Microsoft has quietly retracted its own documentation that suggested 32GB RAM is the “no worries” upgrade for gaming, and 16GB RAM is the baseline. This support document was likely written using a large language model, and Windows Latest first spotted it before it was taken down. Microsoft also nuked a document that recommended Copilot+ PCs for gaming.
Microsoft has a “Learning Center” where it publishes guides and marketing articles to promote various Windows features, and these rank well in search results. It’s mostly used by Microsoft to push a narrative and also make it easier for users to make a choice when they search the web.
In the first week of April, Microsoft quietly published a support document titled “Gaming features: What the best Windows PC gaming systems have in common.”
At first, the document might appear to be about Windows 11’s gaming features, but it goes a step further and builds a narrative around the memory requirement.
In the support document, Microsoft clearly notes that:
“For most players, 16GB RAM is a practical starting point. Moving to 32GB RAM helps if you run Discord, browsers, or streaming tools alongside your games. That extra memory also gives newer titles more breathing room as memory demands continue to rise.” – Microsoft.
“16GB RAM is the baseline; 32GB is the ‘no worries’ upgrade,” the company concluded in the support document, which was first spotted by Windows Latest.
This was later picked up by other outlets and the gaming community, and it didn’t go well with gamers.
Even on linux my non technical friend needed to go from 16 -> 32 because they were running out of mem playing monster hunter. So this just seems like good advice.
Yours is the second comment I’ve seen in this thread where someone suggesting 16 wasn’t enough for gaming on Linux, despite multiple comments from Windows users with no issues on 16 or less.
I actually wonder if it could be that Linux ends up requiring more memory than Windows does. Not necessarily because of the OS itself, but that other applications being used are less optimised, plus maybe the Proton layer for gaming costs more than running the game on Windows.
its probably just the type of games. 16 is fine for most games. My friend plays 100s of different games but only MH required more than 16. So 16 is fine but 32 is really the no worries amount. For me it was modded cities skyline that pushed me to get 32gb.
When windows uses 6-8GB at idle, there’s a lot of room there for Linux to catch up with helper programs.