what difference would it make from upgrading 6gb ram to 8, possibly 16gb?

is it worth it? and why.

 

It depends. Without knowing more, it really can't be said. 4GB is the bare minimum, but that is "good enough" for lots of people and the difference between that and more might not be so easily noticed. If you had 4GB I would say go for the 8GB or 16GB if the price isn't a big deal.

If you want to upgrade your ram, maybe just buy a single 8GB stick to replace your 2GB stick. It is not very expensive and would double your memory to a very respectable 12GB.

 

If you have to ask, then the answer is almost certainly "No." Modern computers are not limited by memory -- for most purposes, even 4GB is overkill. Even with pre-fetching, There are exceptions, but most people who work with programs and files large enough to qualify know that they do so. If you already have 6GB, more is a waste of money unless you know what you are doing.

 

Can't hurt, but not necessary. Unless you are a very heavy multi-tasker (like dozens of programs and web tabs opened simultaneously) and/or use RAM hungry programs (VM's, Photoshop/Elements, Vegas, etc) will you really need more than 4GB. But 8GB modules are cheap now, so it's not such a big risk.

 

I think Althernai's answer is most similar to mine, if you have to ask you probably don't need it

Different story when laptops came with 1GB of RAM and everybody should upgraded to 2GB but now when they come with 4GB+ stock thats all everybody needs other than specific power users that for the most part already know they need more RAM.

 

Buy an 8GB stick! You know you want it! Get lots of RAM and never look back...

 

Not every motherboard or chipset or CPU supports 8GB dimms...

 

True, but many say they support up to 2 x 4GB sticks when they really support 2 x 8GB sticks.

 

This ^^

Although there are many application that would require much more, if that were the case you'd already know it. However, moving from 4 to 8 would likely improve overall efficiency. Nevertheless, if you're at the limit with 6 then adding 2 GB more would still be of some benefit.

 

caguioa, Good points here, What make/model computer are you using now? Do you check your memory usage now, and how high does you usage max. out at?

 

I find 4 is too low for playing a game with a few FF tabs open in the background. BF3 stuttered badly under these conditions, and task manager reported 3.8-4gb orf RAM used. I upgraded straight to 16gb (because for an additional $35-40 over 8, why not?) and I can have a game minimized while running a VM with an HD project open in Vegas with 20+ FF tabs in the background and not break a sweat.

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Well, if you have lots of apps running in the background while gaming you're only asking for trouble. Not only for the RAM usage but also for consumption of resources as well as conflicts. I've seen people complain their machine is running a game like crap only to find out they've got torrents running, a dozen web pages open with heavy flash, youtube feeding their music, etc. It's like DUH!

 

With both my i7 and i5, I haven't found that to be a problem. I don't usually torrent while I game, but only because it slows my internet to a crawl. Otherwise, I'll tend to leave whatever I'm doing open so I can come back to it when I'm done gaming. Of course, if I'm experiencing problems, the background tasks get closed.

My wife complained of this all the time on her old C2D/4gb system. Throwing more cores and RAM at it seems to have solved the problem completely. She still doesn't close anything

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Find out what your neighbor has and get exactly 2GB more...j/k

With RAM being as cheap as it is I think it's worth getting 8GB or even 16GB. But I am used to running VMs so I like to have a lot of memory and I'm probably opinionated.

 

I do that I don't see the problem