Does DCSW really need more than 4Gb of RAM?

Does DCSW really need more than 4Gb of RAM? Obviously without running fat processes in the background or using Ramdisk. The reason I'm asking is that everybody here seems to have an awful lot of RAM installed, but my computer running DCSW never seems to use more than 3,7 Gb...

In my case, at the price of Ram there did not seem to be any reason not to go with 8 and the two machines I have, that are newer than my game rig, have 16. If you can afford it the extra headroom is always nice to have. Especially so if DCS is not the only thing you do with the machine.

Well, I haven't seen an application yet, that would use up all of my RAM and start swapping. I do not do Photoshopping or anything like that on my computer...

Well, I haven't seen an application yet, that would use up all of my RAM and start swapping. I do not do Photoshopping or anything like that on mu computer...

As I said, it depends on what you do with the machine. I do use Photoshop and the images from my camera run around 12-14GB, but everyone has different needs.

I would say yes, the OS would use a little under 2 depending on what you have installed and if you have onboard sound. 8 would do for most situations and as mentioned already nothing will use it if you have more installed, it won't hurt but it certainly doesn't help.

8GB of ram installed over here.

Typical RAM usage of the system when i play DCS is between 5 and 6.5 GB.

Have seen it peak above 7 while i was hosting a DCS game and playing as well.

So yes, more then 4 GB is useful, even if DCS itself won't use it all, the OS does.

Also depends on your os. If using 32 bit your machine can only access 3.5 to 4 gig.

If running 64 bit I'd recommend more ram. Your hard drive will run less and you'll be ready for the upcoming 64 bit version of world which will definitely use more.

I noticed your sig shows a Samsung 640 pro SSD.

Have you referenced a tweak guide for SSD's? If not you should. It includes turning off swap drive on the SSD and moving it to the mechanical drive, or off all together if you don't have a mechanical drive. 8 gig or more is recommended if the swap drive is off.

Here's a link to one of the tweak guides. They all pretty much tell you to do the same things.

http://blog.ocztechnology.com/?p=178

8GB of ram installed over here.

Typical RAM usage of the system when i play DCS is between 5 and 6.5 GB.

Have seen it peak above 7 while i was hosting a DCS game and playing as well.

 

So yes, more then 4 GB is useful, even if DCS itself won't use it all, the OS does.

What app is using alot for you apart from DCS when running DCS? I have 38 processes running on my Win 64 Ult. But its pretty barebone to make sure less problems. My system takes 3.5 GB while running a barebone mission. As i have a extreme OC on my CPU (watercooled systems that is) i use only 6 GB of mem so far as those chips i have in is pretty good.

DCS World 1.2.5 can sometimes use over 5gb of system RAM compared to older versions so yes you would definitely need more than that 4gb.

you'll be ready for the upcoming 64 bit version of world which will definitely use more.

Install SMARTCLOSE to shut down unwanted apps prior to playing

Also depends on your os. If using 32 bit your machine can only access 3.5 to 4 gig.

The bigger problem with 32bit OS is that an app, in default configuration, cannot allocate more than 2GB of virtual memory.

Does DCSW really need more than 4Gb of RAM? Obviously without running fat processes in the background or using Ramdisk. The reason I'm asking is that everybody here seems to have an awful lot of RAM installed, but my computer running DCSW never seems to use more than 3,7 Gb...

if you have more available ram, the system or programs will use it.

if you only have 4GB, you'll only be able to use 3.7 after Windows processes.

if you upgrade to 8 GB, you'll use more than 3.7

with trackir, helios, my key mapping program, MSI afterburner, Nvidia control panel, Core temp, fraps and DCS:world (oh yeah and win7ultimate)....I find it very beneficial to have 8 gigs of ram while I play DCS......anything less would be uncivilized.....

I think having 8+ GB of RAM is good because you can completely disable swap which is a definitive plus. I think 8-12 GB is optimal today. I had 6GB on my old PC and it wasn't enough to have swap off. The reason I bought 16 instead of 12 is that a) it's cheap so why not and b) Having 12 GB would require to have 3x4GB modules instead of 2x8GB.

edit: I wonder how you make dcs to take 3.7 gb ram on a pc with 4 gigs ... must be a lot of swapping going on there - now I just checked and with swap off I have 2.5GB used (about 350MB by chrome, the rest is system + services).

wth, I have no idea why this second post is here. sorry abou that

I have 8 Gb and I don't see any improvement over the 6 Gb I had before.

I do a lot image creation on my PC. 16GB is pretty much standard for that sort of thing and I often use most of it. The less reliance on pagefile the better.

I think having 8+ GB of RAM is good because you can completely disable swap which is a definitive plus. I think 8-12 GB is optimal today. I had 6GB on my old PC and it wasn't enough to have swap off. The reason I bought 16 instead of 12 is that a) it's cheap so why not and b) Having 12 GB would require to have 3x4GB modules instead of 2x8GB.

 

edit: I wonder how you make dcs to take 3.7 gb ram on a pc with 4 gigs ... must be a lot of swapping going on there - now I just checked and with swap off I have 2.5GB used (about 350MB by chrome, the rest is system + services).

You should never disable swap. Some programs won't even run w/o swap. That being said its ok to set it to a very small value.

Hmmm.. interesting thread.

I guess I'll have to watch my RAM usage and see how much is actually used. I bought 16GB of RAM because... well, because RAM is cheap nowadays and I might do 3D stuff and sound/video editing on that PC as well.

I have no clue how much is used when gaming.

But I guess if you have multiple monitors (I have four at the moment) and TrackIR, and Touchscreen software, and TS, and software for gaming controllers and other stuff it might be good to have more than 4GB of RAM. Especially since windows itself is not exactly known to be careful with RAM usage...

16 might be overkill though, I have to admit that. But 6 or 8 might be the right amount.

RAM use is not the only metric to watch..you should also look at the program's and systems total commit size as that is the total amount of memory the application/system has requested. depending on what programs you have running total commit may or may not be larger than physical ram. Also note that due to the system caching file handles and such your total commit can grow over time.

On my system with 8GB of physical ram the my total commit is about 8.3GB including DCS,trackIR,TS3,Helios,etc. It starts out around 6.9 but does grow after about 90 min of flying. It peaked out at 8.3 so I set a 1-2GB swap file to give me overhead. Im on an SSD so telling windows to start with 1GB and max 2GB is appropriate.

Some programs won't even run w/o swap.

I've always operated this rig without swap and haven't run out of memory so far (I've got 16GB installed). But then again this machine only runs DCS + some utilities...

I've always operated this rig without swap and haven't run out of memory so far (I've got 16GB installed). But then again this machine only runs DCS + some utilities...

It really depends on the application for example AD will not run at all w/o a swap file even if you have 128GB in the system.

Some apps perform better w/o a swap as well. But generally speaking you should have a swap at least as big as whatever you have your kernel dump configured for in case of a crash

on my 8GB system the swap is set for max of 2GB on my 16GB system its set to a max of 1GB.

right now on my 16GB system even with a total commit of 4.8GB of 18 only 4.5 GB of physical is being used. Its cached file descriptors and parts of inactive applications that arent changing