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.
oldrocker99 Mar 6, 2017
Quoting: Nouser64 GB is more memory than anyone will ever need.
And Bill Gates said in the 80s that nobody would ever need more than 640K. I have 16GB and I can't run Pan and a 8-gig RAM VM at the same time. I'll probably spring soon for another 16GB, which I will need if I continue such activity.
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This is why I need a new PC. I only do the occasional light gaming and I have to close pretty much everything. I'm gaming with 4GB ram. I'd agree with 16GB over 8GB for future proofing and so you don't have to do what I do and kill all non-essential apps when running games.
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Then there's me with 2 browsers running paused videos and about 30 tabs each , several apps like gimp and godot and atom in the background. And my idle is 10 GB :D
Yes I am insane , why do you ask ?
Yes I am insane , why do you ask ?
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Philadelphus Mar 6, 2017
I built my Linux gaming rig 2½ years ago with 8 GB originally, but upgraded to 16 GB a month later after seeing how much RAM various programs required (I also learned about swap partitions and what happens when you run out of RAM without one set up! :D). This turned out to be necessary for me and a buddy playing Minecraft together, as we play large modpacks and I host the server, so with various Feed The Beast modded servers + client running it takes up ~70% of my RAM, judging from the system monitor. I usually have to close my several-dozen-tabs-open Chrome in order to run it, plus anything else that's eating a significant amount of RAM, but it works fine other than that.
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Quoting: Nouser64 GB is more memory than anyone will ever need.
For the next 5 years :P
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Quoting: liamdaweSince Linux memory management is quite complicated at the best of times, this was a simple test using system monitors to check total listed RAM use. Going through virtual, shared, cache and so on is a bit out of our scope and current knowledge.
Quite the opposite!
Not knowing if the tool you used to measure memory usage includes the buffers and the caches makes the whole article pointless.
Anyway, anybody concerned about desktop memory usage, should really avoid KDE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3nbY0xNykA
Last edited by kokoko3k on 8 March 2017 at 12:40 pm UTC
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Quoting: kokoko3kJust because you don't agree with the method, it does not make it pointless. I trust that output that both XFCE and GNOME system monitor show for RAM use and unless you have a real argument on why you shouldn't trust them, don't go flinging words like pointless around :)Quoting: liamdaweSince Linux memory management is quite complicated at the best of times, this was a simple test using system monitors to check total listed RAM use. Going through virtual, shared, cache and so on is a bit out of our scope and current knowledge.
Quite the opposite!
Not knowing if the tool you used to measure memory usage includes the buffers and the caches makes the whole article pointless.
Anyway, anybody concerned about desktop memory usage, should really avoid KDE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3nbY0xNykA
FYI: The system monitors do not include the cache, it calculates the actual memory used. So the amount of RAM I have shown, is the minimum each game will use for what I tested.
Hope that makes it clearer.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 8 March 2017 at 1:13 pm UTC
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Quoting: liamdaweJust because you don't agree with the method
-BIG EDIT-
Sorry Liam, i completely missed that the first time i read the article.
"This does not include cache (which can differ from machine to machine), just the actual RAM being used."
My apologies
Last edited by kokoko3k on 8 March 2017 at 1:29 pm UTC
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Quoting: M@yeulC1) It can't swap out anonymous memory. because it had no swap. That means it can only discard RO/non-dirty pages, and hence it was reading with 400MB's all the pages it had discarded. It's called trashing, not swapping.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?
2) If you allocate a lot of memory, but don't actively use most of it, that memory can better be used as cache for other stuff. So it needs to be backed up somewhere, and that's exactly why you need swap: to page out dirty but infrequently used memory.
You don't need swap on another disk, if you think that, you need to rethink why you need swap. It also doesn't have to be a partition, it can just be a file. All disk access will quiet down when the infrequent used dirty pages are written to disk, because frequently used data (like the program) wil be in memory all the time.
Now if you have a swapfile and stuff still starts trashing (I tried running btrfs fsck with 700GB swap and 16GB RAM, but it still died after running 6 months of intense trashing with an out-of-memory trying to repair 200GB of metadata), your system is too small, or the software is broken (btrfs fsck was broken in this case).
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The only two things that have exhausted my 8GB RAM (and I don't use a paging file usually) are ARK and virtual machines. Those issues aren't frequent enough to make me upgrade yet. It's funny that I've been running 8GB for probably 12 years now.
My wife, though... yeah, she has 32GB in her laptop.
My wife, though... yeah, she has 32GB in her laptop.
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