I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, or if the memory requirements of the game have even been decided, but what sort of requirements is galciv3 going to target. As saying your going to be able to use more than 2gbs (because your a 64bit process) is immaterial if your going to limit the game to 3 or 4?
E.g. Is the aspiration to make galciv3 scale to the amount of memory the computer it's running on. For example if I have 16gbs I'll be able to run a game "x" large but if I have 64gbs I'll be able to run a game four times larger than "X"?
Iirc it was mentioned somewhere (but I can't find it at the moment) that the minimum RAM would be 4G, but I have no knowledge of what SD has, or will, run into in terms of how much RAM is going to be needed to run the game smoothly with which options. Perhaps they are still trying to figure that out as well.
Does that mean that the minimum RAM requirement will be 4G. Maybe, maybe not. SD may find that 4G isn't enough, or (although not likely) that the game will run well even on 2G if certain other restrictions are applied.
Does that mean that if you have only 4G on your system that SD3 will be restricted to 4G. No. Like any application program SD3 should be using "Virtual Memory". RAM is only part of what the operating system allocates to any application program as virtual memory (only specialized programs such as maintenance and test utilities need direct access to RAM). Several factors will dictate whether 4G is enough for the style of play you use. For instance, it may be enough to allow small maps to run with blinding speed, but immense maps may be subject to overwhelming amounts of page swapping (a condition that occurs when the app uses more virtual storage at a very high rate than the OS has RAM), which is one of many causes of poor performance. (Another cause is high generation of heat in the GPU and/or CPUs. Another: Running two or more "RAM hog" applications at once. There are others.) Does that mean you need 64G to play a game with a map size 4X the size of a game that was pushing 16G of RAM? No. It may take 18g, 24G, 32G, or, as you asked, maybe even 64G, but the scaling can not be expected to be linear.
How will you know? There are system monitors that can help "see" what resources are being used and how effectively the use is. I have a gadget called "All CPU Meter" from AddGadgets.com" that gives me how much of the CPUs are being used, how much of RAM is being used, and how hot the CPUs are. I have a gadget called "GPU Meter", also from AddGadgets.com that tells me how hot the GPU is. And I have an app called "HWMonitor" from CPUID (I am not sure what the web address is) that gives me the same information and much more. There also should be an application that shows things like page swap rate and swap file usage that can be important in evaluating performance problems. Otherwise, knowing if you need more RAM on your PC to support your game style, or whether there is some other resource needed, can be a great big guessing game.
