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23 hours ago
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We are in the middle of a pattern shift once again as 32 GB memory becomes mainstream, while 16 GB's grip slowly erodes. This is more prevalent with the advent of DDR5. Larger-capacity sticks have become cheaper and more readily available. In fact, you'd hardly come across an 8 GB DDR5 stick, which potentially locks your rig to single-channel memory if you opt for a total capacity of 16 GB.
That said, DDR5 is built for large capacities, and 32 GB sticks are readily stocked. The price of running 64 GB is the lowest it has ever been, giving three viable options to those building a rig today: 16, 32, and 64 GB. Which of these is the best for gaming? Let's try to answer that.
16 GB vs 32 GB vs 64 GB: Comparison in video games
For quite some time, 16 GB has been the gold standard for gaming RAM (Image via Walmart)For over five years, 16 GB has been the top recommendation for gaming systems. It allowed for enough headroom to run a game alongside a few other daily apps. However, as titles become more ambitious, that's changing in 2025.
While your GPU and CPU still have a larger impact on gaming capabilities, not having enough memory can straight up crash video games or prevent them from launching at all. This makes researching the right capacity crucial.
Most video games still recommend 16 GB lately, with 24 GB RAM becoming the de facto standard for some more demanding titles. However, the latter will leave with uneven configurations that have the potential to induce system instability. Considering all of this, 32 GB becomes the next leg up in system RAM.
This shows in the latest June 2025 edition of the Steam Hardware Survey charts, as 32 GB continues to be part of 34.37% gaming rigs. It's no surprise my latest system with a 14th gen Intel chip and the Nvidia RTX 5080 also has the same amount of system RAM.
In the Steam charts, 16 GB still maintains a lead, commanding 43.05% gaming rigs. The 24 GB systems constitute just 1.68% of the whole cohort studied, given the inherent limitations of mixing RAM sticks of different configurations.
Here's a comparison of how gaming performance varies based on the amount of RAM your system has. We sourced these numbers from the YouTube channel Testing Games.
| 16 GB | 32 GB | 64 GB | |
| DOOM: The Dark Ages | 44 FPS | 44 FPS | 44 FPS |
| Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 | Crashed | 69 FPS | 69 FPS |
| Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | 57 FPS | 57 FPS | 57 FPS |
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 | 65 FPS | 66 FPS | 66 FPS |
| Marvel's Spider-Man 2 | Crashed | 71 FPS | 72 FPS |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 51 FPS | 52 FPS | 52 FPS |
| Hogwarts Legacy | 64 FPS | 66 FPS | 66 FPS |
| The Last of Us Part II | Crashed | 103 FPS | 104 FPS |
| Stellar Balde | 127 FPS | 127 FPS | 127 FPS |
| Oblivion Remastered | 61 FPS | 65 FPS | 65 FPS |
As is evident, 64 GB gives you no advantage over systems with half the memory. However, 16 GB is showing its age, with crashes in 30% of the titles tested. This is quite alarming, giventhat a large portion of gamers are still on this configuration.
Read more: 16 GB vs 32 GB: How much RAM do you need for gaming laptops?
If you're building a rig solely for gaming in 2025, we recommend at least 32 GB system RAM. If you are a mulititasker, and want to run several Chrome tabs alongside professional-grade software and video games, 64 GB is recommended.
In my system, 32 GB has been showing its limitations as VSCode frequently runs out of memory while running multiple LLM inference notebooks alongside a host of Opera GX tabs. Thus, getting the higher capacity makes perfect sense if you have the use case for it.
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Edited by Angad Sharma
English (US)