TechRadar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. What’s more is that it’s got great thermals to keep that pesky heat down. With technical advancements in gaming, the average title has bigger files than ever before due to better quality visuals and audio, so a typical AAA game is going to need a whole lot of memory space to run smoothly. As … It’s important to note that there are no downsides to having more memory in your machine, so choosing 16GB over 8GB has no drawbacks, aside from the added cost. Right now, 8GB is the ideal amount of RAM. Cores: 12 | Threads: 24 | Base clock: 3.7GHz | Boost clock: 4.8GHz | L3 cache: 64MB | TDP: 105W. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, Excellent single and multithreaded performance, Lower performance in applications than alternatives. The best processors in 2020 will improve your PC’s performance while being more power-efficient. If you don’t have enough RAM in your system, it’ll have to start relying on the hard-drive for file transfers, resulting in slower performance and weaker frame rates. And it comes with a much more approachable price tag compared to most of Intel’s offerings, making it a much better value. Since 8GB is regarded as the sweet spot for modern gaming PCs and laptops, 16GB might seem like overkill, but many hardcore gamers tend to gravitate towards this amount of memory. 8GB is perfectly adequate for modern games and will be fine for the next few years. To figure out how much RAM you’re going to need, it makes sense to understand the exact role that RAM plays when it comes to gaming. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, With Intel’s Core i5-10600K, among Intel’s latest chips to hit the streets in 2020, it’s possible to have it for much less than $500. Here are our top picks. Is this enough for gaming? Plenty of modern laptops and PCs will come with 8GB of RAM as standard nowadays, and this is the perfect option for people who want to enjoy their games. Time was that 4GB was more than enough for gaming and most daily tasks, but those days are in the past.If you have too little RAM—say, 4GB—there's a good chance a … From Intel’s impressive Comet Lake-S to AMD’s Ryzen 5000 chips, there are plenty of options to choose from. We pomise.). Rocking 8 cores and 16 threads, along with much stronger single-core performance, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is among the best CPUs for gaming – as well as less demanding creative work – right now. The minimum amount of RAM you can find nowadays is 4GB. Mid-range buyers will appreciate the fact that they actually don’t have to shell out quite a bit of cash for Intel’s hyper-threading technology. And, it’s also well worth the price, if you need its level of performance. 16GB might not be too useful right now, at least not when it comes to gaming, but as we’ve already said, games are getting better and more technical with each passing year. I enjoy running when I'm not thinking about tech. So if 4GB isn’t enough, 8GB should be ideal, right? Therefore, even though 16GB isn’t going to have any real effect on your system right now, it could turn out to be very helpful a year or two down the line. By Cores: 6 | Threads: 12 | Base clock: 3.5GHz | Boost clock: 4.7GHz | L3 cache: 64MB | TDP: 105W. Besides high-end gaming, the Ryzen 9 3950 also blasts through processing tasks. As games become more technically-advanced, it’s only natural that hardware has to evolve and upgrade right alongside them. However, it comes with a brand-new architecture that delivers performance gains as well as PCIe 4.0, making it among the best processors in the Threadripper arena. You will receive a verification email shortly. Required fields are marked *, Subscribe to our newsletter to get interesting stories delivered to your inbox! It’s expensive, but for a mainstream processor that can go toe-to-toe with HEDT processors, that’s hardly a surprise. Bill Thomas, Visit our corporate site. The simple rule is that more RAM will result in better overall performance and faster speeds for both gaming and general computing, but with options ranging from as low as 4GB to as high as 64GB or even 128GB in certain cases, it’s important to choose the right RAM option for you and not overspend on memory you won’t ever need to use. 8GB RAM. This chip may lack PCIe 4.0 support and has a higher power consumption, but it makes up for those in spades. A quick browse of the latest releases like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or even a look at the required technical specifications for upcoming games on Steam shows that almost every title asks for 8GB of RAM to run smoothly. It’s reliable and surprisingly fast for what it can do. Putting RAM To The Test. For gaming, streaming, movies, and regular day-to-day computing, these high amounts of RAM are simply unnecessary. The 3960X delivers dramatically improved single-threaded performance and has successfully reduced its predecessors’ idiosyncrasies that affect their own performance. Get Intel no longer has the monopoly on gaming CPUs. This latest release from AMD is not just a stronger processor across the board. A mainstream CPU moonlights as an HEDT processor, Cores: 16 | Threads: 32 | Base clock: 3.5GHz | Boost clock: 4.7GHz | L3 cache: 64MB | TDP: 105W. (There won’t be any spam. New York, It’s not going to cost you a lot of cash and will provide perfectly adequate performance for the foreseeable future. However, for the vast majority of users, anything more than 16GB is more or less a waste of money because it simply won’t have any effect on your daily computing and gaming experiences. Some motherboards support up to 128GB of RAM in total, but machines with enormous amounts of memory aren’t designed with gaming in mind. It also stays competitive in even the most intense single-threaded applications. The simple answer is no, unless you’re only interested in playing old games or small, independent releases that won’t tax your system heavily. Cores: 4 | Threads: 8 | Base clock: 3.7GHz | Boost clock: 4.2GHz | L3 cache: 4MB | TDP: 65W. Quite simply, yes! Also, keep in mind that with higher RAM should be complemented with a powerful processor so that you don’t face lags while playing games or accessing multiple applications. However, the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X doesn’t just stop there: it takes that budget-minded stage of performance to a new level, with its increased IPC (instructions per clock) performance and a higher clock speed while staying at the same price point.