Is 4GB of RAM still perfectly fine gaming?

I remember a couple of years ago when RAM prices were dirt cheap, 4GB was touted as being all you "needed" for gaming. Anything over 4GB was superfluous and gave negligible increase in performance...is this still the case? I'm building a Z77 rig with an i5 3570k and the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard and yea, I could get 8GB of RAM for $50, but I'd rather not pony it up if it's gives me 0.2% performance increase since I can use my existing 4GB stick.

Gaming really doesn't require that much RAM. 4G would be fine for any single game I know of, the problem is what else is running while you're playing that game. Browsers these days can take up gigs themselves, so if you're going to be having other apps running in the background you might want to go a little higher. I have 6 in mine, i get over 4 sometimes, but never near 6.

Quote from bubbachuck : I remember a couple of years ago when RAM prices were dirt cheap, 4GB was touted as being all you "needed" for gaming. Anything over 8GB was superfluous and gave negligible increase in performance...is this still the case? I'm building a Z77 rig with an i5 3570k and the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard and yea, I could get 8GB of RAM for $50, but I'd rather not pony it up if it's gives me 0.2% performance increase since I can use my existing 4GB stick.

4 gigs should be ample and the sure fire way to find out, is to set it to "no page file" and observe the ram usage in the performance tab of the task manager. If it manages to surpass 3 gigs while using it the way you do, then you should get more ram. If not, then 4 gigs is ample.
Oddly enough, the only time that I need more than 4 gigs on my main PC, is when I hook up a hard drive for a disk check, usually by USB, but not exclusively. The ram usage slowly builds up to almost 8 gigs, and that is the ONLY reason I need more than 4. (for speed reasons, I run it with no page file).
Naturally, the sky's the limit if you use a large page file, but it is my opinion that what determines the maximum amount of ram needed, is what the machine CAN use (with no pagefile naturally) when operated to the max by its user,

Quote from bubbachuck : I remember a couple of years ago when RAM prices were dirt cheap, 4GB was touted as being all you "needed" for gaming. Anything over 4GB was superfluous and gave negligible increase in performance...is this still the case? I'm building a Z77 rig with an i5 3570k and the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard and yea, I could get 8GB of RAM for $50, but I'd rather not pony it up if it's gives me 0.2% performance increase since I can use my existing 4GB stick.

4 GB should be just fine. What is most important for gaming is video RAM and video GPU.

Quote from bubbachuck : I remember a couple of years ago when RAM prices were dirt cheap, 4GB was touted as being all you "needed" for gaming. Anything over 4GB was superfluous and gave negligible increase in performance...is this still the case? I'm building a Z77 rig with an i5 3570k and the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard and yea, I could get 8GB of RAM for $50, but I'd rather not pony it up if it's gives me 0.2% performance increase since I can use my existing 4GB stick.

no it isn't, just go for 8gb at the least, youll thank your self later. There's an increasing amount of games that will eat up 3-4gb, so 4gb is becoming the bare minimum. Also keep in mind that your windows background processes will require some of that ram also.

Also I'd personally suggest you get your self a pair of 30nm Samsung ddr3 MV-3V4G3D
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Ele...B00592002W
they overclock extremely easy to 2133mhz with nice timings. Also the heat spreaders on most ram sticks are mainly for aesthetics, they aren't very useful for dissipating heat until you have very high voltages.
Easily overclocks to a ballpark of cl10-10-10-28-1T 2133mhz

What about the speed of the RAM you have now as opposed to what your motherboard will support?

Quote from Frogstar : What about the speed of the RAM you have now as opposed to what your motherboard will support?

Ivy bridge supports up to 2400mhz i believe

Motherboard he mentioned supports: DDR3 2800+(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/ 1600/1333/1066

THough there isn't really much real world differences between ram speeds

You might want to also consider 8 GB of RAM for later, down the road. Software is only going to get bloatier and will require more memory intensive to keep going so might as well prepare ahead. In a 64 bit OS environment, you will thank yourself for it in the future.

Quote from menace33 : You might want to also consider 8 GB of RAM for later, down the road. Software is only going to get bloatier and will require more memory intensive to keep going so might as well prepare ahead. In a 64 bit OS environment, you will thank yourself for it in the future.

Absolutely correct. There will be something in the future that will gobble up more resources,
but the OP did say......

Quote from bubbachuck : , I could get 8GB of RAM for $50, but I'd rather not pony it up if it's gives me 0.2% performance increase since I can use my existing 4GB stick.

4GB memory is plenty for non-I/O intensive tasks. The type of tasks that require much memory include database transactions, multiple image batch modification, multiple tabbed web surfing, etc.

For bad applications that cause consistent memory leaks, you won't ever have enough memory.

One way to know if you need more than 4GB is to use memory monitoring tools and record the memory utilization from all the activities and see if you need more.

Yes, 4 GB is plenty in most cases and no do not disable your pagefile. In Windows' memory architecture, RAM is a performance optimization for the hard disk. Disabling the pagefile can prevent applications from being able to allocate as much memory as they need.

There are some games that are either very large or leaky and can use 6-8+ GB, but they're few and far between.

What about for the new Windows 8? Does anyone know if 4GB of RAM is optimal for Windows 8 for an everyday user. (Microsoft Office + Internet+Finance Software etc.)

Quote from jolanar : What about for the new Windows 8? Does anyone know if 4GB of RAM is optimal for Windows 8 for an everyday user. (Microsoft Office + Internet+Finance Software etc.)

When we previewed it in February, it seemed lighter than 7, using less resources, so if 4 gigs is good for what you do in 7, it'll be fine with 8.