Should I upgrade ram from 16GB for DCS 2?

[FlyGuyF119]

From what i've seen so far in the multiplayer 16Gb is the minimum you need to not crash the game, also once most of the bugs are fixed 8 should be fine. "guess, im not a computer qooroo". But for now with just the Beta and the current problems I would say 16 is better. But then again more is always better...

Edited October 6, 2015 by FlyGuyF119
addition

[Demon_]

There we go

[Mohamengina]

What? Where did you see 16GB was the minimum requirement?

 

http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/world/beta/

 

I swear this said 16GB the last time I checked it for RAM.

 

Maybe not after all.

[FlyGuyF119]

Now, how does V-Ram play into this compared to the Motherboards Ram?

[StandingCow]

I believe windows, from 7 on up will use as much RAM as it can to speed things up... that said 16 GB is plenty. I stuck with 16 when I did my recent skylake upgrade.

[VikingTsunami]

I think I might have found out what causes my game to crash, seems to be a memory leak. It might be that it's just like this with me and not everyone else.

 

 

Game crash usually happens within an hour, when I start the game it's usage is around 2GB (ingame). After I took this picture, total system memory used was around 96-97% and eventually the game crashed. Seems to happen everytime for me. I'll also post it in the bugs section.

[Suchacz]

Thinking perhaps I should consider upgrading to 32gb, or is 16gb still going to be plenty enough?

How time flies...:doh: :D

 

[neoshi]

I have 16 but it didnt make any difference tbh. I bought it because it was cheap and because another game actually used nearly all 8gb, so i went for it. Think vram matters more here. I'm sad i have only 2gb trying to run 3 1080p screens lol. Msaa 4x kills the fps. :'(

[Aluminum Donkey]

I run the game with 4GB ram lol

 

If you have a video card with 4GB or more of dedicated video RAM, then 4GB system RAM is actually plenty. The recommended system specs indicate more than that, simply because in the version 1.2.xyz days, the recommended video card (GTX 560 1GB) was pretty wimpy for running DCSW in DirectX 9.0.

 

So, if you find the game runs into bad stuttering because you've run out of total memory and start swapping textures to the hard drive, you can either upgrade your video card to one with more VRAM, or simply install more system RAM.

 

I only have a 2GB video card, but 8GB of system RAM, so I can run the sim with all the graphics goodies turned up and don't get any stuttering at all. If you want to do that, you'll probably need a video card with 4GB or more to keep using your existing 4GB of system RAM.

 

Peace and happy warfare :smilewink:

[some1]

I loaded a mission with many different aircraft models located at one airport and the game uses around 10 gigabytes of ram. But it's not a typical usage scenario.

[Gargoil]

If you have a video card with 4GB or more of dedicated video RAM, then 4GB system RAM is actually plenty. The recommended system specs indicate more than that, simply because in the version 1.2.xyz days, the recommended video card (GTX 560 1GB) was pretty wimpy for running DCSW in DirectX 9.0.

 

So, if you find the game runs into bad stuttering because you've run out of total memory and start swapping textures to the hard drive, you can either upgrade your video card to one with more VRAM, or simply install more system RAM.

 

I only have a 2GB video card, but 8GB of system RAM, so I can run the sim with all the graphics goodies turned up and don't get any stuttering at all. If you want to do that, you'll probably need a video card with 4GB or more to keep using your existing 4GB of system RAM.

 

Peace and happy warfare :smilewink:

 

My video card has 2 GB Vram. I haven't really tested single player but in multiplayer I get smooth gameplay with everything maxed out except for trees and preload range (100km). I crash a lot tho in multiplayer... Not sure who's fault is it

[neoshi]

If you have a video card with 4GB or more of dedicated video RAM, then 4GB system RAM is actually plenty. The recommended system specs indicate more than that, simply because in the version 1.2.xyz days, the recommended video card (GTX 560 1GB) was pretty wimpy for running DCSW in DirectX 9.0.

 

So, if you find the game runs into bad stuttering because you've run out of total memory and start swapping textures to the hard drive, you can either upgrade your video card to one with more VRAM, or simply install more system RAM.

 

I only have a 2GB video card, but 8GB of system RAM, so I can run the sim with all the graphics goodies turned up and don't get any stuttering at all. If you want to do that, you'll probably need a video card with 4GB or more to keep using your existing 4GB of system RAM.

 

Peace and happy warfare :smilewink:

 

Are you sure about this? I have a feeling there's more to this than just RAM when VRAM runs out.

 

I run 16gb RAM with a R9 270x 2gb and i still get slight stuttering (well more like low fps) using MSAA 4x around crowded towns with everything on high along with 50 clutter 10,000 trees and 15,000 preload. Hdr and dof are off, aero disabled, vsync. Lens effects on flare only. 1024 res for cockpit displays.

 

Im also running 3 screens 2x 1680x1050 and a 1080p main.

 

It uses 7gb RAM.

 

To my understanding, a computer only interchangeably uses the RAM and VRAM for integrated graphics solutions anyway, so just sticking in more RAM isnt the solution unless you're butting into your system RAM limit and the system itself is slowing. Is that what you were getting at?

[Aluminum Donkey]

Are you sure about this? I have a feeling there's more to this than just RAM when VRAM runs out.

 

I run 16gb RAM with a R9 270x 2gb and i still get slight stuttering (well more like low fps) using MSAA 4x around crowded towns with everything on high along with 50 clutter 10,000 trees and 15,000 preload. Hdr and dof are off, aero disabled, vsync. Lens effects on flare only. 1024 res for cockpit displays.

 

Im also running 3 screens 2x 1680x1050 and a 1080p main.

 

It uses 7gb RAM.

 

To my understanding, a computer only interchangeably uses the RAM and VRAM for integrated graphics solutions anyway, so just sticking in more RAM isnt the solution unless you're butting into your system RAM limit and the system itself is slowing. Is that what you were getting at?

 

Your computer is much newer and better than mine :) 16GB is kinda the standard these days, but isn't really needed for gaming unless you're only using a 2GB video card--this allows you to spend less cash on your video card, but still get one with a very fast GPU. A portion of the system memory will act as video memory.

 

If you load up dxdiag.exe in Windows, and check the Display tab, it will actually show 4GB of video memory even though you only have 2GB on the card itself. Windows machines will use system RAM as "bulk" video RAM--it's a part of how Windows works and is one of the reasons why Windows is so good for gaming.

 

It doesn't matter if you're using a video card, or integrated graphics.

 

Now, the thing is, flight sims need a HUGE amount of RAM to store the enormous ground scenery textures. With very few (expensive!!) exceptions, gaming graphics cards just do not have anywhere near enough VRAM to stash it all in--there will be texture swapping occurring as you fly around the map. DCSW works with Windows to do this almost seamlessly, better than any other game I've ever seen. If you run out of total RAM (VRAM + System RAM) then Windows will swap textures to the hard drive or SSD, using the drive as virtual RAM to clear system RAM for texture swapping from video card RAM. This causes massive stuttering, because the game must pause while the large data transfer is occurring across the system bus (PCI Express) from the video card to the slower drive. That's when you need more system RAM ($), or ideally, a new video card with more VRAM ($$$!!!).

 

It depends on how much cash you're willing to unload--a video card upgrade costs more than a system RAM upgrade, and it's somewhat wasteful if you don't need a faster GPU, just more video RAM. I game on a single display at 1920 x 1080, and my GTX 760 with 2GB VRAM seems like plenty. I rarely get the micro stutters, and I'm using 8GB of S-L-O-W DDR2 800MHz system RAM! The faster your system RAM, the less micro stuttering you'll notice. If you do get micro stutters, go into your graphics driver settings in Windows and select a higher number of pre-rendered frames--this buys you time for texture swapping to occur and 'irons out' the framerate drop during swapping, making the micro stuttering less noticeable or un-noticeable. It may affect simulation control feel, however, because you're "flying" older frames on the screen. Try it yourself and see.

 

Finally, if you fork over a small fortune for a GTX Titan or other video card with a huge amount of VRAM (8 or even 12GB), you can run DCSW on only 4GB of system RAM, possibly even less, and never get any micro-stuttering at all because texture swapping never occurs while flying around the huge map--it's all in video RAM.

 

It never ceases to astonish me how many truly BRILLIANT people make it their lives' work to build hardware and write software so the rest of us can sit on our donkeys drinking beer and playing video games :)

 

Peace man

Ian

[Aluminum Donkey]

Luckily it's not 2025 yet

 

I wonder what it'll be like when I'm really old. "Oh man, I've only got 64 GB video RAM, I need a new card!"

 

Flight sims better model the entire planet in seriously impressive detail by then :) hehehehe

[dburne]

Monitoring my memory usage while flying the Ka-50 Cold Start mission, where I start up and fly around for a while - few ai aircraft around but nothing heavy.

 

I am using around 2.3 gb of vram, and around 5gb of system ram. We'll see what comes with 2.0 and the NTTR map, but feel like I am pretty safe with my 4gb video card and 16 gb of system ram.

 

I have all my graphics settings maxed out.

[domini99]

I run the game with 4GB ram lol

 

Yea same here.

Though visibility range settings thingy (forgot what it's called like) can be set a lot higher with 8gb.

 

It's the memory leak right now that kinda kills multiplayer experience but overall it runs fine.

 

 

 

(memory leak, as in, it even gets to use up all ram on the menu screen)

[Johnny Dioxin]

http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/world/beta/

 

I swear this said 16GB the last time I checked it for RAM.

 

Maybe not after all.

 

 

It does say 16GB RAM as recommended spec - that's why I upgraded from 8 GB 1600 to 16GB 2133.

 

Haven't seen any difference now - but hoping it will help with 2.0

 

Isn't expensive these days, anyway, so...

[Aluminum Donkey]

Monitoring my memory usage while flying the Ka-50 Cold Start mission, where I start up and fly around for a while - few ai aircraft around but nothing heavy.

 

I am using around 2.3 gb of vram, and around 5gb of system ram. We'll see what comes with 2.0 and the NTTR map, but feel like I am pretty safe with my 4gb video card and 16 gb of system ram.

 

I have all my graphics settings maxed out.

 

dburne, that's a mighty nice computer you've got there :) Since you've got 4GB of video RAM it's unlikely you'll even need 8GB of system RAM. I've only got 2GB of VRAM so it eats up more of my system RAM (8GB of DDR2).

 

I'd certainly say you're 'safe' for the release of NTTR :)

[jimcarrel]

2 or 3 nVidia win 10 driver versions ago, the driver had a memory leak. When you are bored you might swing by the guru3d driver forums and check on the video card techies.

 

Each driver release you can spend your afternoon reading 10 - 20 pages of complaints about the newest driver.

 

Like I mentioned.... when you are bored. (hey, it happens from time to time)

[Zibell]

I get OOM errors sometimes, but mainly when I leave chrome open. 8gb of ram, 4gb vram here. Still, it shouldn't use that much. Gotta be something wrong.

[dburne]

dburne, that's a mighty nice computer you've got there :) Since you've got 4GB of video RAM it's unlikely you'll even need 8GB of system RAM. I've only got 2GB of VRAM so it eats up more of my system RAM (8GB of DDR2).

 

I'd certainly say you're 'safe' for the release of NTTR :)

 

Thanks AD!

Yes I think I am going to just hold where I am for now.

[DarkFire]

I would upgrade. I check the working set for DCS World and it regularly hits 7 Gb so upgrading to at least 8 would probably help...

[AussieFX]

I get OOM errors sometimes, but mainly when I leave chrome open. 8gb of ram, 4gb vram here. Still, it shouldn't use that much. Gotta be something wrong.

 

I was getting those too, right after installing 1.5.

I have 16GB installed and a 4GB R9 290X and was wondering what was wrong. I was getting the errors when finishing a single player mission, I then had to restart DCS to get it going again. No errors when actually playing a mission. My G15 keyboard was reporting ~60% usage (which is far too high for 16GB)

 

After looking at a few things I noticed my machine was reporting only 8GB installed running single channel. It ended being a ram slot that needed cleaning, since I'm back with dual channel 16GB I've had no errors.

 

The concerning thing for me was getting these OOM's with 8GB, I assumed there might be a memory leak being an early Beta.

I run pretty much everything on maximum except DoF and 2560x1440.

VRAM usage can get as high as ~3.5GB on my install.

 

Edit; Using W7 ult.

Edited October 9, 2015 by AussieFX

[dburne]

There is certainly a memory leak. I can sit parked on the runway in my Ka-50, and watch the ram usage slowly climb. Obviously it has been reported and they are well aware of it, undoubtedly there will be a fix implemented at some point in the future.

[Ramstein]

I found that using high performance is just as needed as the amount of Ram... medium to low performance sucks in gaming... even if you have enough Ram..