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32GB of RAM On Track To Become the New Majority For Gamers (tomshardware.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the where-the-puck-is-going dept.
Steam's August 2025 hardware survey shows 32GB RAM configurations reached 35.42% of users while 16GB systems fell to 41.67%, continuing a six-month trend that positions 32GB to become the dominant memory configuration among PC gamers before year's end.

Windows 11 crossed 60% adoption among Steam users. The RTX 4060 continues gaining market share despite newer RTX 5060 availability. Display resolutions at 2560x1600 pixels saw the largest growth, primarily from gaming laptops.
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32GB of RAM On Track To Become the New Majority For Gamers More

32GB of RAM On Track To Become the New Majority For Gamers

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  • 640k (Score:5, Funny)

    by fjo3 ( 1399739 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @11:51AM (#65633070)
    Should be enough for anybody.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      I'll just settle for 24GB RAM

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      SimCity on the commodore 64 fits into 64k. A single load from cassette. Just the fact that somebody sat down in front of a computer and thought, I can fit this game in the 64k, blows my mind let alone the fact that they did it.

      Yeah it's missing features from the Amiga and Macintosh versions but still.

      If you're wondering why it's because in the UK very few people owned this drives using tape drives instead. And tape drives are incredibly slow.

      As an American gamer I had a disk drive for my commodo

      • I was thinking the other day about how amazing C64 games were. Flight sims, air traffic control sims, the Gold Box games, it was ridiculous.

        Sure, those flight sims targeted 4 FPS, and were more akin to fancy arcade shooters than actual sims, but still.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          I had a pretty good pinball game fitting on a single floppy disk. It was all in assembly and you had to boot the 8086 computer from the floppy disk to play the game so it used no operating system at all.

      • Yeah, mindblowing. I had both, the disk drive and the cassette drive - but the latter one took just took ages for those 64kb to load (,1)

      • "I did have The Bard's tale 3 but I can't honestly remember if it had more than one disc."

        2 double sided disks.

        • Turns out I was wrong. So much for going from memory.

          Having now actually checked, the Bards Tale 3 is 3 double-sided disks, or six "sides".

    • For most gamers, 32GB should be enough. For anyone that thinks there is no reason to have more, clearly you haven't had to user Hyper-V (or another VM) to have separate versions of Windows (or Linux) running at the same time you do your work. I have 64 GB on my office desktop (bought 5 years ago) and I use it all the time. Having a Windows 11 VM with a dedicated 16 GB of RAM, another 16 for another VM, and still 32 GB for your main computer makes all the difference. Also, I recommend 32 GB as the standa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        I have 64 GB on my office desktop (bought 5 years ago) and I use it all the time.

        Sure, a computer will always use all the memory it has available in buffers/cache unless your drives are smaller than your RAM or you access less data on the drives than you have RAM. It's no indication that you couldn't have less memory and still have acceptable performances although.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      This is useless trivia, not news.

    • Having 10 times the address space of a PDP-11 user program is an awfully generous amount of space.

  • 32G (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I went for 32GB back in 2020. Maybe it was a little overkill for a desktop PC back then, but I didn't want to upgrade for a number of years. Still haven't to this day. And for laptops I don't go lower than 16GB.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      I went for 64 GB in 2020 and I wouldn't want to have less now. Even in times you need only a fraction of it, your kernel can use it for caches, there is no such thing as having too much RAM.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

      Yup, was building a gaming pc for Cyberpunk 2077. Seemed prudent to opt for 32 GB RAM back then. Still using a 4060 with 16GB VRAM. Can't decide if switching to an AMD GPU with 20GB VRAM will help future-proof things for a few more years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Yeah. I've always gone for RAM above just about all else. Back in the day a computer with a 350MHz processor could outperform one with a 1.2GHz processor if the former had a gig and a half of RAM and the latter had 128MB. When I got my used Precision T7400 as the first OEM-built workstation-class computer it had 48GB RAM and it was always an incredibly solid computer. When the RAM isn't upgradable as in most modern laptops, I opt for max RAM if I can, or at least something that I don't think will give m

    • Shit, my PC was built in 2012, with a pair of GeForce 660s in SLI (since updated to a 1050, wheeeee) and you're goddamn right I went with 32gb of ram.

  • This civilisation wont last long enough for us to see a 64 bit majority.

  • You can just barely install windows 11 24h2, put some basic common software on it, and then just idle it after booting with 16GB without paging with all the bloated garbage running. How the heck are people running games on 16GB? It should be 32 now with people looking at 64.

    • You can just barely install windows 11 24h2, put some basic common software on it, and then just idle it after booting with 16GB without paging with all the bloated garbage running.

      Everything you said is bullshit. Windows deserves all the flak for all the right reasons. This is simply not one of them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
        Okay, go install it, uninstall zero MS apps, sign into a hybrid online account as required by the unmodified installer, install Discord or Teams and Steam, don't disable Edge's ability to run in the background or disable fast boot in Windows, reboot, open one Chrome window, and let me know what wizardry you did to have it not use approximately 11.5GB of RAM, as it consistently does in my testing.

        • Re:Um, what? (Score:4, Informative)

          by blackomegax ( 807080 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @01:54PM (#65633542) Journal
          Sitting with 1 edge tab and teams open I am at 13.2gb used. Literally nothing else.
          • That seems out of hand.
            I've had Teams running all day, and have used it multiple times for conferences and chat. Currently sitting at 138MB of RAM.
            I opened edge and navigated to MSN. Let it sit there for a while. Currently it's at 520MB of RAM.
            My Chrome browser with 10 tabs open, some of them running "apps" in the background is at 2GB of RAM.

            I think you might have other issues.

          • Right now I have Steam, VLC, 7 tabs of Firefox, and some messaging apps to give:

            5.5 GB "In use" / 5.6 GB cached, 19.9 G free

            Steam is using 1.9 GB of that.

            Also, I'm running Linux and KDE.

          • Sitting with 1 edge tab and teams open I am at 13.2gb used. Literally nothing else.

            That seems low. It sounds like your windows pre-fetch system isn't working well. This is why I use Linux. I only have the command line open and my system is using 15GB out of the available 16GB.

            Yes I am serious, but this serious example should come across as mocking you as you clearly don't understand how modern OSes manage memory. The fact that task manager is showing 13.2GB used does not in any way mean that you only have 2.8GB of RAM left for another app. Operating systems haven't worked like that since

  • I would say all my machines are either 32gb or 64gb. With at least an 8gb GPU, preferably 12-16gb. Been having a good time on a 5700x with a 12gb Battlemage ARC GPU. Less than 800$ total system cost, and I can 1440p Ultra any AAA game out right now with a little FrameGen and be in the 90-130fps range. Good enough for me. I don't know how anyone could run on 16 anymore. Not enough parking spaces, too many error prone "Drivers ;-)

    • Public Service Announcement

      zurkeyon is a habitual AC hero who loves to REAP what it has SEWN. It is, additionally, a raving loon.

      So when you meet an AC acting all brave and mouthy whilst also displaying complete ignorance, chances are you're dealing with this particular chuckledink.

      Additionally, zurkeyon loves too post random inflamatory comments because zurkeyon is developmentally challenged.

      Responder beware

      • Awww, I have a creepy stalker. I always wanted someone to show how unhinged they are by doing something this childish and stupid ;-D (YOU ARE A CHILD! STALKING GROWN MEN ON A FORUM BECAUSE YOUR BUTT HURTS!) LOLOLOLOLOLOL We. See. You! ;-D DO MORE!
      • He doesn't like losing debates. :-( Poor little guy.
      • Watching you have Level 9000 "Butthurt" is fucking amazing ;-)
      • I'm in there rent free folks. From the horse's mouth! ;-D
      • (Pokes oblivious child troll with stick) "Do more!" ;-D
      • Translation: "Waaaa I don't like what Zurk posts. Waaaa, I'm gonna creepy stalker him now and look like an immature child! Waaa!" ;-D (WTF bro, I even Fed you! LoL)

  • Throughout the launch of the RTX 4060 and ever since it hit the shelves, all the louder reviewers have slammed this GPU as not meeting their own expectations of what the 4060 should be. They complained that:

    1. No one cares about power efficiency
    2. DLSS/FSR is bad because it makes "fake frames"
    3. People NEED 12+ GB of VRAM to enjoy their video games
    4. $300 is too much for what people got

    The market disagreed and I hope they look back and realize:

    1. The cost of electricity is skyrocketing for most Americans. W

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      It's really interesting to see not just the 4060, but the 3060, 2060 as the most popular cards of their generation by a wide margin. If anything the argument ought to be to buy the *060 model simply because it's going to be best targeted for support by developers as it's the most common card. 4060 has been more than adequate for casual gaming since I got one on sale

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eepok ( 545733 )

        Absolutely! The budget card is consistently the most used card for both Nvidia and AMD. It's no contest.

        And that makes me wonder why the reviewers don't focus more on getting the most out of your budget card instead of (as they will frequently say), "Just save up and buy a better card."

    • In Cyberpunk, 3x frame gen DLSS on a 5060 @ 2K with maxed everything, I'm consistently getting over 100 fps. It looks slightly blurry from the upscaling but what's actually rendered looks so amazing with the ray tracing maxed. It's what I thought the game would look like prerelease. There's a small bit of input latency added, but in this game I don't care. Barely noticeable.

      I care about efficiency, not because of the cost; I just have have enough loud fans and don't appreciate the space heater effect in a h

  • I thought that was VRAM (Score:3)

    by Talon0ne ( 10115958 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @01:33PM (#65633468)

    32 Gigs of system RAM has been normal for like 10 years now...

    • Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms/Mx/Fr/Br/Sr/Dr/Prof/Cllr/The Rt Revd/Sir/Dame/Lord/Lady/HAH/HE/HRH* Moneybags over here swanning about with more RAM than the HDD I had in my laptop ~10 years ago.

      * delete as appropriate

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      It's been normal and common behaviorally to go with 32GB on new PCs/builds, but given how long people keep their laptops and PCs, it hasn't been "the norm" throughout the entire population of home-owned PCs until recently.

  • Windows 11 runs in 4gb of RAM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2025 @02:06PM (#65633610)

    It's not blazing fast, but 4GB of RAM works. I have two laptops that had 4GB of RAM that I recently installed Windows 11 on. Then I upgraded to 8GB each, with old SODIMMs I had around, and they both got noticeably faster. Neither are my main computers. Actually, they're just backups of backups at this time, but maybe I'll have a use for them at some point, or sell or give them away.

    I've run 16GB of RAM and IRIS XE video, and with multiple monitors and a bunch of apps, I've run out of RAM.

    My main laptop now has 32GB, and I'd not go under that, especially because I run Firefox, aka Firehog.

    • Even if 4 GB "works" I expect it to be paging to disk each time you look at it. That might work, at least until your drive dies.

    • 8GB of RAM should be considered the minimum for a browse the internet machine these days. 4GB of RAM seems like it is only suitable for people who have a variety of bondage equipment at home and can't wait for the dominatrix to come over on the weekend.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Errabes ( 711809 )

      Don't know what people are doing with their memory

      I'm currently running 2 instances of Firefox (LTS and nightly build) and some crap, still using only 3GB including Linux kernel, Xorg and usual services. With files buffer and cache, 6GB of memory is allocated in total.

      I upgraded to 16GB only to have headroom to run games on my Windows partition. For now I don't see the point of upgrading to 32GB.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Eh. Win11 with 8 GB of RAM might work if you never connect it to the internet, or find some other way to block Windows Updates from ever happening. (Maybe once it goes EOL, they will stop issuing updates?)

      But every time it starts downloading Windows Updates, it's going to try to store half the internet in system memory, and the platform's horrible virtual memory system is going to consistently swap out the page that's going to be needed next, every single time, and the download that *should* take a few mi
  • All the sudden I'm very interested in seeing how this number changed over time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Matheus ( 586080 )

      Similar... Since I've had 32GB in all of my *Laptops since 2012 why has it taken so long for gamers who typically build far more capable systems to catch up? Or is system memory just not a priority vs. VRAM?

      • I think it's due to the exceptionally high costs for new RAM. Given the current computing demand, I think 32G is going to be stable for quite some time. Folks who do graphics, video, audio, games may need to go beyond. But I don't see developers needing beyond that for some time.
  • Some of these AAA titles seem like their texture and memory management is way down the list of priorities. If the stories from former game developers are remotely accurate, it sounds like optimization is always sacrificed on the altar of speed to market.

    • Not at all. The reality is AAA developers understand their target market and happily ship games that can actually make use of high end hardware. AAA games have massive worlds they load in to RAM to prevent loading screens and similar "optimisations" of the past. This does in fact consume a lot of RAM unless you want a stutter fest while it is loading from the drive while moving. It's why for RAM you typically see the minimum and recommended specs the same. As for texture management those are actually greatl

  • No matter how much ram you have, crappy code will find a way to overwhelm it.

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