Is 8GB Ram overkill?

Anyways I just bought a Studio XPS 16 on dell...I was thinking of getting the 8GB option...I didn't...but I might call them to do it...

The plus's are obviously less paging, therefore longer HDD life and battery life and slightly increased performance...

the negative is the extra $250 cost...which is quite a lot considering I am slightly overbudget after taxes...I do some weird stuff sometimes like photo editing and sometimes utilizing some virtual machines...but its not the norm. Maybe I just answered my own question...but I mean...for $250 I think its a pretty good deal to upgrade to 8GB DDR3 tho no? (btw I have a coupon thats why its $250)

 

Naa dude I honestly don't think its worth the money, I mean hell yeah 8gb of ram is insane but 4gb is enough especially for the xps 16.

 

It's overkill. 4GB on XPS 16 is enough 250$ is too much for ram upgrade, if you really want 8GB wait until it's more common and cheaper to upgrade to. Unless you plan on doing a lot on intensive graphics and video editing simultaneously.

 

awesome...thanks! you guys rock...man notebooks are like an addiction...I bought my gf a Inspiron 1545 and once I played with it...I needed one!!! lol

 

In a few years (if not sooner), 8GB will be cheap enough to be worthwhile, and by then it will probably be necessary anyway. Save your money for now.

 

I find that more than 2 GB under XP is fruitless, and Vista should not require more than 4 (2 should suffice as well).

 

The SSD option is probably a better performance upgrade than going from 4 to 8 GB RAM.

 

definitely over kill....if I were you, I would wait...the price will go down sooner or later...However, if you need the resource, I suggest you keep using DDR-2 instead since its price is better

 

I'd wait for the price to drop; when I bought 4 GB (2 sticks x 2 GB) it cost me $100/stick AFTER rebate; now, it's often $15/stick WITHOUT rebates.

 

8 GB RAM - Lots of RAW image editing, Virtual machines running simultaneously.. that is what your usage woould probably like.. I tested 8 GB on my 1330.. but it doesn't fit into my usual load profile..

 

I'd say if you don't know if you need it or not, it's definitely overkill. Your money is much better spent on that sweet 256GB SSD. And if you really want to hop it up, spend another $200 on FMT. That will speed up things way, WAY more than $800 on 8GB RAM.

4GB (2x 2GB) RAM for that notebook is currently about $70. 8GB should be twice that, but for some reason it's closer to 10x the cost, but it will come down a lot, probably pretty soon.

 

Yes. It would be wiser and give you better performance if you saved that money toward an Intel SSD.

8gb ram is not going to give you any practical advantage unless you are running multiple virtual machines. Few programs are written 64bit anyway, so they wouldn't be able to take advantage of the huge reserve of ram.

 

on my SXPS 16 my Ram % is never over 50! And i do alot of stuff from decrypting/ripping movies to play crysis!

 

If you're doing anything normal, 4GB is good enough. I have 4 and my usage under Vista never exceeds 85%.
If you are doing something that just eats RAM, 8GB is still not cost effective. Try some Intel Turbo Memory (aftermarket upgrade) to put in the WWAN slot if you really need it.

 

does anyone know what brand SSD the XXPS comes with? I configured mine with a 128GB one...doesn't say what brand tho.