Low RAM warning

I've got 8GB RAM on my machine and it runs pretty sweet. I have a GTX660 and Core i5-2400. I'm just wondering if you would recommend 16GB to have the best possible performance? Already getting good performance, but would 16GB give me ever better performance?

Also, someone told me to increase my pagefile (increased it to 16GB, a little overkill) but not sure if this is actually doing anything beneficial. Does the game use a lot of the pagefile once it maxes out available physical RAM?

Haha grey goo. You'll have to wait at least a few billion years until it turns into sentient machines of war.

It doesn't use pagefile very efficiently, that is why you can't just not have ram at all in your computer, pagefile is a very inefficient ram.

16g would allow you to generate larger size. It would not improve performance speed and such. Usually, a computer like mine, 8g ram, 1g gpu, dual core, cable internet, runs the game max speed on lowest setting. Anything higher will run the game just as fast, possibly on a higher graphics with a better graphics card and cpu. With a quad core and 2-3g modern gpu, I could see this game not offering the full speed you should get, over the speed I get, simply over the server bottleneck.

But if 2k radius worlds are your thing, 16g ram with a sufficiently strong cpu and patience with the slow lategame simulation, would make it work.

P.S.: Grey Goo is just as optimistic, albeit a different direction. But like all variety... *insert why not both jpg*

Grey Goo is a new RTS game being developed by Grey Box
https://www.greybox.com/greygoo/en/

But compared to Planetary Annihilation it just seems so run of the mill. There so much you can do in Planetary Annihilation that any other RTS now pales in comparison.

16GB pagefile is overkill though?

I never saw the harm. Hard drive does a terrible job at the Ram's duty. However, there sure is a lot of hard drive so the only dangers of a large page file on the hard drive, is straining the hard drive. SSD would do a better job but might not want to endanger that sort of investment either.

Here is an article though.
http://blogs.citrix.com/2011/12/23/the-pagefile-done-right/

According to this, at the very least, if you ever needed, you could do a full ram dump, for troubleshooting if you got permanent bluescreen. That's good. However, I think page space does like ram's task only for a moment, anything requiring the ram back to back in the same use of memory couldn't use just the same space of hard drive all over again, it would require double the hard drive space, triple, more memory than you should safely use. So I would go with 16.

Also asks that oh so important question: Why does windows pagefiling default to such incredibly low numbers? Nobody has that little ram, and hard drives are over 100gb. Why wouldn't you have at least 8gb page files by default?

I am using an SSD. My question is whether a 16GB pagefile is overkill. The Pagefile is almost always used, even when you have a lot of RAM. My question is how much is the pagefile used by Planetary Annihilation and when is it used?

Yes, that is the question. It says test PA and applications you normally have open like a web browser and PA at the same time, and check your task manager throughout it, and set your pagefile as your Ram + your usage across your computer.

So not double, but little over 1.6x. And the article actually suggests you use a moderate computing load you normally use, but if PA is your usual workload then I guess use that.

TL;DR Don't modify page file at all, leave it at what Windows thinks is a good idea.

There have been a large amount of lobbies I've seen pop up with a ludicrous number of planets in a system. Personally I'd say give PA an 8GB RAM recommended specs.. spec. Then again, the official specs still imply you can run the game on a 32-bit CPU, but you need a 64-bit OS, so...

More ram will only improve your performance in relation to system size. Basically running out hurts performance badly in my experience (moving from 4 to 8gb was a huge boost). Moving from 8 to 16 though? Well if you like to play very large systems (specifically ones that use more than your 8gb of ram) then extending your ram further will help. If you have a system that already loads up and runs smoothly *at the start of the game* then it wont make a difference. If your getting slow down late game I'm fairly sure that has nothing to do with memory (at least until you can run the server yourself when offline mode hits).

There is a 32 bit version of the client for windows I beleive (still needs windows vista / 7 / 8 32 bit though).

Quotes in quotes in quotes confusing.

Um I know having PA (or whatever program) eating up all your RAM will slow things down.. You said moving from 4GB to 8GB was a huge boost, which in most peoples circumstances is true, so that's why I said 8GB minimum recommended spec would be a good idea.

I was pointing out the floor in the required system specifications for PA, saying that Uber doesn't seem to care that their minimum specs don't make sense. Also still says "subject to change" even though the game is released -.-

A good idea at least for now is if you are running into memory problems, don't play on systems that have more then 2 planets, 3 at most, playing on games which have as many as 10 planets you will obviously run into issues with low amounts of ram with a system like that.

6GB worked ok for me although I have since upgraded and have noticed a big difference. I guess getting that amount only really makes sense with triple channel motherboards though

Hi, sorry about the double quotes... Tidied it up for you

My point was only that *technically* it is still possible (I think?) to run PA on a 32 bit system which will only give PA access to 2 gb of ram. I'm not sure you'd be able to load more than a single planet though so they should probably make 64 bit and 4 gb ram the minimum requirement (having played for quite a while on 4 gb it is very much playable with the caveat that you have to be careful with what systems you try and load, hence my earlier suggestion about indicating required memory for various maps).

So from my experience I think (for Windows) the minimum and recommended specs should be updated as:

Minimum Spec
Windows Vista, 7, 8 64bit
Ram: 4gb

Also an amendment to graphics card for AMD: HD5000 series or newer (as there are no stable drivers available for HD4000 on windows- although HD4000 does work fine on linux using the open source drivers).

Recommended Spec
Windows 7 / 8 64 bit (Vista is problematic re driver support so shouldn't be recommended)
Ram: 8gb+

Multi-platform support is a real pain, isn't it

I agree they should update the specs, it might help people out some.

I kinda assumed the amount of memory was just something unavoidable with produceral planets. All the better if there actually is a way to fix it.

Edit: Checked and there is no mention of HD4000 on the Uber of Steam page (I'm sure I read it somewhere, maybe it's been edited?). Might be worth noting that for AMD / ATI HD5000 or newer required on Windows though (just to avoid confusion)?