The system won't function properly if it doesn't meet the required RAM.
The system won't function properly if it doesn't meet the required RAM.
Considering your setup, it's worth checking how the game handles limited RAM compared to the recommended amount. With only 8GB available, you might notice slower performance and longer load times, which could affect overall experience despite meeting minimum requirements.
Just run it at a reduced setting because the engine keeps textures and visuals in RAM, making them available instantly. (Higher quality needs more RAM) You’ll notice top-tier games use less RAM when they’re well-optimized compared to lower quality versions. This applies mainly to that particular game.
The game might need to frequently transfer information from RAM to your computer's swap space (or page file) on the hard drive to free up space for new data. Once it’s no longer needed, it discards the old data and reads it back from the swap file. This process causes the hard drive or SSD holding the page file to be accessed more often, which is slower than RAM. As a result, you may notice brief delays or lag, especially during data writes or reads in the page file.
Some games handle this better by adjusting settings automatically. They might reduce background effects like "fog of war" to save memory, lower texture quality, or switch to simpler animations. For instance, in games with dynamic music, a game could load tracks from the hard drive and keep them in memory for smoother transitions when needed. With limited memory, it may discard unused tracks from RAM and reload them later.
Often, games are designed to run at lower quality settings to meet minimal memory demands.
It depends on their choices regarding RAM needs. - If they significantly overestimate, chances are everything will be okay. - If you're trimming it closely, windows will begin clearing up more efficiently than usual, just like after a long gaming session when the start menu takes longer to open. - In the worst case, you might start swapping to disk, which could affect your gaming experience in some way.
Additionally, many settings and applications operate quietly in the background—antivirus, anti-malware tools, chat platforms, streaming services, voice communication apps, and more. These run alongside other programs that consume memory, which isn't always fully transferred to swap space for smoother gameplay. Even if a game uses just a few gigabytes, developers often suggest at least 4 GB, with 6–8 GB recommended as ideal, since all background processes also demand memory. Unlike consoles where hardware allocates memory predictably, PCs don't have such strict control; for instance, a graphics card and CPU share a fixed amount of RAM, but other software can still impact available space.
Just install more RAM. No problem. When your computer runs out of free memory, it turns to the hard drive which will seriously slow things down. If both RAM and swap space are gone, it will freeze and crash. Check your performance monitor for page faults. Experiment with settings until it starts relying on the page file. Once the page file is in use, remove it.
I came across an article evaluating games on different RAM sizes—4GB, 8GB, and 16GB. It seemed that 4GB often outperformed 8GB in those tests. A few titles even needed more than 4GB to run smoothly, but they still managed. In short, unless you're running many heavy tasks or other programs, the minimum RAM needs for games aren't super strict. Additionally, I tried playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare with a CPU set to two cores and half its speed. It ran at about the same level as a Core 2 Duo or an older dual-core i5. The game reported issues but kept 60 FPS.
In the worst scenario it may stop working. Consider installing more storage. Upcoming titles require this.
It really depends on the game in question. For example, Source engine titles are likely to crash due to memory limits, even if they tend to fail otherwise. Other games might actually use less memory than they claim.