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

hhaunter about 3 hours ago 59 commentsRead Article on videocardz.com

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theandrewbailey•39 minutes ago

For reference, this is what Minecraft used to need, back around 2013[0]:

Minimum Requirements:

CPU : Intel P4/NetBurst Architecture or its AMD Equivalent (AMD K7)

RAM : 2GB

GPU : Intel GMA 950 or AMD Equivalent

HDD : At least 90MB for Game Core and Sound Files

Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 or up is required to be able to run the game.

Recommended Requirements:

CPU : Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz

RAM : 4GB

GPU : GeForce 6xxx or ATI Radeon 9xxx and up with OpenGL 2 Support (Excluding Integrated Chipsets)

HDD : 150MB

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130124012851/http://help.mojan...

HelloUsername•about 1 hour ago

Minecraft is not more demanding than some years ago, they didn't neceserily raise it, they just updated the info page. This snapshot from 2022 says minimum 4gb and recommend 8gb: https://archive.ph/NTMU4. Source was posted some days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49038901

nesk_•about 2 hours ago

It will only cost you $200 in RAM, definitely a good time to raise the minimum/recommended specifications.

h4x0rr•about 1 hour ago

It's only a change on paper, in reality it was unrealistically low for a long time

inigyou•about 1 hour ago

Is that ever since 1.8 made the whole game engine vastly less efficient? The game used to run with 256MB.

Rohansi•18 minutes ago

> The game used to run with 256MB.

These are system requirements - not how much the game actually uses.

Filligree•about 1 hour ago

Less efficient but faster, which is a fun combination. At least they seem to have improved FPS.

surround•about 1 hour ago

I highly recommend using the open source Sodium and Lithium mods to improve performance. And I hope you're not still using OptiFine!

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/lithium

fusl•18 minutes ago

I don't use OptiFine but care to explain to someone not in the loop why they should avoid OptiFine?

dmrivers•about 3 hours ago

If the new requirements are a dealbreaker for anyone, Mineclonia is a lightweight open-source alternative that runs on much weaker hardware and feels close to Minecraft.

rpdillon•about 2 hours ago

My 13-year old son has an absolute blast writing mods for mineclonia with Gemini. He's later e on Diablo-style randomization of weapon drops, rune combinations that cast spells and have effects. And he's even working on what he calls an MMO, but really a server with quests and groups and classes, but probably wouldn't support more than about 16 players.

Great platform for hacking.

jasonjayr•about 1 hour ago

Mineclonia is the 'game' that loads into Luanti (formerly Minetest). Luanti has a c++ core engine, but definition of the worlds, rules, games, interactions is all lua

mkayokay•about 1 hour ago

Often kids are playing the game and kids want to play what their friends play and that's most likely not mineclonia.

So first I'd test mods [1] that improve performance. The best thing about java Minecraft is the modding scene.

[1] https://modrinth.com/collection/Dtkcqkms/mods

honeycrispy•about 3 hours ago

I'm fascinated with how that game is almost entirely written in Lua.

deaton•about 2 hours ago

I remember playing back in like the 1.6.4 era on a piece of garbage from 2005 with a monstrous 1GB of ram.

Sohcahtoa82•about 2 hours ago

1.6.4 released in 2013.

I'm pretty sure I had 8 GB back then, possibly 16 GB.

I can't imagine how poorly that ran.

Nextgrid•about 1 hour ago

He is probably referring to Beta 1.6.x. I remember running 1.7.3 in 2011-2012 on a potentially 1 or 2GB RAM machine and some Nvidia 7xxx series card (7600?). It worked fine on Linux.

inigyou•about 1 hour ago

No reason it couldn't be Not-Beta 1.6.x besides the 1.3 singleplayer server split, which doubled memory requirements, but 1GB was enough after the split.

deaton•11 minutes ago

Nope, it was actual 1.6.4 (and probably beyond that too). It wasn't amazing but consistent 30fps with some ATI card from the time. It had a Pentium D of some sort, can't remember exactly what.

functionmouse•about 3 hours ago

This might have impacted me, had Microsoft not deleted my legacy account. So I suppose I'll just stick to Tekkit Classic on my pirated client.

Nicook•about 1 hour ago

Made it through the account migration. But later lost my account after some hacker compromised my microsoft account. Microsoft kindly let me know about some unauthorized access, and then promptly deleted the account :) .

That was the last straw from Microsoft for me. Never again.

will4274•about 2 hours ago

Was it really Microsoft or was it Mojang? There were two account transitions, and in my experience, most customers use Microsofts name, but are complaining about the first (Mojang, not Microsoft) transition.

butlike•about 2 hours ago

It doesn't matter. An acquiring company acquires the 'sins of the father' as well. A paying customer had their account wiped out is the bottom line.

functionmouse•about 1 hour ago

You're telling me people lost access to their Minecraft accounts due to a transition BEFORE Microsoft owned it? I had no idea.

ezfe•about 3 hours ago

I have lots of problems with Microsoft but the Minecraft transition was handled very responsibly.

jandrese•about 2 hours ago

I ran into problems because some time before the transition happened some bot use my email address to sign up for an XBox account, in German for some reason. So I have to first do an account takeover on some bot account that has been used for no doubt unsavory purposes meaning my Minecraft account is now tied to something that's likely to be randomly locked. Also, some communication has to be done in German because there is no way to change the original language set on the account, although most pages can be converted to English if I look through the various settings pages. Email is always in German though.

Also, can I say what a mess the whole Microsoft account thing is? There's at least three different systems kinda duct taped together and settings are scattered seemingly at random among those systems. Want to connect your Java Minecraft instance to a server you are running? Be ready to dive through pages of kid protection and security settings looking for the option that lets you do that again. Also, logging in used to be "enter your username and password when the game starts", but now involves a bunch of bouncing around half a dozen or so Microsoft pages getting redirects that fail 60% of the time for no stated reason. It's kinda killed any enthusiasm I have for checking out new releases, just knowing that I'm going to waste 10 minutes just trying to get the damn login working again.

ezfe•about 1 hour ago

> can I say what a mess the whole Microsoft account thing

absolutely agree

Fun fact, Xbox profiles can be disconnected from Microsoft accounts without doing 2FA verification. It's a whole problem right now.

Filligree•about 1 hour ago

Using a third-party launcher (e.g. Prism) mostly fixes that nonsense, at least.

fishgoesblub•about 3 hours ago

Mine wasn't. I lost my main account as I couldn't verify I owned it given it was bought on a whim years ago through a giftcard, and they didn't have many recovery methods for those users. Then they permanently deleted the account after the transfer window was over. Luckily I had a second account I could transfer, but even if I could transfer the other account, you cannot have multiple Minecraft accounts tied to a single Microsoft account and having multiple Microsoft accounts is against TOS.

ezfe•about 2 hours ago

You couldn't verify you owned it because you didn't have access to the email presumably? What account system doesn't work like that?

Also - having multiple Microsoft accounts is absolutely permitted, I have multiple due to their Xbox profile messiness (it is possibly to detach Xbox profiles and they can't be reattached if you ever navigate to the Xbox website while it's detached...) and senior support endorsed it as the recommended solution.

Defletter•about 2 hours ago

The biggest issue I have with it was the lack of support for multiple accounts a la World of Warcraft style: why do I need 3 Microslop accounts?

Loughla•about 3 hours ago

I would agree.

They honored my account, and I originally bought the game when you had to send Notch money directly for him to send you a copy.

Microsoft was great in this instance.

amarant•about 2 hours ago

As one of the Devs responsible for the technical part of that transition: thank you. We tried real hard to give users the best possible experience, but I think it has nevertheless been the least appreciated piece of code I have ever written. So it's nice to finally hear some positive accounts from users!

So, again, just thanks for saying this.

deaton•about 2 hours ago

I don't love that I need a Microsoft account to log into minecraft, but the alternative was losing it permanently.

bstsb•about 2 hours ago

don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, they gave legacy users literal years to migrate

malfist•about 2 hours ago

I just downloaded a game I bought on steam 12 years ago and played it. I hadn't really thought of the game in the intervening time. If this had been minecraft, I'd have had to pay for the game again because I didn't convert my account.

But no, subnautica was ready to go, though the base building was just as buggy as it was before.

bspammer•about 2 hours ago

I really don't care about Microsoft's maintenance costs. I should be able to play the game I paid for 20 years from now without having to jump through hoops in the intervening period. It's not my fault that they decided to make my perfectly normal account a "legacy" account, that was their decision.

thayne•about 2 hours ago

It would have been better if they hadn't required you to migrate at all. And a lot of people, including me, ran into issues during the migration process. Thankfully I was able to get it sorted out after contacting support, but other people weren't so lucky.

butlike•about 2 hours ago

They should have made it a seamless transition for legacy users.

thrance•about 3 hours ago

Is this 16GB for those so-called "Vibrant Visuals" or just for parity with the old version? If the latter, then what's the point of the transition to Vulkan if it quadruples resource use?

loire280•about 3 hours ago

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-java-editi...

> For minimum requirements, the new target is 1080p at 30 FPS using the Fast preset. This means a 64-bit system, 8 GB of RAM with a discrete GPU or 12 GB with integrated graphics, a 4-core processor, and a Vulkan 1.3 capable GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM.

> For recommended requirements, the new target is 1080p at 60 FPS using the Fancy preset. This includes 16 GB of RAM, a stronger modern processor, and a more capable graphics card with 6 GB of VRAM.

This blog post also implies that the requirements bump is due to numerous changes to Minecraft over the years, not just the change to Vulkan.

> If you already play Java Edition without issues, you may not notice anything changing right away. If your game often struggles, the new requirements may help explain why and give you a clearer target for a smoother experience.

reidrac•about 2 hours ago

> [...] and give you a clearer target for a smoother experience.

Actually, this means you're better running and older version. Is not that Minecraft makes huge improvements with each release. IMHO not enough to justify 16GB of RAM and a GPU with at least 6GB of VRAM.

Especially these days with memory being so expensive.

nottorp•about 2 hours ago

Are they cutting the default world update distance to leave more room for bling too? :)

linker3000•about 3 hours ago

Is this the evolution of something that used to run moderately well on a mid-range Raspberry pi?

Don Priestley (Mazogs), stares down with a withering look.

cl3misch•about 1 hour ago

Wasn't that the Bedrock edition? Or "Minecraft Education Edition"? An alternative C++ version, anyway.

I can't imagine Java Minecraft ever to have run well on a mid-range Raspi.

inigyou•about 1 hour ago

Well it did used to run on early Raspis. Maybe you don't realise how much less efficient it's gotten? It used to run fine in 256MB with small render distance.

So how did they break that?

* run both server and client when in singleplayer - doubles memory use

* turn byte block IDs into object pointers - octuples memory use for blocks

* make all game content into JSON object trees with huge amounts of indirection - adds about a GB of objects deserialized at startup that used to be simple if/then ladders

* add a whole bunch of code to handle these object trees, don't know how much this adds but probably 100MB of code when you include the raw class files through to the JIT-optimized assembly.

yapyap•about 2 hours ago

recommended amount of wam