What users benefit by going from 4gb to 8gb ram?

I'm curious if you think I'll see any noticable benefit from doing this $150 upgrade.

I'm running Windows 7 x64 with a fresh install and an SSD. I do multitask but these are the tasks that I multitask: browse the web with multiple news article tabs open, download videos, watch videos, edit office documents, occasionally transfer files between hdds, occasionally burn DVDs, and ocassionally zip small files. I game and use photoshop but it's light gaming and I don't multitask while gaming or photoshopping.

I ask because the ram is the low score on my windows experience index, it has a 5.7 while I have a 5.9 or more for everything else.

Would I have a noticable difference going from 4gb to 8gb? Thank you in advance.

 

you clearly never tried a ramdisk...

 

No I havent. Not clear on what it would help with.

I do want to try it. How do I set up a ram disk?

Thank you again.

 

The only situation in which you will benefit from more RAM is if you are running programs that use all of your existing physical RAM, and forcing your system to page (swap) to your storage disk. Having more RAM is useful, because it prevents this page (swap) activity from happening.

Since you aren't really doing anything memory-intensive with your system (office apps, web browsing, games, videos, downloads, etc), you are not using all 4GB of your RAM. So upgrading to 8GB will not give you any real-world benefit.


There are two ways to look at your situation:

(1) You don't use all 4GB today, so upgrading to 8GB is a waste. Save your money, or spend it on something else instead; or

(2) You don't use all 4GB today, but you might use more than 4GB at some point in the future. You are upgrading anyway, and RAM is cheap - so just do it now, because why not?



For what it's worth, I am in favor of option #1 - buy what you need, when you need it. Otherwise, you're wasting your money.

 

What kent said basically. If you're not already bottlenecking your 4GB, then moving to 8GB is pretty much a useless upgrade.

 

I got 8GB ram because I run virtual machines on mine. You don't, and none of the tasks you listed requires more than 4GB. Where do you get the $150 price from? Mine was only 80 bucks from Amazon.

 

The price is so high because it's a Sony vaio VGN-FW590F3B laptop that uses ddr2 ram.

Thank you for the advice everyone, I'll stick with 4gb of ram.

 

I was gonna say... Newegg's Memorial Day weekend sale has 8GB DDR3 kit for $65 with no rebates.

Let me add that WEI is not a straight measurement of performance. Actually, I don't know what it even measures, because Microsoft isn't saying. It probably does some quick performance measurement, plus ranks by type. If this last part is true, then you will be limited by DDR2.

 

Do you run VM's or memory heavy applications?

Keep track of your physical memory usage. If you dont go over it then you wont even notice the difference with 8gb. But if you can grab a bargain on RAM then sure why not.

Ignore the Windows Experience scores, dont let .2 bother you. Run proper benchmarks.

WEI isnt a measure of raw performance. Its to measure how well Windows (and everything within it) will run on your hardware. The test parameters are the resources that will be used in operating Windows.

 

WEI is documented by microsoft.

it ranks by size, by performance-tests, not by type (as that doesn't matter. if the performance is the same, the type doesn't matter).

but going from 5.7 to 5.9 will not be noticeable anyways. nor will going from 4gb to 8gb if you don't use them (but superfetch can prefetch a bit more so you will still profit a bit from it).

but not worth the 150$ imho.

 

Turn off page file and see what your RAM usage gets up to...if it gets really close to 4GB at any point, you would benefit from upgrading to 6 or 8. Would it make a big noticeable difference? Depends.

But...I wouldn't spend $150 on it for your needs. If it was a more reasonable $100...maybe.

 

If it's DDR3, You can frequently find 8GB modules for less than $70. Sell your existing 4GB on fleabay for $20 and difference is $50. Not a huge investment by any means. Can't hurt to have more memory, but for most users 4GB is adequate. The only reason many people are considering 8GB now is because it has become remarkably inexpensive. If it was twice the cost like it was, people would have been more than satisfied with 4GB.