to replenish.
Through the test, we found that the 16GB system achieved 13162 MIPs, three times faster than the 8GB system.
In terms of data transmission speed, 16GB system is 11 times faster than 8GB system.
In terms of compressing and decompressing files, the 16GB system seems to be much better than the 8GB and 4GB systems, but it should be pointed out that for ordinary users, their use environment is far less than the 512MB dictionary setting. It is understood that the 32MB dictionary setting is relatively close to the real use environment of ordinary users. At this time, the skylake core i7-6700k processor can achieve the performance of 25120 MIPS and consume only 1.7GB of memory. Therefore, for ordinary users, we do not need to blindly upgrade 16GB memory.
Simulation application performance test
● simulation application performance test
SPECwpc V1. 2 is an authoritative simulation application testing software. We selected four applications that occupy memory resources, but their memory requirements are basically no more than 8GB.
Blender simulation test:
Blender is an open source cross platform all-round 3D animation production software, which provides a series of animation short film production solutions from modeling, animation, material, rendering, audio processing, video editing and so on. However, it is a slight pity that perhaps because it eats too much memory, it can only increase the occupancy rate of the system to 6,1gb, so it is not very suitable to test the difference between 16GB and 8GB systems. Even so, the score of 4GB system has not decreased significantly.
Lammps simulation test:
Lammps, namely large-scale atomic / molecular massively parallel simulator, is a large-scale atomic and molecular parallel simulator, which is mainly used for some calculations and simulations related to molecular dynamics. In the specwpc simulation test, lammps can simulate the memory utilization to 10.5gb, so it is very suitable for testing the difference between 8GB and 16GB memory. Through the test, compared with the 8GB system, the improvement brought by 16GB is not very obvious, only less than 10%, but compared with the 4GB system, the performance improvement of 16GB is as high as 306%.
Namd simulation test:
Namd (nanoscale molecular dynamics) is also a parallel molecular dynamics system used to quickly simulate macromolecular systems on large-scale parallel computers. It can be seen that it is not suitable for Blender's simulation system with a memory utilization of 167.8gb, which is also different from that of the previous simulation system.
Rodinia simulation test:
Finally, specwpc Rodinia development platform, which can help system architects study GPU platform. The test shows that the 16GB system is only 4% faster than 8GB.
Game performance test / summary
● game performance test
In this game performance test, we will also add 65 chrome tags with a memory occupancy of 2.2GB.
Grand Theft Auto 5:
Through the test, we found that although the memory utilization rate of Grand Theft Auto 5 + Chrome browser has reached 9GB, perhaps because the windows system optimizes the memory, the performance of 16GB system and 8GB system is surprisingly consistent. The frames of Grand Theft Auto 5 are 56fps, and even the 4GB system has only lost one frame.
Batman: Forrest Gump Knight:
In the game test of Batman: Forrest Gump knight, the memory occupancy rate of game + chrome application in the background is as high as 10GB. Nevertheless, the game performance of 16GB system is only one frame ahead of 8GB, which is basically negligible, but it is 4% faster than 4GB system. In other words, 16GB is a waste, 4GB will bring bottlenecks to the graphics card, and 8GB is more suitable.
《F1 2015》：
As like as two peas, 16GB, 8GB and 4GB are playing the same game in F1 2015.
Summary:
For ordinary users who plan to install or upgrade memory in the near future, 8GB is enough, and 16GB is a waste. Through the test, it can be found that whether it is daily application or playing games, 8GB can meet the basic needs of ordinary users, and 16GB is not necessary for the time being. In some games or game scenes, 4GB memory sometimes becomes the performance bottleneck of the graphics card. If the budget is sufficient, you might as well upgrade to 8GB memory.
In a word, at present, for most users, 16GB is a waste. 4GB sometimes becomes the bottleneck of CPU or GPU, and 8GB is the most suitable.