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

For an average user, nothing can be a bottleneck, theoretically speaking.

 

Ryan, I find that hard to believe.

If you have a person that just surfes the web over wireless and he's just using a "B" network compared to the "N", are you saying he's not going to notice the change with speed?

 

What about a slow hard drive? That will bottleneck just about everyone, unless you have everything in the 'cloud', in which case your internet connection and/or router would be the bottleneck.

I often found myself waiting for my hard drive on both my old, el-cheapo Satellite, and my W520 (when I had the stock 500GB 7200RPM HDD in there).

 

I've read many of such posts on this forum, and this is the first time I've felt that I've HAD to chime in.

I run Win7 x64 and Vista x64 on my systems, and I would consider an 'average' user (or one with a moderately higher load than the norm) - with 8GB in my system, I have NEVER topped more than 6.5 GB. 95% of the time my open programs take up about 4GB. Running virtual machines is not what I think an 'average user' does.

If there is even 100MB of free RAM as seen by the OS, how can there be ANY performance gain at all, by upgrading the amount of RAM? In particular, how can RAM make your internet connection feel faster? Even for a placebo effect that would take a serious stretch of the imagination. Unless it's an analogy I'm missing of course..

I also use Outlook to search for specific messages (searching via e-mail, subject or e-mail content) as part of my daily routines, and having extra RAM does absolutely nothing to my search speed. Switching to an SSD made searches an order of magnitude faster, but not going from 4GB to 8GB. Again, how can it possibly make things any faster if there is still free RAM as seen by the system - unless, by some coincidence, the system in question is using like 50MB less than the system installed RAM?

No doubt the monetary 'investment' in going to 8GB is very small (and I do have 8GB on all my systems, even before 4GB sodimms became so cheap), but this is simply misleading. Attributing it to a superhuman ability to discern 'small but noticeable performance gains' to justify this is.. simply.. out of this world

 

Remember we're talking about average users here. Noticing the speed change when they switch over and voluntarily switching wireless cards to gain performance are two different things. Average users tend to live with what they have, they aren't familiar with taking apart laptops at all.

HDD part I have to partly agree, but only in a sense that SSD is more widespread and that people are slowly getting familiar with upgrading HDD components. Bottleneck becomes important when you can swap out certain things to boost the overall speed; for an average user, and for a part like the HDD, can be a bottleneck as it can be swapped out.

 

I'm still looking for what makes a user average.

I'm assuming someone coming to these boards will not be your average user, why would they come here if they have no desire to change anything with their laptop, besides maybe some advise on what laptop to buy next.

 

My exact point.

Being here actively in the forums kinda makes you out-of-the-average..

And that's why no one can actually describe an average user's usage.

 

You are correct, up to a point. SSDs are become more widespread, but they are still relatively "rare". To the average consumer (who doesn't know about aftermarket SSDs), the only place to get one would be in the MBA/Ultrabooks, and as a very pricey option on some higher-end laptops. The super-majority of people still buy mechanical hard drives, so the "lag" inherent to HDDs are still very relevant bottlenecks. A lot of people I know are too afraid to even think about tinkering around in a computer's internals to actually upgrade the drive themselves (hence why I'm more than willing to, for a fee ).

I typically think of an "average user" as a person that fits one of the following descriptions:

1) A person who only buys computers from big-box stores (BB, Walmart, Amazon, etc) and doesn't know how to smartly shop for them either because they are ignorant or arrogant (as in, they only care about getting something that works, for the lowest price).

2) Someone who's deathly afraid to tinker with their computer's hardware.

3) Someone who doesn't know anything about the hardware in their system ("What's the difference between the CPU and GPU? RAM and HDD? HDD and SSD?"). Basically, any question that would make a NBR user facepalm hard.

Some people like to think that another description of an average user as a person who simply uses their computer for the Internet, basic Office usage, and media consumption. While some people believe that is the basis of an average user, I disagree since simple requirements like that are not mutually exclusive to being a computer-smart person. I use to fit in this category since I only used my old Satellite for those reasons (and light gaming), but I only did that because I didn't have any desires to do heavy computing on that (multiple VMs, CAD, etc) and that laptop was a POS spec-wise anyway, so I never bothered upgrading it. Despite that, I was still a tech savvy person.

 

I'm glad some one else noticed it too. Now when the memory is maxed out there is a point to the system being faster.. but...

I can't wait to get this huge boost in my internet speed from upgrading the RAM

 

I can see if you download pages full of pictures or watch a lot of video, but what do I know...I'm here to learn.

Sent from my AT100 using Tapatalk

 

In my opinion an example of average usage would be two browsers with ten tabs each, Skype, MSN, playing music with WMP, occasional usage of Word and Excel, some light photo editing, some zipping, unzipping, downloading and virus scans Not all at together at the same time but some of those tasks as multi tasking.

 

That is a lot of browers to have open.

What I usually have going on that kills my computer and reason to upgrade soon.

Four browsers open with one uploading finished pictures to Smugmug, Lightroom, CS5 with major photo editing going on, email, streaming of the NFL network or any American show to my 58" TV via the HDMI cable. I thnk that wraps it up.

 

I felt a difference upgrading from 6GB to 8gb. Added couple fraps in games. Why? Because when you have only 4Gb of in dual mode may be not enough if you use 1gb for eBoostr or dataRAM or spoil it elsewhere. Nowadays 1333 8Gb is cheap. very

 

OP go for 8 GB and never look back.. with RAM prices cheap as chips you've no excuse not to fill up those memory banks....

Loving the 8 GBs i got on my SXPS 16 which is now running 2+ years old but still a decent low end machine...

1 GB RAM is dedicated as a permanent RAMDisk (starts up with Windows) to turbocharge application loading even more.. All my temp folders go there, and so do apps that i use on a day to day basis.. It's like a having a freebie SSD for most commonly used apps lol...

Sometimes just for the fun of it I make a 4 - 5 GB temp RAMDisk on top of the 1 GB one to put games in and watch em load in seconds lol....

DataRam and Imdisk RAMdisks are perfect for fooling around with when you have all that spare RAM...

 

Solarmystic has a point, its ideal to get RAMs when they're at their lowest price point and it seems now is the best time to get them. Usual pattern is at first they are quite expensive, becomes affordable when it's mainstream then becoming hideously expensive again when RAM manufacturers cut down production for the next best thing. You only need to compare prices of DDR2 vs. DDR3 to see this trend.

 

get the additional ram.
personally i have 12gb for video editing. but i do see some benefit when i have many programs open, and while multitab surfing. it also makes alt-tabbing and ctrl-escaping between programs and games a breeze.
with the price and benefits there is no reason not to get it.
and also, regarding this normal usage/user talk- i really doubt that anyone who frequents this forum would be considered as such

 

I remember 1 german guy who I met in Ukraine once and he had MASSIVE ROBOCOP LAPTOP (that's how I called it) with desktop Pentium 4 CPU (I mean Celeron). He could upgrade it to the max or at least enough to use this laptop with calm. Instead of this he turned off all visual effects in Windows XP (remember blue color in name field of icons on desktop?), used couple of some tweaking programs which possibly used more resources than freed and waiting for ever till screen refreshes after closing notepad for example.
He had 256MB of SO-DIMM DDR-333, integrated GPU with 32 MB of video memory max and Celeron with 256 KB cache.

When he didn't see I added 512 MB stick of RAM which was just lying in my room and changed in BIOS shared video memory from 32 MB to 128 MB. I think he noticed performance in Germany

What is the point? His laptop was UNUSABLE while I could make a power business machine (or at least 5-10 times faster than what he had) from it using better CPU and more RAM
Upgrade till you can and till it is cheap. In 1.5-2 years we will have DDR4 standard.

 

I bought 12 GB of RAM to add to my already exsisting 4GB for a total of 16GB (the memory was super cheap anyway ).
I normally browse the internet, play games and sometimes video or audio editing, result:

I NEVER use my full 16GB...lol...

 

Do you know that your 3GB video memory is shared? It has 1GB onboard + up to 2 GB is taken from RAM.

 

lolz... i just noticed u might wanna change your RAM frequency unit from MHz to GHz in your sig.....

 

Yup I know that. Eventhus someone told me that shared memory its a kind of myth. It's not really 2GB afaik, they claim that as propaganda,lol...
However, let's pretend my 445M will use 2GB fully, still have 14GB..I am still thinking I won't use it..

Lol...you are right, I noticed just now..

 

I noticed the jump from 4GB to 8GB but it's not earth shattering. You will notice a somewhat faster response, especially if you multi-task between apps. Most games still are fine with 4GB and are GPU limited more than by RAM.

 

I have 8GB of RAM, upgraded from 4GB months ago and never looked back. Really, I was amazed as to how I could cope with 4GB of RAM after I added the second 4GB stick. My usage typically goes like this:

Chrome (<10 tabs), Outlook, WLM, Zune, Folding@Home ( join us ) and that's that.

With the usage scenario described above, my RAM usage is 3.6GB (103 processes), even when accounting for Folding@Home which only consumes 60MB of RAM. This is with the computer on for about 12 hours, folding all the way. I plough through msconfig and services and have about 15 startup items, mostly related to drivers or essential software like Wireless Console so it's actually a best case scenario since I have more than 50 disabled items (blame iTunes, Intel, Microsoft etc). While one might argue that 400MB is plenty of backup RAM to spare in a 4GB system, if I were to play games such as Crysis 2 or Battlefield 3, 400MB of RAM is definitely not enough at all. Which is where 8GB comes in. With 8GB, you can do anything without really bothering about closing apps that you don't need to free up some RAM. Now, the hard drive becomes the bottleneck rather than the RAM, especially during startup. This is what I observed from my computer anyway, ymmv

 

Others reported that when they upgraded from 4 to 6GB, they noticed a snappier system, even boot-up.

The x64 Os is 'comfy' with 6GB, while if you have 8GB, you have extra to tend to other needs.

 

if you have 6 gb only 4 GB will be really fast while 2GB you added are twice slower. 8gb is not just 2gb more than 6 but increase in bandwidth

 

I feel the need to always be organized, I do not really use my laptop for anything professional. If I'm not using a program I tend to just exit it out... I'd usually have one or two things opened at the same time (a game maybe, and possibly Steam or chrome or something like that). I have managed to complete everything I wanted to on a 3GB Ram machine, including editing and rendering videos with Sony Vegas... but i'm sure i could of bumped up my performance by upgrading RAM. You can't really expect ram to boost performance but its always nice to have.

 

I don't understand this at all Are you talking about dual channel support? Dual channel does not give a linear twofold increase in performance, and it was more noticeable in the DDR2 days. Now, the performance boost with dual channel is not so noticeable in DDR3 since it's fast enough with or without dual channel for most prople.

 

DDR2 and DDR3 is just a name. DDR3 has lesser voltage but Mhz is Mhz anywhere. DDR2 is usually 800Mhz but happens 1066 in desktops. DDR3 in laptops starts from 1066. 1066 (DDR3) over 800 (DDR2) is not more different than for example DDR2-800 against DDR2-400. In fact the boost in the last pair is even more noticeable. So there is no point to say that after DDR3 standard came double mode is no more needed. LOL/

1333 in single mode is only 667 Mhz which is worse than DDR2-800 in double mode.

When you have 6Gb in 2 slots it means that you have flex mode where 4GB works at full double mode (1333) while another 2GB is in single (667). 667 is not what you want to have in laptop. Considering nowadays even 1333 is not even an average DDR3 frequency (1600 and 1866). Sometimes speed is more important than size.

 

That's wrong. DDR3 has twice the transfer rate of DDR2.

From Wikipedia:

See above. Because DDR3 is twice as fast (theoretically), dual channel in DDR3 will not give as large a speed boost as compared to dual channel in DDR2.

That's comparing apples and oranges In fact, I still don't get what single mode and double mode have anything to do with this. Even if DDR2 is in dual channel mode, it does not give a linear twofold increase in performance, so technically speaking since DDR3 has twice the data rate as DDR2, isn't DDR3 still faster?

From how I see it, if you have a 4GB module and a 2GB module, both running at 1333MHz, I don't see how the motherboard will throttle the 2GB module since if anything that would only contribute to latency issues. Both will still run at 1333MHz, except that you don't get the small speed benefit of dual channel RAM.

 

Flex mode
This mode offers the most flexible performance characteristics. The lowest DRAM memory in the system memory map is mapped to dual channel operation; the DRAM memory nearest to the 8 GB address space limit, if any, is mapped to single channel operation. Flex mode results in multiple zones of dual and single channel operation across the whole of DRAM memory. To use flex mode, both channels must be populated.

Memory configuration for flex mode
For the use of flex mode, DIMMs must be installed in both channels.

The figure below shows a flex mode configuration using two DIMMs. The operation is as follows:

The 512 MB DIMM in the Channel A, DIMM 0 socket and the lower 512 MB of the DIMM in the Channel B, DIMM 0 socket operate together in dual channel mode.
The remaining (upper) 512 MB of the DIMM in Channel B operates in single channel mode.


More about RAM channel modes read here

About what you said at the beginning. Imagine 2 birds. They have 1 nest. And then they found magic wand which can double every apartment. So they created 2 nests from 1. But now image 2 birds have 1 empire state building. they think that magic wand is what they don't need because the building they have is big enough so they don't need to double it. (the bird is you). But who knows, maybe these birds are as big as King Kong but they just didn't understand it before. In this case they really will suffer that they haven't doubled that building before. See a point?

I forgot that difference you wrote between DDR3 and DDR2 but I know that 1333Mhz is 1333*8=10666 MB/sec. And if my memory doesn't play with me it means 21333MB/sec for double mode.

 

Doing so made my Windows Experience Index go up one point. Whatever that means.

That would depend on the program. Nevertheless, under typical use, it's unlikely to make any difference.

Think of it like buying Z rated performance tires for your daily commuting. How many drivers on the road will ever take them to anywhere near their limit?

 

Oh I see. I was wrong

Yes, the bird is me
However, while dual channel does in theory double the data rate, DDR3 is already fast enough for most users' needs (more on that below), so the difference is not noticeable if you were browsing the internet etc, ie 'normal usage'. It would be more noticeable in memory intensive operations such as running virtual machines et al.

You might be confusing 1333MHz with PC3-10666 designations. Both are the same, but neither determine the transfer speed of the RAM module.

To calculate DDR3 transfer rate: (clock speed) * 4 (bus clock multiplier) * 2 (data rate) * 64 (bandwidth) / 8 (number of bits in a byte)
To calculate DDR2 transfer rate: (clock speed) * 2 (bus clock multiplier) * 2 (data rate) * 64 (bandwidth) / 8 (number of bits in a byte)

Assuming that the clock speed of both a DDR3 and DDR2 RAM module is 1066MHz,

Transfer rate of DDR3 stick = (1066*4*2*64)/8 = 68224 MBps
Transfer rate of DDR2 stick = (1066*2*2*64)/8 = 34112 MBps

So, DDR3 is theoretically twice as fast as DDR2

 

Dual channel does double the data rate, however memory bandwidth is rarely ever a bottleneck so it's a rather moot point.

 

I do know that I make not proper way of calculating but... 1066Mhz DDR3 is definitely as fast as 17GB/sec which means 4 times less than your 68, trust me. You can find special software to test your RAM bandwidth. Here you go, look here at Smart Post of 1 Genius Note the date he posted it

I really forgot much for last half a year but I will read again and give you proper formula.

 

The speed given there is in giga bits per second, while mine are in giga bytes per second

 

just check it using some program. I was just too lazy to hold Shift button 1 second more typing B letter. Bytes are 8 times bigger, not 4

bus clock multiplier is what doesn't exist in formula
Rated Memory Frequency (1333Mhz) x 64 x 2 divided by 8 = Memory Bandwidth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bandwidth

What you said about better performance is true but it doesn't affect on what is Mhz. 1Mhz in DDR2 is 1 Mhz in DDR3. The only thing is that RAM needs to "work less" for getting those frequency and therefore it needs less voltage. I really forgot many things for last time but still summary info I remember (talking about modes, bandwidth, timings/latency).

P.S. It was a nice try

 

Actually, looking at your post, yours uses the CAS latencies to calculate the bandwidth while mine uses frequencies to calculate the transfer rate so I think we're not talking about the same thing

Anyway, I found an error in my calculations. I should not have used 1066*4*2*64/8 but should have used 133*4*2*64/8 = 133*64 = 8512MBps for DDR3 and 133*2*2*64/8 = 133*32 = 4256MBps. This would corroborate your theory that clock speed * 8 = transfer rate. So, you were right all along

 

I upgraded to 8gb on my timeline for cad, building design software and photo editing. I upgradeda to a 120 gb ssd and that made a HUGE difference in speed. im using the c2d low voltage 1.6ghz processor and its really fast now!....LOVE IT...ram being 50 bucks for 8gb, why not!

 

If you do game development, it might be worthwhile. I do some stuff in the UDK, and the Lightmass process alone can exceed 1GB... Counting in the editor and you might start to exceed 2. If it's just for browsing the internet/gaming, however, you might as well just stay at 4.

 

To summarize: you need to have a definite need for it to be of any use. Obviously if you're running a program that needs more RAM and you give it more it's going to improve performance/efficiency. Otherwise, it's just money spent on window dressing.

 

Conversely, one could use the excess memory for a ram disk as cache/temp.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

I just upgraded to my max of 8GB for $35 last night. Do I *need* it? Not really. I learned a lesson with my old desktop. At the time I built it I installed 2GB. When I finally decided to upgrade it, RAM was twice as much for the older sticks than for the newer ones. For $35 and whatever my 4GB can fetch on Craigslist made this an easy decision.

 

I had 64-bit Windows and 8GB of RAM. Recently I got an SSD and started over; didn't notice I had installed the 32-bit Windows for two weeks until I looked at the Task Manager and realized I had 4GB available.

Haven't noticed a difference even with Photoshop ..... shrug.

 

With a SSD you notice lowered ram less. This is as the system with alot of ram has a large amount of standby ram to cache the HDD disk with. The low access times and speed of the SSD will hide the lack of disk cache substantially.

 

In my desktop I have 8GB DDR3 1600. I notice when I play Battlefield 3 that I use 68-69% is available memory. This tells me that with 4GB I would be out of memory.

I guess it depends on what you are doing. If college papers and surfing the net if all, then I am sure 2-4GB is PLENTY. Gaming? I would do at least 8GB especially considering the low cost of DRAM.

 

My OS caches 4-6GB as it is.


This is after only about 1.5 hours of use. It usually stays around here unless I play a game or do something intensive.

 

I really want 16GB 1866MHz

 

I also use Canon DPP and the stanby ram on my 8 GB system limits my free ram to 100MB or so quite often. Even without DPP after several hours I see 1GB or less as free. I tend to run 24/7 so it all gets used.

I also though have a SSD and had it before the 4 to 8GB upgrade. Performance wise this made the 8GB seem insubstantial.

 

Many people still feel this way, but it's not true. Facts are, most PC's average around 3.9 to 5.2 GB of memory usage. Of course since many PC's only have 4 GB, Windows compensates by sending anything not directly being used at the moment to the swap file on the hard drive. So upgrading to 8 GB will reduce the amount of services and processes being sent to the much slower hard drive improving speed when they need to run. This makes a much smoother experience. In addition, like all storage (digital and physical), the more stuff you pack in there the longer it takes to find what you need, and it gets less organized. While improvements have been made to memory and drive mapping, nothing compares to simply have more space to spread it out.

And as a 3-D modeler, indie game developer, IT proffesional, and general hardware enthusiast, I have 16 GB in my desktop and 8 in my laptop. Granted I don't do development on my laptop, I still could not stand to use it with only 4 GB of RAM. Why, I watch some youtube videos, check emails, run skype, and browse. Yet it was still horribly jittery when it only had 4 running windows 7.

Final word, I think all laptops should come standard with at least 6 GB of RAM (8 is better but companies will find any way to cut corners), and at least a 120 GB SSD. With these a laptop can run as smooth as my 2.2k desktop; won't handle the kinds of tasks I throw at it, but loads just as fast and is just as smooth for browsing. So yeah, go for 8 GB, and maybe snag an 120 GB SSD for about 70 bucks.

 

You do realize that this thread is three years old, right?