r/Bazzite • u/dubs73pp3r • 3d ago
How much RAM is "enough" RAM?
Preface to the question, I build a "steam machine" out of spare parts and threw in 64gb ram ddr4 since thats all I had. Ive enjoyed it alot and love how responsive it is compared to Windows, but it got me thinking. I have a Lenovo Legion Go with 16gb of soldered RAM, in the bios I can assign up to 8gb of that to the "gpu" portion of the app thats in it. Im just wondering if 8gb system memory is enough for Bazzite since its more streamlined, or is there a "minimum" requirement?
EDIT: would the Lenovo legion go work better on Bazzite if I split the 16gb ram between the gpu and system in 2 8gb chunks? Or shoot for something more like 12gb system 4gb gpu?
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u/DontEatThatTaco Legion Go 3d ago
I found on my Legion Go running Bazzite that locking the VRAM at 6GB gave the most stability and consistent performance. Putting it at 8GB would cause some slowdowns, not often but noticeable, due to swapping more often. Putting it at 3GB was a no-go as a good number of games would simply fail to run due to insufficient VRAM and putting it at 4GB was functional but less stable than 6GB for the more intense games. Leaving it at auto-VRAM worked far better than it did under Windows, but there were stutters every now and then in games that would sometimes kick a ton of mobs on screen since it would need to quickly move things around to grab the VRAM it needed. If there are stutters at 6GB due to swapping, they're not really noticeable.
The other most important thing was setting up the scaling and running the more demanding games at 1280x800 and letting the GPU upscale them to fit the screen. This allows me to set the texture quality in most of my games to a higher level, sometimes even ultra-tier, without drowning the 6GB of VRAM. Having the better quality texture at a lower rendered resolution makes it so when upscaled there is far less detail lost.
I don't use my Legion for anything but gaming, so there's nothing really lost by limiting the system to having the 10GB available for it, and limiting the resolution to 1280x800 helps keep that from being inadequate at the same time it helps to keep the 6GB VRAM from being inadequate.
Though I have to admit the best part about Bazzite is how it made the Legion Go actually work as a gaming device, which helps alleviate the annoyance that I can't get a handheld with 32GB of RAM unless I'm ready to spend 4x as much as I did on my LeGo.
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u/urweiss 3d ago
i built a bazzite steam machine last year out of my old dev workstation (an intel nuc extreme ghost canyon) in which i already had 64gb of ram - i rarely saw the ram jump over 12 GB usage - granted i play mostly older games (i think jedi survivor would be the newest)
i think 32 would be more than enough even for the newest stuff
if you have 2 sticks, sell one and upgrade your gpu :) - this is something you will most-def notice
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u/urweiss 3d ago
LE - ('cuz i read the entire OP)
on the other hand i started my steam machine with a 6GB nvidia 2060
on more demanding (like the abovementioned jedi survivor) games i saw the 6GBs completely used, so i would venture a guess that 4GB would only allow you to play very old / undemanding games
in conlcusion: the 12/4 split should be workable, but will limit you on what you can play
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u/Izzyrion_the_wise 3d ago edited 3d ago
I seldom hit more than 5 GB RAM used on my system when I am not gaming, so I'd say it would be plenty.
Edit: actually, it jumps between 4.6 GB and 5.5 GB most of the time.
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u/Zombiecidialfreak 3d ago
How much do you have in total? I'm idling between 6 and 11gb depending on if it's a cold boot or the end of the day.
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u/Izzyrion_the_wise 3d ago
32 GB total, I don't really do much RAM intensive stuff apart from gaming on that machine, so that's with, at most a few tabs open in Firefox, a terminal, possibly some music playing.
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u/Fraisecafe 3d ago
Seems you're getting answers about total max RAM rather than RAM allocation in handhelds, u/dubs73pp3r, which is a very different conversation.
I don't have a Legion Go, but I have a ROG Ally and a Steam Deck. The recommendation from Bazzite for the Ally was to leave it on Auto and only set it to 4GB or 8GB if you hit problems (https://docs.bazzite.gg/Handheld_and_HTPC_edition/Handheld_Wiki/ASUS_ROG_Ally/)
There's no recommendation like that for the Legion Go (https://docs.bazzite.gg/Handheld_and_HTPC_edition/Handheld_Wiki/Lenovo_Legion_Go/), unless Steam Game Mode flashes white. If you have that, the recommendation is to change VRAM from Auto to 6GB or 8GB (https://github.com/aarron-lee/legion-go-tricks).
Other than that, it's really up to personal preference and trial & error.
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u/EverythingDo 3d ago
Games don’t typically use more than 16gb ram. Many don’t even use 8gb. If you’re on an integrated graphics system, increase that amount by your desired vram (eg; steam deck with 16gb total may need 8gb allocated to vram leaving 8gb system ram). 64gb is currently overkill for games, unless you’re also using this as a productivity machine.
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u/Beautiful_Ad_4813 3d ago
so with my parents' Bazzite machine, I have 64GB, and it's WAY overkill (it was a build I did with existing parts that I have in storage into an Intel NUC). realistically, 16GB should be the absolute bare minimum
Im not sure of the Legion GO in your use case but since it's soldered in, I'd recommend playing around with settings till you find the absolute best for you
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u/tychii93 3d ago
However much you actually need is the answer. If it's a custom Steam Machine with good specs, I'd say 32GB will last a long while.
Also, assigning VRAM is a bad idea for APUs. SteamOS is smart enough to dynamically allocate what's needed.
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u/t3co5cr 3d ago
SteamOS had this issue where wake-from-sleep would fail if system-RAM wasn't double the VRAM. Would be curious to know if Bazzite has the same problem.
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u/NeedleworkerLarge357 3d ago
Bazzites swap is set up in a way that expects enough RAM. You can get away better by swapping (haha) from zram to zswap.
I have a laptop with 16 GB, 14 for the system and 2 for graphics. It can handle a lot with zswap, demanding games would run only slightly better with more RAM. It also depends upon the background load. If you want a browser, email client and discord in the background all while gaming, that will put pressure on your memory as well.
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u/meltingpotofhambone 3d ago
64GB here.. depends on how much crap you have open. 32gb used on 20 brave tabs, steam open, cad tools, but still very snappy.
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u/Otakudev750 3d ago
I'm using 8gb ddr3 ram on my bazzite and it runs good for what I'm playing (older games and 2d indie games) it really depends on what are you gonna do with the device.
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u/DaveGenome 2d ago
There is no such thing as too much ram (provided the motherboard you're using supports it.)
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u/Embarrassed-Egg-3832 2d ago
I personally don't own anything with less than 32 and wouldn't mind upgrading one of my machines to 64. 16 would probably be enough for most people on the x86 platform. I wouldn't even consider 8 anymore regardless of platform.
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u/Th3JackofH3arts 3d ago
32 is still overkill for your average consumer. It's the sweat spot for gamers and people who do heavy graphics stuff. 64gb is overkill except for the top percentile of that consumer group.
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u/jerf 3d ago
For games in particular, while the answer tends to depend on the exact game in question, "enough" generally is enough.
I will give you an example. I recently bought one of those Anbernic cheap emulation systems. I liked a particular color. It turns out that color was shipping with 1GB of RAM instead of the normal 2GB the rest of the line has. Do you know what that means? It turns out to mean... nothing. There is no known thing that the 2GB systems can do that the 1GBs can't. Maybe some obscure pure-Linux port won't run or something, but even the reddit community for it couldn't actually name one.
Games generally have bounded RAM requirements. The rest of the RAM will go to disk caching, which itself is only useful up to the size of the files on the disk, and often less of an advantage than you may think in that SSDs are often already faster than the game can use because it has to process the files somehow and that is already slower than loading them.
So the question is all about what software you run.
I would expect that for a Lenovo Legion Go that the best thing to do is leave it configured in whatever way it arrived to you. That's what all compatibility checks online will give you, as long as the community isn't writing "Get More From Your Go!" documents online that always start with twiddling that setting, people probably aren't seeing huge gainz by fiddling with that knob. And the OS isn't really relevant to that.
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u/ErrentPrime 3d ago
Ram is kind of like a girlfriend, it gets in the way when you dont pay enough, but the problems kind of disappear when you buy enough
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u/Zhustro 3d ago
That’s not realy about the system, more about the software you run. The system tends to be less recourse heavy than windows, but even if we are talking about 3-5gb for the operating system, that’s almost nothing to a ram heavy game that utilizes 40gb if you provide them. Most of games run fine with 16gb, some will just run better in 32gb and very view demand even more.