RAM question for a new laptop: 8 GB vs 16 GB

Sager NP8150 / Clevo P150HM - XOTIC PC

I'm going to buy a customized one of these with a i7-2670QM and an ATi 6990M. One thing I'm having trouble deciding is if I should go with the 8 GB RAM, or go with the 16 GB one. Since this is going to be something that I want to last me for a very long time.

I do love multitasking and I usually have quite a bit going on at once on my current Desktop. But I do worry if 16 GB is just plain overkill, or a smart investment for the future.

 

16GB. Period.


--

 

Fry's has 16gb kits for $100ish AR now... there is no reason not to

 

My smart suggestion is to buy with as less RAM as you can and buy aftermarkt what you want. For example hyperX or better Corsair Vengeance 1600 or 1866 which are cheaper and faster. also aftermarket rAM is cheaper and most likely better than what you order on notebook's site.

 

Yes, 16GB is overkill. Even for hardcore multitaskers.
Do money grow on trees in your backyard? If no, go for the 8GB. If yes, go for 16GB. The more the merrier although I fear that the extra RAM is just beautiful numbers. The extra RAM could be used for RAM disk if you are in to that stuff though (lol).

It is quite funny though. The requirements for a functional system have increased along with the reduced prices for RAM over the years.

 

Bill Gates once said: "who would ever need more than 640kb RAM .."

- but RAM is easily upgradable and cheaper than what you'd pay for if bought with the laptop.

 

Just work out the cost of getting aftermarket RAM vs in-house fitment. If its cheaper to obtain RAM's yourself then just order the 8GB RAM model and then top it up yourself, otherwise just get the 16GB instead if you really need it.

 

Firstly, that quote is misattributed to Bill Gates, he didn't actually say it.

Secondly, that quote is from the early 80's. While you can never say that X amount of RAM will be good enough for all time, in the time it takes for such a vast amount of memory to be needed (640kb was pretty immense back then), the system running it would be redundant.

If you have nothing better to spend the money on, then by all means get 16GB, but you could find a much better use for it elsewhere on your system. By the time you can find a reasonable use for 16GB (beyond actually trying to use make use of it), your system will most likely be out of date anyway.

The way I see it, if you had a realistic use for 16GB then you would already know the answer to the question you asked. In short, if you don't know that you need 16GB, then you most likely don't.

 

If there are 4 slots, Fry's has 4GB for $8 after MIR lol. Too bad I don't live near one since it's instore only for Boxing day.

 

I'm a fan of the RAM disk, so I'd say it's worth getting the 16GB. As has already been said, it may be more cost effective to buy an after-market kit.

 

Everybody here knows that when I sit down to push my systems to the max (intense, RAW multiple high resolution image editing), I can easily bring any system to its knees.

But, interestingly, when I'm just idling/sitting there with my 16GB notebook and billing/invoicing customers, cruising the forums and reading my email (Outlook) and creating PDF's of various (small) sizes, at the end of a 4 - 6 hour period my 'cached' RAM usage is over 14GB easily. The system runs so much better with 16GB RAM than with 'just' 8GB that I knew in less than an hour of using it that I had to keep the 16GB RAM inside. And as noted, this was not for my 'hard-core' usage, but for general usage.

Long term use and multi-tasking for long sessions at a time begs for as much RAM as you can cram in there.

Don't listen to the 'overkill' crowd; $100 more over the course of a few years is pennies a day - you can't do nothing with even a lot of pennies a day - but you can certainly feel the extra RAM with your workflow (as I do too) each time you sit in front of your system.

And before anyone says 'cached' RAM is not used RAM - let's just say that when the cache is filled up like that, even the entry level M4 256GB SSD seems like it's on Turbo mode.

 

As someone said before, if you're not sure you need it, you probably don't.

From what I've seen, even the faster RAM doesn't do too much better than standard speeds.

And most of the time its still cheaper to ust upgrade it yourself.

 

Buy with 8GB of RAM for now - I understand that you want the notebook to last long, but slotting in another 8GB in the future should it be necessary is an absolute breeze! Also, RAM would have dropped in price by then, so its pointless having all those $$$ tied up in your pc for the future, because currently I believe the 8GB will be completely adequate.

 

It's always cheaper to buy and install RAM yourself, usually 1/4th the cost. So start with 8 for now, try it, and if you feel like you need more you will be able to upgrade for 20 bucks.

 

Only the top 10 per cent of computer user will need even 8 GB. Going beyond that does nothing more than satisfy a cosmetic appeal.

 

Krane, where do you get your stats from? lol...

 

OK I'll admit it, this time they're arbitrary. But you can glean a lot from observation of the masses, not to mention sources including websites like this one.

Besides, I use video editing software and have only hit my 8GB limit once. I take it you disagree?

 

There is no point to "investing" in more RAM since that is the most easily upgradable part of the system.

Also you should never buy a laptop to last a "very long time." You will end up being one of those people wondering if their ancient system will be able to play new games. Throwing more money at it up front is only going to make things worse.

I disagree. 8GB was great for me, and I don't really do anything intensive. Windows 7 takes advantage of all the RAM to cache things.

 

Why do you disagree? Since you don't do anything intensive, you don't actually need 8GB... Windows 7 does take advantage of it, but it also takes full advantage of 4GB or 16GB. Just because it can use it all doesn't mean you need it.

 

I disagree because I noticed a positive change from 4GB to 8GB because of Windows caching everything.

 

Well, to be in line with the OP's request so the laptop lasts a long time..
16GB would be recommended... but of the 1333Mhz variety.
If you noticed, higher clocked RAM is more expensive, but ultimately not worth it because the higher Mhz Speed in RAM doesn't do anything for real-life performance... the difference would only be noticeable in benchmarks.

Selecting 16GB of 133Mhz RAM over 8GB on that sager config would be $90 extra.
If you can find RAM sticks of equal capacity for a lower price tag though, then you might as well get 8GB and upgrade yourself.
It's pretty simple.


32GB would likely really last you a long while though... but, you'd have to have a 27xxQM cpu for that, because other models support up to 16GB according to Intel's info.
So, you could theoretically get a 2760QM cpu with lower amount of RAM now, and just jack up the RAM later on to 16GB or 32GB on your own.

 

If you put engine from Mersedes to old Pegaut it will look...

You shouldn't put more RAM for future. RAM is not the only thing you will need in the future.

BTW Why do people choose faster SSDs if the only difference you can see are benchmarks??? Maybe the same people used to talk about DDR2? Actually it was because people told that DDR2 are not even worth, maybe only DDR2 800... Now we know the truth and we have DDR3. Soon we will have DDR4. People used to talk that new I7 are stupid to create because people do not need more performance... Now we are waiting for new Iy bridge. etc, etc.

 

The difference is that fast SSD's do make a difference in certain situations, for example large files transfers, there's also the access latency which has a HUGE effect on performance. However, with RAM it really doesn't make much difference, name me a situation where you will ever need to access every single byte of memory you have all in a second or so. It never happens, hence why the numbers only show in benchmarks. Then there's the fact that faster RAM only increases the bandwith, the access latencies remain pretty much the same if you factor in the higher clock speed.

 

If you can't tell the performance difference between single and dual channel RAM, how is running RAM that is slightly faster going to make any difference at all? Unless you are relying on integrated graphics, memory bandwidth is far down on the list of things affecting performance.

 

Man you people are trippin.
4GB will be enough for many users. Average Joe fall in this cathegory. Same with some gamers. 8GB will be enough for hardcore gamers and hardcore multitaskers. 40 tabs (!!) open with firefox only use 1GB of RAM. The OS use about 1GB. So you have 6GB for other use. No way in hell you are going over that with intensive multitasking, BUT there is one user group that need 16GB. It is the people who work with graphic software and have multiple projects open at the same time. But like mentioned earlier in this thread, you wouldn`t ask question like "do I need 8GB or 16GB" if you were one of these people since they already have experienced the performance drop you get with little RAM. Getting 16GB RAM instead of the 8GB is a complete waste even for the future. Well, if you have a plan to become a graphical engineer or someone who make big games, you might need to buy 16GB. Windows 8 or any other mainstream program included games will not need more than 4GB in the next 2-3 years. We hit that limit a long time ago, and games have not evolved any further to need more RAM during the last few years.

Cached RAM doesn`t mean that that RAM is unavailable for other programs. It is RAM that have been used by programs. Any program can easily use it when needed. And your example is wrong tilleroftheearth since the amount of memory that is cached depends on the amount of RAM you have in your computer. So that is the reason why you "easily" have hit 14GB after a long session with various tasks. That is the reason why your example is wrong since a system will not cache all that RAM on a 4 or 8GB system. Just as much RAM you have "free" in your system will be "free" in a 8GB or 4GB system. The whole cached, free etc is dynamic.
That is my understanding.

 

+1. Yesterday I was going to write the same about cached amount of RAM but forgot. Windows will cache all your C Drive if you will have plently of RAM and will use all programs at least once.

 

Why do these threads always turn into this???


Fact: RAM is DIRT cheap, there is NO reason not to upgrade.
Fact: More RAM will NOT slow down the system. Only speed it up.
Fact: 4x4gb sticks are $60ish on sale, 2x8gb sticks are $110.

Show me an upgrade that would make a larger difference for less $$$$.

 

Okay, even with a disclaimer, you guys have to attack (me). Lol...

With my 'relaxed' workflow (when I'm invoicing), I'm opening and closing many small utilities, Adobe Acrobat, my accounting program (moving between different companies and/or company year ends) and opening/closing creating many small Word, PDF and accounting entries as I sift through all my various data points to create a final statement for a client. In between all this, I also cruise the 'net finding inspiration for my current/next projects and also try to keep up with my emails.

This is not a very taxing workflow for an i7 Quad and 16GB RAM.

However, even with a 256GB Crucial M4 and an XT 750GB Hybrid for data duty, the system under the workflow specified above felt sluggish with 'only' 8GB RAM - especially if I needed to fire up LR to look at an image or two to verify the work I should be charging for.

How was it sluggish? Well, the M4, good as it is for the price, is no Intel 510 250GB model, which is head and shoulders above it in real world 'feel'. However, the savings from the Intel 510 to the M4 is what the XT 750GB Hybrid is worth, so those savings are real and tangible and is one reason why the M4 still on my system.

The other reason it is still on my system is that with the move to 16GB RAM, many of the micro stutters/pauses that was experienced with the M4 are simply gone - not to mention the fact that anything that is cached in RAM is still going to be 10x faster than even the fastest SSD (with less/no caching).

I too know how caching works - and I'll say it again: for ~$100 over =>1000 days (about 3 yrs), it is foolish to think that any other upgrade will pay you back more each time you use your system than a RAM upgrade will - no matter what logic and justification you can use to say otherwise.

Of course, this is assuming that the rest of the system's components are at the highest platform/level you can afford first, then add as much RAM as you can in your platform of choice.

I'm not saying/giving this advice to ma and pa Jones down the street: I'm saying it to someone who comes to this forum and needs to learn how/what certain things are inter-related from a performance stand point.

The saying 'if you have to ask, you don't need it' is a dumb one too.

Asking is what ignites our imagination and sparks our thirst for knowledge even more. I'm providing a clear indication for the OP and his usage style what the implication of more RAM will mean to him/her.

He/she may try it and feel I gave good advice, or, find that it doesn't fit as well with their version of 'multi-tasking and last a long time'. That is okay; that is learning too. Next time they'll be sure to ask more questions of the next person's advice they think they might follow.

What almost everyone else here is saying is that with more RAM there is no more benefits at all. That is plainly wrong.

When I go back to my computer classes in the '70's and clearly remember that ONLY the CPU along with the RAM does the 'work' we request of a system, it is easy to see why additional RAM is always advantageous from a performance perspective.

Throw the fact that you can quadruple your RAM capacity for less than 10% of the cost of your system and with the appropriate workflow reap performance rewards upwards of 60% or more with the additional RAM - and the fact that the whole thing will cost you $100 or less... well, as I keep saying - you are being penny wise and pound foolish if you get a current quad-core platform/system, the best O/S yet (Win7x64), an SSD and cripple all that hardware with 4/8GB RAM.

CPU+RAM=Performance - increase one or the other and your performance will always increase - for $100 or so, it is a good 'gamble' to see how much it will increase for 'you' (and that is what a no restocking fee return policy is for, anyways).

Cheers!

 

Keeding me? Before you read next text you should recall that RAM he is going to buy from xotic or elsewher will cost like 90$ for 8GB.

You can: Buy almost the best I7 CPU (100$ more expensive than your), sell your CPU and totally you will see an improvement for only 100$ (the difference between your CPU and tthe CPU you want).
Or... Buy SSD instead of OS HDD you have (if you have no SSD) or... buy 2-nd HDD caddy and another HDD for more storage or... Notebook Cooler for less noisy machine and lower temps and therefore better gpU overclock or... hould I continue?

tillerof, I am not attacking you, I am OK with more RAM if it is as cheap as it is now on the market. But guy should know that he will have less performance gain than from faster RAM he can get. I just don't get what has changed for last 9 month? 9 month ago everyone would suggest to buy either 6GB or 8GB. 16Gb would be... madness.

 

James D,

Nothing has changed: my recommendations have always been the same: get as much RAM (max it!) as your platform can support.

People believe in marketing too much - manufacturers like it because they can sell a 4GB RAM system in late 2011 and get away with it.

When an AMD E350 with 8GB RAM becomes (finally) a machine which is responsive enough to be used in this century; it tells you something which you are simply not getting: CPU+RAM=Performance.

A lowerend cpu with more RAM may outperform a highend cpu with capped/4GB RAM.

I agree about not buying from the manufacturers, but maxing out the RAM is the first thing I do to a new system (from past experience, of course, when I maxed out a four year old system and it kept working and kept me and others productive for another six years).

 

Well, I have HP nc6000 DDR1. it had 1GB. I saw sugnificant reduction of performance when I took away 1 512 MB stick. but I saw no performance increase (on XP) when I exchanged 1 512MB stick on 1GB one. Frankly I would leave all as it is but Wwindows 7 eats more RAM than Xp and I hope that it can manage more RAM for smth too. so I bought 2 GB of 400 mhz and hope when they arrive it will support it. But in this case I know that mostly it will be used because windows 7 just can't breathe/live without RAM. So at the time when Windows 7 starts breathe with enough RAM i stop seeing any further performance increase. Even if I could put 4 or 8 GB of RAM inside it my CPU and GPU will not use it as they should.

Nowadays systems do not have improvement not because i-core are slow but because software doesn't need it unless for video editing and smth professional. I just don't get why would guy who doesn even know what to do with that RAM thinks to buy 16GB. I'm sorry, I didn't read your big post, maybe later I will find an answer.
But seriously, I would suggest him buy better GPU for gaming and stay with 6-8 GB instead of buying 16.

 

Well, okay. XP had/has horrible memory management - not a good way to judge/measure if Win7 will perform the same with less/more RAM.

Win7x64 doesn't simply need more RAM than XP. It knows what to do with it.

And if you have a platform with DDR RAM - then we're talking light years in performance inprovements to a modern platform. Again, don't judge/measure what you see on that platform with what you will gain on a modern one with more RAM.

If a video card was worth $100 more (doubtful, a 'real' gpu upgrade is at least $200) and it affected more than just games, I would agree to go with that upgrade instead.

But the OP is asking specifically for multi-tasking scenarios and a gpu will do him no good for that. Actually, it will be $100 well wasted, in his case as specified so far.

With RAM being the component that the CPU uses to do the work we need/require of our systems; his long term satisfaction for the same $100 cost will much favour the RAM as the component to upgrade rather than the gpu.

 

why is this argument still going on ?

I think it's all pretty simple - RAM, the more the better, one way or another it always comes true.

point is how you get more ram cheaper, that's all.

 

No one's attacking him. In fact, I've given him many accolades for providing excellent advice. Rather, I was merely voicing an alternate opinion based on my observation and personal use.

As am I. Nevertheless, I also maintain it's not necessary for everyone.

Not madness...necessarily. But certainly superfluous.

You are like a race car driver giving advice to the average daily commuter. Its unlikely that even the majority users here run their computers at that intensity. Still, I doubt if anyone would turn down a high performance engine if the gas mileage didn't matter much.

On a personal note, I couldn't agree more with you: My next workstation will definitely be maxed for RAM. In fact, RAM maximization will be my first priority. But that will only be because I have the software that can utilize it.

However, at my present level of editing proficiency, having more than 8GB of RAM (even if I had the capacity for it) would just have been sitting in idle gathering dust.

 

I think this topic has been discussed long enough. It is up to the OP to make his choice. Both points of view have their merits and have been discussed extensively enough for the OP to make his choice based on RAM prices and what's been discussed.

This thread is starting to turn into quite an argument and i'd rather like if it didn't turn ugly.

 

I'm not sure why you are dismissing the performance benefits of RAM caching. It works wonders.

 

or let him get a 16 gig ram, use the 8 gig as ramdisk and plug all your apps in there. gonna be faster than a sata III SSD

 

You have no idea how many ages will it take to boot every time because of 8GB ramdisk, do you?

 

Most Sager resellers will let you order the system with zero RAM so you can install all the RAM yourself. Perhaps a solution if you want 16GB. They will probably only knock off $12-15 for removing the RAM though, so not much saved, but then you would have four matching RAM sticks which is less risk for compatibility or stability. Usually you can throw any RAM in there but there are times when it can lead to issues.

 

I'm sure he can negotiate for that ram because he can choose the minimum which I think is 4 GB. So he saves around 40$ for another 4 GB and only then they may negotiate about how less they will pay for last 4gb. But I think that if they will reduce price only for 15$ for 4 GB then mayby it is better to order 4 so OP could check working condition.

 

With 1.2ish GB used by OS and the rest is for the user and you have 6.8GB left for caching whatever you`d like, how much is there to gain really? Don`t you think that Microsoft have made the whole RAM system dynamic to the extent so that it cache the things it really need to first? With more RAM (16GB instead of 8GB) the system is caching more data it guesses you are going to use or want to use. It`s the way Windows is programmed.

It is a complex system. System cache flushing accurs. New writes are made to RAM. Cached RAM is timed, it can flush unused cached RAM anytime it want. If you have 14GB cached, 1.5GB in pagefile, and it needs 1GB when you boot up a program, it force some cached RAM to flush.

I agree that RAM is cheap and should be a non problem to buy. Cram in 16GB if you want to. I just want to voice out that you don`t really NEED 16GB.

Did you guys know that you can force firefox to write data on the RAM instead of the disk btw? How cool is that

 

not cool. Firefox will cache all into RAM and then recache again and then again. It is painful if it takes half a minute to download flash game while it could be not only cached but also saved on non-volatile memory.

I used RAMDisk. I created 100 Mb RamDisk, named it as R drive (RAMDrive) and forced FF to save its cache in R:\FF_cache\ It is much better now. Only disadvantage is that it takes 15-25 seconds longer because of RAMDisk. And will take longer if you use more like someone suggested. I have already tried.

 

Oh that is true. Didn`t think of that. The temporary data, cookies etc are flushed away from the RAM once closing the browser. Guess it is only good for a single surf session without downloading and lots of tabs open.

RAMdisk sounds exciting. Is it much pain in the butt to make new drives each time you want to use it?

 

you may just create it once and choose program to save it each time before shutting down into iso file automatically and then it will autoload ramdisk drive with all saved info while booting. But as I said it adds time to boot and little bit to shutting down time.

 

I'm not even sure what you are talking about. You're just saying random not even totally correct things about RAM and cache. You are not talking about RAM caching nor if it provides an improvement in performance. That's not the way RAM caching works in WIndows 7. It just keeps things in memory after you exit the program or whatever. So it can take a while to build up the cache, but it provides a very noticeable boost to system responsiveness.

 

rofl!!! if you use it that way then yeah you'll definitely have a really long boot/shutdown time with it.

best way would be to setup 512mb-1gig as your temp file drive, this is for your IE, firefox cache or whatever (persisted between reboots).

setup another one where you don't need to be stored or accessed on startup (where my portable apps are located, initial VMware setups, this setup can be destroyed after you're done with the apps in there

really it depends on how you can use it or if you'll use it.


now I'm not sure what you're system is but with 100mb on ramdisk and it added 15-25 secs boot time? must be something wrong, 1gb on mine adds about 5-10 secs if filled, otherwise it doesn't really add much since it was set up to be a cache drive so cleaning those prior to shutdown or when an app is closed cleans most of what's in the drive (and 1gb is already way way way more cache than a standard user would need)

heh re-read my previous and it indeed was misleading to use ramdisk and install everything there and create an iso every shutdown which should not be but rather should be treated as a portable really fast hdd aside from the temp cache.