Should I upgrade my PC to a 16GB ( Software Engineer Senior)

Hello, This is my first post here
So i had my Asus Q500a for a year now and it has been working wonderfully. here is a little bit of spec information about it so you know my situation: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Q500A-BHI7T05-Notebook-i7-3632QM-DVD-RW/dp/B00AU8KQ5G

The only thing is. It has only 8 GB of RAM. Now it's been running very fast the last 2 years. And have not run into any issue or problem. Until lately.

Since I am a senior in computer science, we are getting larger and larger projects at home, and downloading more programs, also I have an internship and projects on the side that I work on. and sometimes the computer starts lagging like crazy, until I clean it and de-fragment it(sometimes).

I was wondering would it help if I upgrade it to 16 GB. or you do not think so ?
I read some posts that says it's only good if you do video editing. Well I do open multiple programs at the same time (None for video editing), and it starts lagging then. Shouldn't 16 GB help ?

Thanks

 

Your first priority would be to get an SSD, a page file on SSD will perform significantly faster than on HDD if ram is low, make sure it is an MLC and not a TLC to be able to handle a pagefile.

If money allows, also upgrade the ram.

Either upgrade (RAM or SSD), should help allot with heavy multitasking

 

Hi there - welcome.

I'm in agreement an SSD will improve performance dramatically. Upgrading storage drives in notebooks is almost always possible - you'll need a 2.5" drive for your notebook. See our SSD forum here for recommendations. Here's our how-to guide on upgrading storage drives. What will honestly help most of all throughout the storage drive upgrade process is reinstalling Windows and relevant drivers ...operating systems can get "clogged" over time and slow down.

Next, regarding RAM; yes, 16GB will be beneficial if you use programs that require a lot of memory. Check your memory usage - open the Task Manager ([Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Esc]), click the Performance tab and monitor the Memory bar during daily workloads. If you're frequently using more than 50% of it (3.5-4GB+), that's an indicator you would benefit from an upgrade. We have a guide on upgrading notebook memory as well.

 

A list of your specific programs and the size of the data files (once opened in RAM) would help a lot in our recommendations.

If you are memory bound (and that seems to be the case at first blush) an SSD will help only incidentally. A RAM upgrade is what is indicated when you're multitasking extensively.

An SSD will give you faster bootup and shutdown times (and program load times), but will generally not increase your performance one iota over a HDD storage subsystem.

One important exception is Adobe Lightroom. That is because LR is based on a database workflow and there, an SSD can make a difference while browsing the library of your images and/or applying the settings (from it's database) and creating new files.

CPU+RAM=Work done - This includes multitasking.

If the lagging is still obvious, then that indicates that your platform may need an upgrade (from your over two year old IB QC to a newer Haswell QC and Win8.1x64Pro setup - the performance difference can be almost 2x depending on the cpu you buy today).

Are you running Win8.1x64? If not, consider doing so.

The last thing to consider upgrading if performance is your real goal (and not just 'snappiness') is the storage subsystem. Yes, an SSD can transform how responsive the O/S is vs. a HDD. But raw compute performance, it can't increase at all.


Looking forward to getting more details about your workflow.

Good luck.

 

Hello. what kind of programs do you run?
from your link Asus notebook have integrated GPU.may be this is the problem?

about using task manager was already told
but also try to monitor your temperatures. may be something throttling?

 

I think that's ctrl-shift-esc (or ctrl-alt-del and then click start task manager).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yes my bad, you are correct.

 

I took a snapshot of the task manager and it seemed I was at 51% in memory usage averagely. 21% CPU, and 16% Disk. Ram and SSD upgrade should do the trick ??

 

51% in memory usage averagely. 21% CPU, and 16% Disk
I use lots of programs: Groovy on grails, Ruby on rails, Visual Studio C++, Two skype accounts always on, internet browsers pretty much always up, couple of word documents. Damn thinking about it no wonder my PC is freezing up

 

Programs: Ruby on rails, Visual studio C++, two skype accounts, Word document most likely one is always open in the background, Browsers always up.
I am using 51% of memory ram daily.
I do have windows 8.1 installed

So ram and SSD upgrade should do the trick ?

 

See:
https://hackhands.com/ruby-rails-performance-tuning/

See:
https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...timize-unicorn-workers-in-a-ruby-on-rails-app

What I see is that RoR needs some fine tuning along with more RAM and a fast storage subsystem.

I would do both (maximize the RAM and install an SSD that is OP'd by 30%), along with a clean install of Win8.1x64Pro.

With the above complete, you will quickly see if your cpu is now holding you back.


The order I would do things is:

Optimize RoR as noted in the links above.

Max out the RAM (if the above isn't sufficient).

Install SSD (if still needed to reduce or eliminate the lagginess).

Buy new platform (if needed after all the above hasn't eliminated the lagginess for your workflow).

Good luck.

 

51% in memory usage averagely. 21% CPU, and 16% Disk
For my personal opinion this is not realy big load. may be something just not working properly?&
what about temperatures? tool like hwmonitor can help.

 

Probably defragging the hard drive after 2 years will help quite a bit... OP try that... You should be fine with the above usage numbers however defraging should improve drive performance slightly..

 

That depends on what portion of active programs (and core windows functions) are swapped out too.

I agree that defragging the drive should help. Short stroking the drive would also be a further recommendation before moving to an SSD.

Of course, PerfectDisk 13 Pro and above is my recommendation for defragging. Short stroking should be maximum 20% of the total capacity of the drive and preferably 5 to 10% (depending how big the drive is, of course - the minimum size I would recommend is 100GB, within those percentage constraints).

 

In task manager, ram usage is not that matters, what matters is the commit size, since if you are running applications that use 11gb of ram, while having only 8gb of ram, your ram usage may be 80%, while commit size may look like "11gb commited out of total 12gb".

in this case the extra 4 gb are allocated in the pagefile / swap space, and when this happen on computer with no SSD, pagefile on old HDD could make the computer very slow.