I had a chat on reddit about RAM use and it inspired me to check out multiple games to see just how much RAM you should be looking to have as a Linux gamer. Part of my thought pattern here is that I tend to leave a bunch of applications open when gaming (Discord, Telegram, IRC, Chrome) and I imagined other people did too. So I wondered: Just how much RAM will games use up and is 8GB still okay for now?
These tests were done on my main machine with 16GB RAM and XFCE which is quite light on RAM use compared to other desktops.
I also did a Twitter and Telegram poll to see if people generally leave background applications running like me. Both polls were very much one-sided with people leaving applications open in the background.
The tests
My system uses about approximately 1.07GB RAM with just Steam open by itself, so I will use that as the figure when adding things together.
I chose some games that I felt would be quite hard-hitters or popular amongst Linux gamers, considering these tests take quite a while to do I do have to keep it to a limit.
This is not the RAM used at the end of the session, but the maximum the game requested to use throughout the time spent in it. This does not include cache (which can differ from machine to machine), just the actual RAM being used.
ARK Survival Evolved: High details, 1 hour playtime.
Game RAM Use: 7.3GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 8.37GB
HITMAN: Ultra details, SSAO off. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5.6GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.67GB
DiRT Rally: Ultra details, 4xMSAA. Daily event, Rallycross custom event plus a Championship stage.
Game RAM Use: 4.8GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 5.87GB
Dying Light: High details, AA on. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5.7GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.77GB
Cities Skylines: High details, AA on. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.07GB
That was only on a small scenario too.
I did additional tests with Cities, one with a 100K population.
Game RAM Use: 5.8GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.87GB
A 1 Million population city.
Game RAM Use: 6.7GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 7.77GB
Rocket League, 1v1, 2v2 and a two 3v3 matches
Game RAM Use: 2.2GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 3.27GB
Looking at my simple testing, it is entirely possible and relatively easy to stick with 8GB RAM for now, as long as you close most of your background applications. However, if you are on 8GB RAM you will want to be careful about how much you leave open, especially considering how close to 8GB my short sessions were in some, as RAM use will likely creep up in longer sessions.
I will recommend at least 16GB RAM to ensure you have breathing room without the nuisances of closing everything possible before gaming. Not only that, but it will give you room to grow as our games are getting bigger and bigger. It would be silly to buy 8GB now and if you are still on 8GB this might give you something to think about.
You should always aim to have some breathing room with RAM for any issues encountered in games and extras you need to run behind them at any time.
If you have ideas for tests for me to do at any time, feel free to pop a message in the comments or email me. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
These tests were done on my main machine with 16GB RAM and XFCE which is quite light on RAM use compared to other desktops.
I also did a Twitter and Telegram poll to see if people generally leave background applications running like me. Both polls were very much one-sided with people leaving applications open in the background.
The tests
My system uses about approximately 1.07GB RAM with just Steam open by itself, so I will use that as the figure when adding things together.
I chose some games that I felt would be quite hard-hitters or popular amongst Linux gamers, considering these tests take quite a while to do I do have to keep it to a limit.
This is not the RAM used at the end of the session, but the maximum the game requested to use throughout the time spent in it. This does not include cache (which can differ from machine to machine), just the actual RAM being used.
ARK Survival Evolved: High details, 1 hour playtime.
Game RAM Use: 7.3GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 8.37GB
HITMAN: Ultra details, SSAO off. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5.6GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.67GB
DiRT Rally: Ultra details, 4xMSAA. Daily event, Rallycross custom event plus a Championship stage.
Game RAM Use: 4.8GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 5.87GB
Dying Light: High details, AA on. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5.7GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.77GB
Cities Skylines: High details, AA on. About 30 Minutes playtime.
Game RAM Use: 5GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.07GB
That was only on a small scenario too.
I did additional tests with Cities, one with a 100K population.
Game RAM Use: 5.8GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 6.87GB
A 1 Million population city.
Game RAM Use: 6.7GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 7.77GB
Rocket League, 1v1, 2v2 and a two 3v3 matches
Game RAM Use: 2.2GB
Total with Steam + Desktop: 3.27GB
Looking at my simple testing, it is entirely possible and relatively easy to stick with 8GB RAM for now, as long as you close most of your background applications. However, if you are on 8GB RAM you will want to be careful about how much you leave open, especially considering how close to 8GB my short sessions were in some, as RAM use will likely creep up in longer sessions.
I will recommend at least 16GB RAM to ensure you have breathing room without the nuisances of closing everything possible before gaming. Not only that, but it will give you room to grow as our games are getting bigger and bigger. It would be silly to buy 8GB now and if you are still on 8GB this might give you something to think about.
You should always aim to have some breathing room with RAM for any issues encountered in games and extras you need to run behind them at any time.
If you have ideas for tests for me to do at any time, feel free to pop a message in the comments or email me. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
i bought another 4Gb last week so i have now 8Gb, hitman was swapping constantly and thus was not really playable.
On mate with xchat, qmagneto and steam open i use only 600mb of ram.
On mate with xchat, qmagneto and steam open i use only 600mb of ram.
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I must be the odd one out around here :P Whenever I game I close everything running, which is usually only browser and email (Pale Moon and FossaMail) anyway unless I've been doing something specific.
I have 16GB and give 14G to /dev/shm as I use this extensively for working in RAM (compiling, temporary storage, video/audio conversion, ripping DVDs etc, etc). I don't use a DE or swap and like to keep memory freed up. I may just be a little OCD about it!
I have 16GB and give 14G to /dev/shm as I use this extensively for working in RAM (compiling, temporary storage, video/audio conversion, ripping DVDs etc, etc). I don't use a DE or swap and like to keep memory freed up. I may just be a little OCD about it!
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Quoting: tuubiQuoting: wolfyrionThese applications are open by default when the computer startsJust curious, is there any reason at all not to close most of these apps when you're not actually actively using them? You can easily install a single indicator to watch your mail boxes at least? And surely you don't listen to music while you watch netflix and play games? Your decision of course, I just don't understand why anyone would do this.
[Massive list of apps]
Just a small explanation...
I am working as an IT (Freelancer) doing support to over 30 companies that means most of the day I spend it outside with the clients or inside my house doing remote support and so on... my FREE time is pretty much 0 because I wake up to 6:00 (gym until 7) and end my job around 19:00 and then gym for like 1h....and then back to work/games/hobbies until 24:00.
Clementine is playing my favorite songs that I want to keep me up for the whole day and listening to some rock radio stations as well.
Twiter it gives me daily information about my country news, my interests and many other news I put on #
just a picture of my old pc desktop second monitor
Thunderbird has to be open 24h per day as is my tool to communicate with partners and clients
Imagine that I also have to use teamviewer and virtual machines to start a Windows Server 2012/Windows 7 and 10 in order to explain to some clients what to do...(sometimes)
+ I can use my PC for entertainment as well when I have free time...
When I sit on my PC is like having the whole world in front of me with the 3 monitors available... I want to have everything instantly and yes 1 Sec to open an application it does matter to me! :P
Is an obsession!!!! Is like Steam that I have thousand of games available and when a new game comes out I want to play that game that just got released right now... I buy it and play for 10 mins and maybe never play it again...
I think use my pc like a remote control, I play games for like 10-30 mins , watch an anime for 20 mins or a movie , listen to music for some hours, work for many hours.... and so on..
There was a day that I had 5 Teamviewer clients , 3 VM Machines turn on , answering emails , playing music in the background , libreoffice open both writer and calc with many files open, watching a video on third monitor of how to fix something related with Active Directory.I had also DVD Styler converting one AVI to DVD in order to play it in a presentation and also burn the Video to DVD as well + many other things happening in the background...
Is just I dont want to have LIMITS! simple as that... :P
Last edited by wolfyrion on 6 March 2017 at 12:01 pm UTC
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Quoting: STiATAnd browsers on modern sites today easily eat up a gig of RAM.That's exactly what steam (big picture) is, hence liams 1GB :-).
Anyway: it's funny to see chromium eat 1GB of ram while midori eats 90MB for the same crap. And I mean chromium when it was build on webkit, now it is build on blink it still uses 1GB though.
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Quoting: wolfyrionIs just I dont want to have LIMITS! simple as that... :PSounds super stressful to me. I don't see how you get anything done, but we're all different and that's fine. :)
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In the FortressCraft Evolved forum, a linux guy was asking about why fortresscraft demanded 400MB/s throughput on his SSD. While he did not notice any slow downs he was wondering about that.
Turns out he had no swap partition. So after adding the swap his SSD almost went silent.
So even if you are on SSD, always, *always* use a swap partition. The swap is used to swap out not frequently used anonymous allocated memory. Every bash you start, any program linked to gcc will start out initializing memory it will never use.
In his case, his anonymous memory usage (i.e. the memory used by the game) made the kernel continously page in the static game data at a rate of 400MB. Adding swap made it possible to swap out a large part of the almost static allocation of unused memory.
Turns out he had no swap partition. So after adding the swap his SSD almost went silent.
So even if you are on SSD, always, *always* use a swap partition. The swap is used to swap out not frequently used anonymous allocated memory. Every bash you start, any program linked to gcc will start out initializing memory it will never use.
In his case, his anonymous memory usage (i.e. the memory used by the game) made the kernel continously page in the static game data at a rate of 400MB. Adding swap made it possible to swap out a large part of the almost static allocation of unused memory.
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Don't forget Linux (the kernel) is pretty good with using RAM for caching.
I had been with 8GB for a while (that pretty much is everything you need nowadays for 99% of games). I decided to upgrade to 16GB in order to enjoy more caching. I have two SSDs working as raid 0 so read performance was already pretty good but nothing beats RAM.
I had been with 8GB for a while (that pretty much is everything you need nowadays for 99% of games). I decided to upgrade to 16GB in order to enjoy more caching. I have two SSDs working as raid 0 so read performance was already pretty good but nothing beats RAM.
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I have two 4GB DIMMs and two free slots at the moment. Hardware isn't my expertise - any good advice for when I decide to upgrade? If I add a second pair does the brand/size/speed matter?
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Quoting: ArdjeIn the FortressCraft Evolved forum, a linux guy was asking about why fortresscraft demanded 400MB/s throughput on his SSD. While he did not notice any slow downs he was wondering about that.
Turns out he had no swap partition. So after adding the swap his SSD almost went silent.
So even if you are on SSD, always, *always* use a swap partition. The swap is used to swap out not frequently used anonymous allocated memory. Every bash you start, any program linked to gcc will start out initializing memory it will never use.
In his case, his anonymous memory usage (i.e. the memory used by the game) made the kernel continously page in the static game data at a rate of 400MB. Adding swap made it possible to swap out a large part of the almost static allocation of unused memory.
There are a few things I didn't understand in your post:
1. Without a swap file or partition, how could the kernel page to disk (aka swap)?
2. Why would a swap partition reduce swapping to disk?
The only thing that could reduce it is to create a swap partition on an other disk, delete the swap partition or decrease "vm.swappiness".
Interesting read: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/do-we-really-need-swap-modern-systems
Of course, every use case is different.
I keep 4 gigs of swap in case my system needs to page some background apps.
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