Does having more than 4 gigs of RAM increase gaming performance?

Have we reached a point where game makers are taking advantage of 64bit OSes and allocating more memory to their processes beyond the standard available on a 32bit OS or are games not yet taking advantage of large amount of RAM?

Basically, is it worth spending the money on a 64bit OS and more than 4 gigs for a gaming PC?

Solution 1:

A lot of times the bottleneck for your graphics is the video RAM, not the other kind you usually associate when you hear RAM.

Video RAM is located in the video card, and is used to store textures that are used while you're playing, among other things. The higher-resolution textures you want to use, the more video RAM you need. And high-resolution textures are generally the most noticeable thing that makes the graphics look better.

Most games don't do much intensive stuff other than the graphics, because they just don't have time to. So you're probably safe sticking to 4GB of RAM.

Solution 2:

Having more RAM won't give you more FPS, if you can run the game at all.

It will make life a bit easier, though.

If you have ample RAM, some or most of the game assets will be already cached while, say, loading it a second time, so it might start, or load levels faster than the first time around.

Currently, 64 Bit OS's don't have any visible advantage than being able to address RAM beyond 4 GB. But that might change with Battlefield 3, for which DICE recommends a 64 Bit OS, though I am not sure if it is for the larger memory use or DX11 support. Either way, I wouldn't invest into anything bound by 32 bit technology anymore.