4gb vs 8gb of ram? Who would notice the difference?

I currently have an I5-450m with Hitachi 7k500 hard drive, Nvidia 330m and 4gb of ram. I am debating back and forth on if I should purchase 2 4gb of Samsung rams= 8gb total for $58.95 shipped.

Would I even notice a difference? What kind of computer user would notice a difference between 4 and 8 gb of ram?

My laptop is acting a little sluggish lately, would this bump up its performance?

I am in the insurance business (health, life, disability, long-term care) and I have maybe 7 or so desktop illustration softwares downloaded on my machine, so I can give quotes on the fly. I believe that is what is making my system a little sluggish as I would assume these illustration softwares might be resource hogs even not in use (I am not a big computer guy, but I assume they would be).

Would putting 8gb of ram make things act quicker?

 

Not sure if it would speed anything up (most speed problems typically are the result of the HDD), but why buy 2 sticks? If you already have 4GB of RAM, you could just buy another 4GB stick for ~$20 on Newegg. So long as the type and speed match (DDR3 1333MHz, most likely), it'll work. I have a Samsung stick and two Mushkin sticks installed atm and never had any problem.

 

People who use lots of demanding apps at the same time. Such as 5+ instances of VMWare, processing raw images on photoshop with crazy filters etc.
Average user will never need beyond 4 Gigs (-- for now).


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True. On a typical basis, I usually hover around 3-4GB for daily use (few web browsers, each with multiple tabs, AV, Office, and Minecraft).

 

I actually have 4gb total in right now. 2gb x 2....Also, mine is a 1066Mhz as its the 2010 I5 processor and not the 2011 I5 Processor. It seems like what you wrote as your last post that your "typical usuage" is not too heavy, )don't know what minecraft is however) and you hover around 3-4gb?

Just not sure if its worth the upgrade or if I will notice any difference at all with what I do...Hmmmm

 

You should definitely upgrade. My last computer had 4gb of RAM and I was constantly hitting 100% load.

 

4GB is enough for most people including gamers. Usually professional photographers and video editors need more in which case I would recommend 8GB of ram.

 

I upgraded to 8 GB and it made my notebook run faster. I never used the whole 4 GB but for somereason having 8 GB of ram starts my programs and games faster. It didn't make my games have alot more FPS but it did help some FPS.

 

Yeah, with browsers taking up huge chunks of RAM nowadays, and with 8GB RAM being so cheap,

I see no reason staying at 4GB.

Even using two browsers with like 4 tabs each + iTunes + some software like MATLAB seems to max out at 3GB+.

 

How many percent of all the laptop users have MATLAB (or similar software) in their computers?

More than 2%???


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What your seeing is cached memory.

I have been using Linux for years and used windows 9x, memory management sucked, it has got much better.

On Linux you can get a better view of what memory is doing. I have music player playing, Firefox running, and decided to compile in the background for this test.

Here is all running with one tab open:

Code:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         11879       1258      10621          0         30        458
-/+ buffers/cache:        769      11109
Swap:         7938          0       7938

Now just to go to extremes, I opened a whole folder in tabs. 36 total with all still going on in background:

Code:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         11879       1506      10372          0         33        488
-/+ buffers/cache:        984      10894
Swap:         7938          0       7938

Then I browsed each tab with stuff still going on in background:

Code:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         11879       1654      10224          0         34        507
-/+ buffers/cache:       1113      10766
Swap:         7938          0       7938

This shows that although total used memory increased, a large amount of that memory was devoted to cache.

Windows 7 has awesome memory management and even though it shows high memory management, it is devoted to making programs faster=cache. Windows/Linux will release cache to free memory if needed. 4 gigs of memory is plenty unless using virtual machines or whatnot.

 

Guess you could do what you do on your computer and pay attention to the resource monitor you have in windows...

 

I don't run Windows so I wouldn't know. I do think resource monitor may show this info albeit not as detailed as Linux can. They're other tools to measure memory management in Linux.

But that's another matter....

 

8gb worth of memory is $30 flippen $$$s.... is there any reason not to upgrade?

 

OP asked from a performance perspective.

I do not think there is a reason to upgrade based on performance alone. But I do however agree with you. I have 12gb of memory on my desktop because it was cheap and I like virtual machines.

 

Exactly, for the general masses, 4Gb RAM is more than enough to keep lots of tabs open in browsers, talking on skype, listening to itunes, etc all at the same time. Heck, even for gaming, 4Gb is enough if you manage your RAM carefully.

 

I have to agree here, at that price, there is no reason not to upgrade. If you are the kind of person that launches a lot of programs simultaneously, the extra RAM will allow windows to use it as "standby memory" or cached memory if you prefer. Overall, there will be a little bit more snap to your system.

It is not uncommon for me to reach over 4GB with steam, skype, my browser with loads of tabs, zune, a game opened, the AV and live mesh running. My drivers are of course running too, including the ones for my corsair headset so there is a little of bit of what some might consider bloat.

Do you need more than 4GB, no. Will 8GB add more performance to your system, not really. Will it add more snap to it, not as much as a SSD would though.

 

I'd try reformatting / doing a clean install of windows first before buying anything, chances are there may already be a lot of garbage running in there that you don't notice.

@off topic, wish 5 of my VM's would function properly on 8 gig of ram (as it is 4 of those are at 2 gig each, and my dev vm at 3 gig.... excluding my main os).

 

I have 8GB of RAM. Windows 7 currently has ~4GB on standby as cache:

 

One word ===> Minecraft.

haha but other than that people who have a lot of programs open and multi-task. Or super high settings with gaming ><

 

4GB is fine for casual use, but once you start having lots of things open, 8GB really comes into its own, even if none of the things you are doing are individually demanding. Also for amateur photographers and video editors, I would recommend as much RAM as possible, but 8GB bare minimum.

After you leave your computer on long enough, your RAM should be in 100% use as that cache grows. And it does make a large difference.

 

To make your sluggish system run faster/smoother:

Buy/install 8GB RAM with Win7x64 running.

Disable the pagefile (you may need to test this with your particular software/configuration before you can set and forget this tweak).

Disable the hibernation file (Windows runs better from a cold boot...).

Download PerfectDisk Professional 12.5 trial and run an online/offline/online defrag on your drive.

See:
http://ftp.raxco.com/pub/download/pd12.5/PD12.5_PRO.exe


With the above defragging completed (all three runs...), Shrink your O/S partition so that only around 15GB is free.

To Shrink a partition: Right Click Computer, Manage, Disk Management, select the C: drive partition and Right Click on it and select Shrink.

Remember that if you need more HDD capacity, you can simply 'Extend' the partition to a larger size. This way, you'll always be using the smallest possible capacity of the drive (and getting the fastest responding storage sub-system in return).

With all of the above maintenance completed you should notice a marked improvement in your systems responsiveness - even without 8GB RAM.

With the addition memory though, you will have a fighting chance with current/future software demands.

(And no, monitoring your current (low) RAM usage will not give you a good indication if you need more RAM and/or how it will improve the responsiveness of your system).

Good luck.

 

Especially with the OS and VMs on an SSD and my docs on an expresscard SSD (115/65 read/write)!

 

I see no reason why not to make the upgrade to 8GB unless:

a) Your laptop does/CPU does not support 8GB ram

b) Your worried about the valuable space being taken away as pagefile if you have a small SSD (64GB).

 

you can turn the PF off with 8gb...

 

Personally, I wouldn't turn off the PageFile...maybe reduction to 1GB-2GB in size if applicable.

 

To be honest, I think it's safe to turn off the PF if you have 8GB of RAM and aren't running any memory-intensive tasks. However, this isn't something I (or many other people) recommend the average user do, mainly because you don't necessarily know which applications require a PF to run.

 

@ Shemmy

And thus not safe..., you're contradicting yourself.

It's best to leave the PageFile alone (OS Manage) or use the 1.5x system memory formula for the reason that you never know when an application requires a PF to run and a full memory analysis dump when necessary.

Of course doing so uses up expensive SSD storage space and moving the PF to a mechanical drive can result in performance loss. Even so, there will always be some PF on the main OS drive (this case SSD) even if the entire PF is moved onto a different physical hard drive.

 

Leave the page file on as Nemix77 said .... it has been discussed endlessly on this forum and others, there are more problems disabling it. Some programs will refuse to run without it enabled. Lastly, you're running your system with an increased risk of having it crash.

I would notice the difference between 4GB and 8GB, but only when heavy video/photo editing. Otherwise I use a minimal amount of resources.

 

Seriously, this have been debated to death. Disabling pagefile does absolutely nothing except create an theoretically unreliable system where something wrong *could* happen due to not having a backup.
There is absolutely nothing to gain by disabling the pagefile. Let Windows handle your memory/pagefile settings. The people at MS have spent a lot more hours thinking about these issues than most of us.

Now read this test of pagefile on vs pagefile off and learn:
The Windows 7 Pagefile And Running Without One » TweakHound

 

I didn't even notice the difference from going from 2.5GHz C2D to i7 Quad Core for my regular Photoshop/IDE/Browser/VM multi-task usage. For VM the RAM helped a lot, and for general system snappiness the SSD helped a lot, but for the rest of the stuff I didn't see a great performance jump besides extended battery life.

So really, it's a matter of what you're going to be doing with the system. For general use, a RAM upgrade won't yield you speed, but a bottlenecked one will slow you down. I would say that users of VM would most benefit from the added RAM.

 

My wife, a decidedly low-tech user, constantly finds herself out of RAM with only 4gb. Of course, she tends to have 30+ browser tabs open, a couple of Office documents, maybe a Paint window or two, and then wonders why it takes ages to switch between any of them.

She says she doesn't mind the lag, but it's painful to watch. She'll probably end up with 8gb and an SSD soon.

 

It's the price of ram that makes 8GB upgrade so standard these days but in all honesty I don't think I'll ever use more than 4GB personally within the next year or so.

Even with my plans to upgrade to Windows 8, I think I'm still good with 4GB on Windows 8. That being said, Windows 8 actually uses less memory than Windows 7 kinda like the transition from Vista to 7.

 

I put 16gb of RAM in my desktop because, at $80, I can. RAM is so cheap these days that maxing it out might as well be a no-brainer.

 

I wouldn't have expected it, but after upgrading to 8GB a few days ago, it feels like Terraria loads the worlds about 20% faster than when I was running 4GB. My new RAM is 1333mhz, but the i5-450 should run it at 1066 anyway, right? Does anybody out there have an explanation for the apparent speed boost (aside from the legitimate possibility that I'm delusional? ).

 

damn right...
i put extra 8GB in my laptop because i got it for 40$ only....
honestly RAM is so cheap now that if i have 4GB and i am confused whether i should get more or not... i would find it easier to buy 4GB extra than posting online asking for it (no offence to OP).

 

I've never noticed any difference between 4GB and 8GB. My usage: Word, Excel, Chrome (many tabs), Firefox (many tabs), Skype, WMP, MSN. I leave a lot open.

'But RAM is so cheap now!'... I don't like waisting money even if it's $10.

My conclusion: if you're not running demanding apps (VMware, photo-, video- and/or audio-editing) better save your money and put it towards a faster hard drive (hybrid or SSD). I do notice the difference from a faster hard drive.

 

I don't know, but with 8GB my computer felt so much smoother. I originally just had a 4GB stick, but I wanted to buy a second to increase my integrated graphics performance. I though there would be no difference, but I was wrong. With 8GB there was never a pause for switching between anything which was always happening with 4GB. I could have two games open and lots of browser windows open and I could switch between all of them instantly. Definitely increased my productivity since I do a lot of switching back and forth between programs and windows and keep a lot of things open at once. Windows 7 makes good and effective use of extra RAM.

 

I usually leave my laptop ON for quite a long time for downloading and stuff, now when it hits 2+days without any shutdown or restart, idle time RAM usage gets about 3 GB, and then opening only some internet tabs+messenger+music gets me to 3.5+ GB and that's something i would not like if i have 4GB RAM..
my point being, even non extreme user can get benefit from upto 8GB and when it is so cheap then why holding back your several hundred/thousand dollar system for 20 bucks .

 

For the average users that say they're system runs faster with 8GB, I'd like to see some numbers. Unfortunately placebo effects can be strong and impossible to notice without accurate measurements.

Surely someone with 8GB can take out 4GB and run some basic benchmarks. Booting, launching apps, simple multi tasking, hibernation etc.

If I had the 4GB laying around I would do it, but I'm back to 4GB now.

If there's more RAM Windows likes to take it. That doesn't have to mean you'd be running into problems or even slower performance with 4GB.

 

For whatever reason, and I'm not sure why as there should be nothing in RAM to start with when booting and disk read performance should not change, the jump from 8gb to 16gb did significantly lower my boot time. With the SSD, I'm into Windows before the "Windows 7" animation even finishes. With 8gb, that never happened. I guess it's possible that a difference in RAM speed accounts for this, but the disk should still be the bottleneck.

 

Could you measure this?

Boottimer.exe is a good tool, 3 measurements would be necessary for accuracy.

Did you mean the 16GB is of a faster MHz than the 8GB?

 

It's not a placebo effect. Also, aside from multitasking, all of your proposed benchmarks are bottlenecked by the hard drive. I never hibernate, rarely launch apps, and boot at most once a week. More RAM just lets more things stay in memory. So once something gets put into the RAM, it doesn't have to get shoved out to make room for something else. It's not hard to get Windows 7 to use all 8GB of RAM. With 8GB in my system, the hard drive was used a lot less often, to the point where I practically never have to wait for the storage system. I can switch between any number of programs without any lag because they are all running in system memory.

 

We probably have very different usage patterns. For my usage pattern it makes zero difference to have 8GB.

Actually hibernation can be influenced by memory size too.

 

Definitely not a placebo effect.

Even works on Macbook Pro's.

When a 7 yr old notices that system 'a' is faster than system 'b' and system 'b' is the newer one - and, upon further investigating/questioning it is noticed that the biggest difference is system 'a' has 8GB RAM and system 'b' has 4GB RAM, then even the 7 yr old knows to ask for more RAM for Christmas.

As I've mentioned many times on this forum: with Win7x64 on a modern SNB platform; 8GB RAM is the minimum for the O/S to not trip all over itself (no matter how 'extreme' or 'average' the usage scenario is).

With a SNB quad core setup 16GB is easily the sweet spot (for 'above average' use) and 32GB is not too far out of reach ($$$-wise) with $85 8GB SoDimm modules available on a regular basis and 4 memory slots available on the larger/better mobile systems.

Phil, I know you want numbers, but these kinds of improvements don't need measuring - they need to be experienced to be appreciated - as many have already stated.

 

Sure for your usage it makes a real difference. I'm not questioning that.

I'm talking about the average user or my usage.

And telling me it's faster isn't going to work. I need to see evidence. For average usage.

And like I said, I've tried 8GB, never noticed anything.

 

I wasn't talking about my usage scenario - the '7 yr old' example above was for typical 7 yr old usage (children's website games, etc.).

If you've tried it and it didn't work for your typical usage, then you can't extrapolate that to everyone's typical usage (as witnessed from various posts on this very thread).

I would be interested in seeing an 'objective' and 'scientific' method of comparing RAM capacities for average use scenario's, but the raw numbers will seem 'ho hum' vs. what is actually experienced in real life.

For example: my 'average usage' scenario is when I'm reading a forum, replying to email in Outlook and following links on the various posts I'm reading.

With 4GB RAM, the 'internet' feels like a slow 1999 DSL connection. With 8GB RAM, the 'internet' feels like a modern (6Mbps) DSL connection. With 16GB RAM or above; the full 100Mbps speeds of a fast connection can be utilized and easily seen.

With regards to the Outlook email, replying, receiving and checking email is about the same, granted. But with 8GB RAM or above, searching for specific email in Outlook is easily twice to four times as fast vs. 4GB RAM.

This not only applies to when my Outlook PST file is 8GB+ in size - it is the same when it is 'only' 2GB in size too (and whether or not an SSD vs. a HDD is in use to, btw).

The major thing for my 'average usage' scenario is that the system will be running for the better part of 4+ hrs before I shut it down and/or reboot it for one reason or another (such as going to a different location, for example).

Phil, I have noticed that you're very insensitive to small, but noticeable performance gains and also that you're extremely sensitive to spending even $20 more - that combination is not effective in determining whether the performance gained (by others) is worth the small ~$40-$60 'investment' in additional (even 'extra') RAM.

 

Phil wants the new Seagate Momentus XT 750GB.

 

That's not what I said. I'm saying the typical "average user" doesn't benefit from having more than 4GB.

That's not you and that's not the average NBR user. They're heavier users than average users.

I've seen some accurate examples in this thread, like Qing Daos one, where having more than 4GB actually makes sense. Not for my usage though, like I described a few pages back.

Well performance gains in internet speeds and page loading can be measured.

Your Outlook example under your usage scenario is a good demonstration of an application that can actually benefit from the extra memory.

And if outlook doesn't use more than 2GB, the internet connection isn't going to magically speed up by having more than 4GB.

You have claimed in the past that you can notice 1% performance gain. That would mean you can distinguish between 3.00 seconds and 2.97 seconds.

Whether I'm being insensitive or you're being unrealistic, we'll leave that up to the reader to decide.

Hehe I'd love to have that. That's 8GB that might actually have an effect

 

Someone please define "average user"?

In my experiance it doesn't matter how much ram you have if the processor or something else is the bottle neck.