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But that long familiarity we have with DDR4 doesn’t make memory upgrades today any less complex. How do you go about buying the best memory configuration for your PC? Whether you are building a PC new or upgrading the one you have, the answers come easily—but only once you know the right questions to ask.
Surprisingly, the overall memory demands weren’t that different from regular browsing. Whether listening to multiple audio streams or watching multiple videos, the overall memory use didn’t change much. Single audio or video streams from Spotify or YouTube used less than 3GB of memory (2,747 MB and 2,532 MB, respectively), and you had to bump that up to 4 or more simultaneous streams to get above the 3GB mark. At that point, you’re streaming an unenjoyable cacophony of sight and sound, but you can add more if you want.
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Our initial testing showed no real impact on memory usage from actual use, with little to no difference between viewing open photos, simply cropping photos or performing complex edits with multiple layers. That said, as a general rule, Photoshop is a bit of a memory hog, and will put as much memory into stand-by as it can get. Adobe recommends your system have at least 2.5GB of RAM to run Photoshop CC in Windows (3GB to run it on Mac), but in our testing it used 5GB just to open the program and leave it running.
Yes; as an average user, 12GB should be good enough for you unless you want to do some heavy and resource-intensive data processing. Conclusion RAM isn’t that expensive, and it’s the easiest component to upgrade in a desktop PC— laptops, too, in many cases. Buying a generous amount is wise, but don’t go crazy. There’s not much reason for a gamer to exceed 32GB for now, and no reason to exceed 16GB if all you want to do is watch Netflix. Gaming with only 8GB of RAM in your system can be a dicey proposition. Yes, there are many games — including modern titles — that run perfectly fine with 8GB of memory. But if you want to play something demanding like The Division 2, which requires 11.3GB of RAM, 8GB simply won’t cut it. You’re better off streaming games from services like GeForce Now or Xbox Game Pass on PC if you only have 8GB of RAM. How much RAM most people need: 16GB Similarly, 8GB isn’t enough if you want to run 3D modeling software since you need a significant amount of space for these programs to run. You’ll also experience lagging and other problems when trying to run high-quality interior design software if you don’t have enough RAM (16GB or more). DDR4 was launched primarily at per-module capacities of 4GB to 16GB each, while DDR3 modules favored 1GB to 4GB capacities per module. The upper limits of these specifications were twice as high, but it took several years for 32GB DDR4 and 8GB DDR3 modules to reach the consumer market after the introduction of the memory type. Because of those delays, many older motherboards required a firmware update to support the bigger, later capacity. (As seen in the earlier “old Dell notebook” example, many platforms never got those updates.)
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Video editing comes in many shapes and sizes, from simply trimming clips down to complex multi-stream edits with effects and transitions. To help establish how much RAM you need, you've got to figure out what video demands you have.
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