Is 8GB RAM Enough For Gaming Laptop?

If you are a new gamer and want to buy a new gaming laptop but don’t know if 8GB RAM is enough for your gaming laptop or not? Well, this is one of the most frequently asked questions by buyers and this is the main reason I am here to help you out. Actually, there are many other things that you need to think about it because it will help to make your decision on how much RAM you need for gaming.

The answer to this question varies from one person to another because it depends on what kinds of gaming you will do and what kind of hardware configuration is available on your laptop. So, let’s talk about this topic in more detail.

RAM is known as a short-term memory of a laptop or computer where the data is stored temporarily due to it is being used. RAM is a ‘volatile’ memory, it means it loses your data when you shut down your system.

The data you want to store in your laptop and don’t want to lose even if you shut down your laptop then it needs non-volatile storage like an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or SSD (Solid State Drive).

Moreover, there are two kinds of RAM available such as DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and SRAM (Static Random Access Memory). Let’s talk about DRAM first, it stores the data in its integrated chip itself, which makes it work fast and efficiently. However, if you shut down your laptop or lose power then you will lose your data.

While SRAM does not work like DRAM, it stores its data on the system’s motherboard or CPU which makes it slower and less efficient as compared to DRAM. But it is more stable and reliable than SRAM, if you face any power loss then you won’t lose your data anymore.

Apart from the types, RAM has different types of speeds also such as SDR (Single Data Rate) and DDR (Double Data Rate). The DDR is the latest technology which provides faster performance than the SDR. Also, in every new generation of DDR RAM update, they doubled the performance and optimise to save power also.

If we see then the maximum speed for DDR4 RAM was 3200MHz, while the latest DDR5 initial speed is around 4800MHz which makes it around 50% faster than its predecessor.

Actually, RAM is the kind of memory that lets you work with the data that is needed to open the files and programs frequently.

Further, the operating system that runs on your laptop also uses RAM. To open a file or run any program, your laptop opens up that in RAM.

When you click to open a program then it begins to fetch that data from the storage drive to RAM, so that it can be accessed very quickly which makes this process much smoother.

In case, if RAM’s memory is full then it starts to use memory from HDD or SSD drive to store and access the short-term data. But when it starts to use a storage drive then you may face performance issues because it works slows than the RAM.

RAM plays a very important role in a gaming laptop because to run games smoothly and efficiently, the files responsible for recreating the objects and textures that need to be delivered to the CPU very immediately.

While the storage drive such as SSD or HDD doesn’t have that read and write speed that RAM has to fulfill this thing.

As we all know the games are fully stored on the storage drive whether it is SSD or HDD. But the thing is that to run any game the part of the data of that game needs to process quickly and that’s why temporarily it moves to the RAM so that the CPU can easily access it and process it.

In case your laptop has short RAM then this process can’t work properly so you will face performance issues like lagging or frame drops. So, this is why you’ll need enough RAM in your laptop for your gaming and other day-to-day tasks.

Well, the answer to this question is different from person to person. Like, if you are a normal gamer who just wants to play some games on low to medium graphics such as GTA 5, Call of Duty Black Ops III, PUBG, or Fortnite then 8GB RAM is enough for you.

But if you are a hardcore gamer who wants to play AAA high-end gaming titles at high graphics then 8GB is not enough and advisable for you and definitely, you’ll need at least 16GB of RAM to fulfill your gaming needs.

Also, I suggest you when you are playing games on your laptop then make sure to close the background apps that use more memory, so there is a chance you may get a smooth performance.

Besides this, I also want to tell you that the operating system running on your laptop whether it is Windows 10 or Windows 11, it uses RAM of around 1GB to 3GB for its system operations. So, now you can calculate if you have 8GB RAM then you will get around 5GB to 7GB RAM to use.

Before you make your buying decision you should try to figure out which games you want to play on your gaming laptop and what is the game’s minimum and recommended requirements. So, that it helps you to discover how much RAM is sufficient for your gameplay such as 8GB, 16GB, or a whopping 32GB.

Apart from gaming, if you want to do some heavy tasks also like video editing or any 3D-related work then I personally recommend you to go with 16GB or even 32GB RAM.

If you have 8GB RAM and all your games and apps working properly fine then upgrading to 16GB won’t improve the performance. But if all your games and apps use all the memory then you will face performance issues like lagging, freezing, and frame drops.

In simple words, whatever games and applications you want to run you should ensure that you have sufficient RAM and once it’s enough for you then upgrading RAM won’t improve performance.

Finally, we are reached at the end of this article and I hope that now your doubts may be clear about is 8GB RAM enough for your gaming laptop or not. Here I have tried my best to make it easy for you to understand this topic so that you can easily make your decision for yourself. If you are stuck then first try to ask that question which I have mentioned in this article or just go through this guide again.

But if anyone of you is still confused that 8GB RAM is enough for you or not then feel free to contact me via email or below contact form, I will help you out with this.