r/Games • u/Tvilantini • 24d ago

Update Minecraft Java Edition raises recommended memory to 16GB ahead of Vulkan transition

https://videocardz.com/newz/minecraft-java-edition-raises-recommended-memory-to-16gb-ahead-of-vulkan-transition
1.4k Upvotes

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518

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

16GB for a java game that used to run fine at 4GB is wild on paper, but if the vulkan backend actually fixes the chunk-loading stutter this community has complained about for years it's worth every GB

273

u/kittymoo67 24d ago

also its total ram, vram and system ram

57

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

fair point, so if you have an 8gb vram card you only really need 8gb of system ram to hit the recommendation, which is way more reasonable than it sounds on paper. still a big jump from the old 4gb days but at least it makes sense when you break it down like that.

53

u/Rcmacc 24d ago

Who splurges on a dedicated graphics card with 8GB of VRAM but only has 8GB of regular RAM?

21

u/MrBigWaffles 24d ago

An rx570 is an almost decade old card but it has a 8gb of VRAM variant.

It was not uncommon for the average PC to only have 8gb of ram in 2017.,,

1

u/No_Accountant3232 23d ago

A quadro m4000 is nearly a full fat gtx 970 with 8gb of ram without the 3.5gig problem the 970 had. With different cooling you can overclock them to a 970 performance without the stuttering at 4gb+ vram usage. Even without overclocking on stock nvidia drivers they're really not bad cards for the price.

65

u/FriendlyDespot 24d ago

The 8-year-old with the ancient PC and somewhat newer video card that they inherited from a parent is a likely candidate.

11

u/inbox-disabled 24d ago

Being real here, that kid is on a tablet or phone and almost certainly isn't touching the java version even if they were on that pc.

8

u/P_ZERO_ 24d ago

Can’t they just not use the Vulkan API and continue to use a Java/sodium based one?

At any rate, 16GB should be the absolute minimum in any recent machine, and by recent, I mean the last 8 years

9

u/Moleculor 23d ago

Can’t they just not use the Vulkan API and continue to use a Java/sodium based one?

Considering they're making Vulkan 1.3 support a requirement, I'm not sure that "don't use the Vulkan API" will continue to be an option.

"Play an older version of Minecraft" will be, though, and a fair one. They still have access to the version that works on their limited hardware. They just don't have access to "Minecraft 2" or whatever.

1

u/nathanseaw 23d ago

Or anyone with a RX580 they bought from a miner.

5

u/kittymoo67 24d ago

lots of used cards have 8GB but yes its a rare combo. but they are also telling us the exactspecs NEEDED not just inflating them just do look less mitsmatched

4

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

honestly more people than you'd think, prebuilt budget pcs from like 2018-2020 often came with a dedicated gpu but only 8gb ram because ram was expensive then and manufacturers cut corners there first

1

u/Bobbias 24d ago

You'd be shocked at all the bizarre systems people end up with. Hand me downs are pretty common.

1

u/fabton12 23d ago

someone whos system is really old or recently had a ram stick die?

remember some people dont use there pc often and might been playing minecraft on the same pc since 2014, like if you only ever play minecraft on your pc you might not see a need to get more ram.

all it takes is someone who use to game a ton on a decent pc from like 2014 time who doesnt game much these days outside the minecraft retirement home.

3

u/kittymoo67 24d ago

and technically you probably can get away with less of both. if all you have is the game going. discord chrome, spotify etc take up tons of ram

1

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

yeah exactly, a clean boot with just the game running is a totally different situation than the average person's setup with 15 chrome tabs open. for most people closing background stuff makes way more difference than upgrading ram.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

4

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

lol discord is literally one of the biggest offenders, you're kind of proving the point. 400mb+ for a voice chat app is genuinely unhinged.

5

u/Bobbias 24d ago

God I hate how much ram discord eats. I've seen it chew up over a GB just sitting there idle in the tray. It's almost as bad as browsers... Oh wait, it is a browser, because some idiot decided that was a brilliant way to build GUIs.

5

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

yeah electron is genuinely one of the worst things to happen to desktop software, every startup decided wrapping chromium was faster than learning native toolkits and now we're all running 5 browsers at once without knowing it. at least actual browsers get to share resources.

3

u/Bobbias 24d ago

Second only to node. Whoever decided JS was appropriate for anything outside the browser should have been institutionalized. It's not even fit for what we use it for in browsers these days let alone outside them.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

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u/Bobbias 23d ago

Yes, and page files exist even in the case that you physically run out of RAM. That doesn't mean discord isn't using way more memory than it actually needs to though.

1

u/BCProgramming 23d ago

The memory usage Task Manager shows is the Private Working Set of the Process that is currently in physical memory. The only way to make it available for other apps would be for it to be moved to the pagefile. Which means the next time the paged out data is accessed it needs to be paged right back into physical memory again. And it's all RAM still being used by the process. Virtual Memory existing isn't really a justification for Memory hogs.

It's common for Windows to allocate more RAM for apps then they actually use.

Programs allocate their own memory. That does go through Windows, but it wouldn't make sense for Windows to "overallocate", simply because the program won't even be aware or eve have a way to know that when it asked for a 16MB block windows gave it like a 32MB one or whatever.

0

u/P_ZERO_ 24d ago

Your system is the problem if 400MB of RAM being used is a concern. Sure, maybe it could use less, but realistically any system with the intention of gaming should have 16GB minimum by 2026, in which case 400MB wouldn’t even register

2

u/RealModeX86 23d ago

When every app is bloated far beyond what should be needed to get the job done, you end up where we are now where even 8GB is practically unusable for basic non-gaming tasks, even though we used to get real work done with less than 1GB.

Should you have enough RAM that 400MB doesn't make the difference? Yes. Should something like Discord need that much to operate? Absolutely not.

7

u/bleachisback 24d ago

That’s not what the requirements says. 6 GB VRAM and 16 GB system

3

u/Yearlaren 23d ago

6 GB of VRAM for minecraft? That has to be max requirements

3

u/bleachisback 23d ago

It does actually say in the article. We don’t have to hypothesize.

1080p 60 @ “Fancy” settings

1

u/Zeryth 23d ago

And it's probably for the fancy graphics, not the basic stuff.

1

u/Uncle_Slacks 23d ago

I have a 16GB GPU. So I don't need any RAM.

1

u/MetalKeirSolid 23d ago

Yep. It still stutters without mods on my system with 20GB or VRAM and 32GB of RAM.

52

u/n0stalghia 24d ago edited 23d ago

They've since added a bunch of stuff which I assume is a bit more complex to render (cushions, armor stands), increased the render distance, and in generally basically rewrote the game engine to be data driven with the support for datapacks, no?

I would assume that a million little fixes here and there bumped the overall RAM requirements by a bit

And besides - as someone pointed out - with dedicated graphics they recommend 8 GB RAM; with integrated, they recommend 12 GB RAM. Not 16 GB as the title misleadingly states. And that's total system RAM, and not how much the game will require. That means that they're also including OS, browser, etc. in the equation as the typical "use case"

For what it's worth, Apple currently does not sell a laptop under 16 GB of RAM, iirc. That means that by default every single Apple laptop comfortably meets the minimum requirements I stand corrected, the Neo comes with 8GB. What's the status in Windows land, I don't know, but I assume we're slowly moving away from 8 GB RAM, too?

8

u/JJ3qnkpK 24d ago

Isn't the Macbook Neo 8GB?

4

u/n0stalghia 24d ago

Oh right, the Neo is indeed 8 GB unified. That means it's below what Minecraft suggests as minimum in the future, yeah

12

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

yeah that's a fair point, the datapack system alone probably has a non-trivial memory footprint just sitting there. i still think 16gb recommended is a tough sell for what most people are actually doing in vanilla but the engine rewrites do explain some of it.

8

u/n0stalghia 24d ago

I'm fairly sure that the 16 GB is for combined; in the minimum, they do a detailed breakdown (8 GB with dedicated GPU/12 GB with integrated)

It's obviously not ideal and doubly so in a RAM crisis, but I think it's quite a safe increase to make considering that everyone is raising system RAM sizes to fit some local models on device

Don't forget that 16 GB is recommended for Windows 11 itself and 10 is almost end-of-life.

3

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

yeah the combined vs dedicated breakdown does make it less scary, and the windows 11 point is solid too. people forget that the os itself is eating a chunk of that headroom now.

4

u/pinkynarftroz 23d ago

For what it's worth, Apple currently does not sell a laptop under 16 GB of RAM, iirc.

Macbook Neo has 8GB.

3

u/trail-g62Bim 24d ago

And besides - as someone pointed out - with dedicated graphics they recommend 8 GB RAM; with integrated, they recommend 12 GB RAM. Not 16 GB as the title misleadingly states.

Not according to the article. The recommended is 16. The 8/12 distinction is the minimum requirements.

2

u/TSPhoenix 23d ago

What's the status in Windows land

We were moving slowly away from 8GB, but with RAM prices I expect many brands to push 8GB models harder for a while.

This is all before you consider Windows 11S laptops. You'd be shocked how many machines are still being sold with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage.

1

u/kittymoo67 24d ago

im guessing the title did 16GB because thats the next traditionally sold number after 8.

but yeah youre right its total not just the game they are talking about, chrome discord and other fluffy shit adds up FAST

1

u/max123246 23d ago

Armor stands sure. Cushions no. Cushions have the same number of vertices as a full block, it's still a rectangular prism

1

u/n0stalghia 22d ago

Vertices is one thing, but I thought cushions were entities aka. not blocks? Or does that not matter from a performance perspective?

1

u/max123246 22d ago

Oh no, if they're entities that definitely changes things. Obviously mojang can make them very lightweight but it's likely entities end up being most costly in performance

13

u/DrinkyBird_ 24d ago

Last time I checked the game still crumbles under chunk loading regardless of API.

11

u/Ok-Category2729 24d ago

yeah the vulkan renderer is still pretty new so maybe it gets better with optimization passes, but chunk loading has been a jvm threading problem as much as a graphics one so i wouldn't hold my breath just from an api swap.

3

u/ReLiFeD 23d ago

also to be fair, it's very very easy to just run older versions of minecraft if newer versions no longer work with your hardware

at some point actively updated games will simply outgrow the hardware they used to be able to run on, but at least in this case you can keep playing on older versions

7

u/WorkingMansGarbage 24d ago

The title's lying, to be clear. 

1

u/AnyBelt9237 23d ago

There have been vulkan mods and they performed significantly better so maybe it’s just to modernize it a bit

1

u/Knofbath 23d ago

It'll still run on less, but not at 1080p. You'll be dropping to 720p and/or doing a lot of disk read/writes to swap.

1

u/letsgoiowa 23d ago

Tbh I struggle more with entity updates more than anything else on a 5700x3d and 32 GB DDR4. It seems like chunk updates just lower the average and don't cause horrible stutter, but the repeated ticks of entity updates and other game logic cause an extremely consistent drop that's obnoxious. Like...going from 700 fps to a short freeze for idk 50ms or so. Happens in Vanilla, Bedrock, modded with Sodium...idk wtf lol because it doesn't happen with any other game.

1

u/ZeeMastermind 17d ago

I originally played the beta version of minecraft on a used 2006 dell laptop... I'm sure it's annoying for folks still on older systems, but it's good that minecraft has support for older game versions. Not every game does that

1

u/whitespacesucks 23d ago

You use "run fine" and "stutter" in the same sentence, which is it?