RAM upgrade recommendation for Unity

Hi, I am planning to upgrade RAM. On Windows 10 - with 8gb of RAM can't handle decent size Unity project , code editor and browser with few tabs opened.

Is 16gb ram is sufficient for pc (i7 8th gen, GTX1070) to hand heavy projects like FPS Sample? or should I go for more?

 

32 is minimum for a workstation today. I'm very happy with my G.Skill memory, works well with Ryzen (As well as they can, Zen has very bad memory management)

 

If you financially capable, then yes. Also check, what is your motherboard type.
So you can define, weather you can go 4x8, or go with 2x16, and what maximum frequency you can take on.
And check what you got. Either 1x8 or 2x4 GB memory sticks.

But first, I would check, if setting virtual memory correctly does help. Then you could estimate, if 16GB could be sufficient.

Mind, browser tabs take a lot memory. Closing unnecessary one, can free up a lot of mem. I wouldn't be surprised, if 16GB could work for you.

 

You don’t mention your hard drive. If you don’t have an SSD then that might help you more than ram after a certain point. Unity uses so many tiny files that a platter drive really grinds.

 

I really can't recommend using anything less than 32 gigs of ram.
But it really depends - if you don't ever plan on 'baking' anything, then you can do less than 32 gigs.

The high memory count is really only useful for baking and running a ton of programs at once.
E.G. - Unity, 3ds max, Zbrush, Chrome with (20 tabs) open, youtube/media player, Visual Studio, etc - all at once lol.

It then also depends what kind of games you'll be making. If you're making mobile games then you could probably get away with 16 gigs, heck maybe even 8. But 16 is my lowest I'll ever go.

I don't know of any games today (AAA or Indie) that need 16 gigs for just the actual game to play it, there might be a *couple* out there. But yeah, generally high memory counts is simply for development. I believe most games today are still stuck around the 8 gig's range to play them correctly (on PC).

 

16 will work well for most projects, but if you're building something very big or switch between a lot of memory hogging applications frequently you'll probably benefit from 32.

 

Thank you everyone for info. I will go for 32gb.

 

I am stuck with ordinary hard drive. Definitely need SSD. I am planning to upgrade later this year.

 

heh..
currently typing from a notebook decked out with a whopping 4gb ram & only integrated graphics (or whatever it's called.. y'know that thing when yer rig has no graphics card? --that)
..glad I found this topic before trying to make my game

totally new to this, if anyone could direct me to somewhere around these parts where I can learn things i'll spend some time with that [while waiting to win the lottery and get this 16-32gb ram &/or this new ssd drive I've been hearing about] that'd be much appreciated..

 

Scroll to the top of the website and click "Learn". Alternatively scroll to the bottom and click "Learn".

Game development costs money. Unity is one of the lightest game engines on the market and yet it will still barely run on 4GB RAM and integrated graphics from the time period that 4GB was typical of new computers. Modern integrated GPUs like the ones made by AMD are a different story.

Going back to hardware, because that is the topic of this thread, DRAM prices are currently at a very low point making this one of the best times to buy memory. Currently DDR4 prices are at around $6.25/GB. That's a massive decrease from the $10+ per GB they were last year. If you have an older system, check to see if it can hold 8GB, because while 4GB will barely run 8GB should be fine within reason.

Alternatively SSDs are at a very low price point too. A 120GB SSD can massively improve the performance of an older laptop (I've installed SSDs into older laptops only to see them boot, start, and run apps much faster). If your laptop uses SATA for it's connectors, you can pick up a 120GB SSD for around $25.

 

Nvme is the way forward, skip classic SSD

 

Only if you can afford them (and even then only if you can afford an acceptably sized one) and only if you have the slot (though the latter is very easily solved if you have a PCI-e 4x or greater slot available). If you can only barely afford one extremely small SSD (ie 120GB) NVMe is a waste of money.

 

Get the 512 one, it's pretty cheap

 

I also enjoy NVMe . I install one in every available NVMe slot in every computer I own. Having said that, I don't recommend them for older computers or for people on a tight budget. If somebody is on a tight budget, they are better off getting a less expensive SATA SSD that can plug into their existing computer.

 

I hate downtime when the computer is doing S***. nvme is worth every penny to reduce that downtime. Plus its taxfree = almost free

 

I added another 16gb stick along with 8gb stick. Got big noticeable performance jump. Now even with Megacity project running no slow down with my pc and I am able to multitask butter smooth.

I noticed another 2 unexpected things:
- Performance increase with my hybrid hard drive disk usage. Now its not always 100% disk usage like before.
- Windows 10 in idle taking up 7 to 8gb.

 

Modern Windows caches and preloads apps if there is memory available. You might not have had enough space for it to thoroughly cache and preload before the upgrade.

 

I have 16 RAM and i've never had a single memory issue, but my projects are small scale.

 

I was developing on 8gb for the last few months until one of my sticks gave up the ghost and I wouldn't recommend either of those. 16gb seems like it'd be fine for my needs, but I optimise heavily and work on relatively small projects that are mostly GPU bound.

 

If you cant afford both nvme and 32 gigs. Go with 16 gig and nvme

 

That completely depends on what you're doing. I've been sitting with 8 gigs and have no issues running Unity, VS, Blender, Krita, Opera and a few other programs (about 70% memory usage). I'll probably grab another 8 gigs soon, but I've never really had an issue without it.

 

At least no issues that immediately stand out to you. Like the OP mentioned a few posts back increasing memory came with a substantial performance increase. Sitting at 70% memory usage isn't necessarily an indicator that you have more memory than you need.

Windows (and modern OSes in general) is very good at working within the confines of available system memory. You only see a problem on modern systems when your system memory is far below what is required for your applications.

I don't know how memory efficient Opera is compared to Chrome, but I'm currently running just communication apps (Battle.net, Discord, Slack, Steam) in addition to Chrome and my system is currently using almost 7 GB out of 32 GB.

Edit: That said you can somewhat make up the difference in some applications with an SSD. Blender benchmark linked below from Linus Tech Tips where they artificially capped memory at 3GB and made up much of the difference with an Optane M.2 module.

Spoiler: Blender Benchmark

 

There are two types of downtimes. The unnoticeable one, the computer is just slower than it needs to be. And then there is the complete halt downtime. The former is only noticeable when you actually upgrade.

Hardware is dirt cheap. Its a none issue

 

Benchmarks can assist with determining bottlenecks to a limited degree. I like to run them both before and after to see the performance difference and how each upgrade affects the rest of the system. Plus it's just exciting seeing the numbers get higher.

 

Its a bit fun yes, but at the end of the day they are just numbers. Its the experience that matters

 

I've got 7 tabs open right now and Opera is using around 650 mb's. I haven't used chrome in ages, but I'd guess it uses more memory. With Unity and VS on top of that I'm sitting at just under 4 gigs in use.

To be fair though, I don't really use any communication apps on this machine. I have a few installed but rarely ever running. I do almost all via my phone.

I feel like it depends on the system and the user, I've actually had 16 gigs in here but ended up giving 8 away to another rig and I didn't notice any difference.

When I pick up another 8 gigs, I'll be sure to let you know the difference in specs. I'd be fairly certain it's almost unnoticeable at least for my uses, as I've had 16 in here before and I didn't even notice it when I gave it away.

 

I've got 20 tabs running in Chrome at 500mb, but part of that is because Chrome finally properly stops allocating memory to idle tabs. That said, it balloons up pretty fast if you have a lot of active tabs going. I've not seen it go above 1gb in a long while though.

 

As Ryiah mentioned this don't mean you have enough RAM. Having SSD makes seamless data transfer between storage and ram so the system will able to manage with less ram. For handling projects like Megacity need ~5gb of ram for editor play mode alone, In this case need more than 8gb of ram. What if you have Maya, Photoshop project with 100s of layers, multiple unity editor instances opened at the same time, in this case, need more ram. If 8 gb is working for you it is great but not recommend for everyone.

My old office has MacBook with 4gb ram and non-ssd, when I used it once I felt like to throw it out of the window in anger - that much slower with just unity, browser and XCode opened. But I have seen people using MacBook Air with just 4gb ram and ssd but It not the same.

This is how on my pc memory usage looks like.

 

I was under the impression that storage was only used when RAM reached capacity (ie. over 90%) and not at 50%. Maybe Windows 10 is very aggressive with memory management and my SSD is saving my performance.

I would point out my current project only uses about 500mbs in the Unity editor (currently the game has 0 textures and everything is very low poly). So I'd completely understand other people needing more RAM but for me 8 gigs hasn't been an issue.

 

Windows 10 compresses memory too. In the screenshot above you'll notice that he has plenty of available memory, but that hasn't stopped Windows from compressing 236 MB of it.