Upgrade memory?

When I got my new Dell almost 2 years ago (see my signature) I opted for 4GB RAM as I'd heard that Win7 ran better with a lot of memory. I have upgraded an older laptop (WinXP) from 1GB to 2GB and found some improvement in speed and response. The Crucial memory scanner tells me that I have capacity for 2x4GB modules so the question is this...is it worth shelling out £40 or so for the extra 4GB?
I tend to have several applications running at the same time and have taken to minimizing iPlayer whilst working on other things (please don't ask why!). I'm running
Home Premium 64 bit.
On the same issue, remind me why the modules have to be installed in 2s. They don't recommend one 8GB module, just the 2 4GB ones.

It depends what applications that you're using of course but for general use, 4Gig is plenty. Of course, if it's cheap enough and you have the cash to spare.......

I use a few hefty apps on my well modded Aspire 7520 but I can't say that anything over 4Gig makes any difference at all.

Edited by Deadbeat (Sun 29-Apr-12 10:50:51)

Using two memory modules allows the CPU to use two channels simultaneously to access memory, thus giving faster operation. Three and four-channel memory is now possible with the latest CPUs.

I would suggest you consider tidying your system prior to increasing from 4GB, as I feel it is plenty. Newer Windows versions use almost all memory by caching the thing you will use more often (Superfetch). This is a good thing, but the startup services and apps will occasionally impact on system performance.

I'd be looking to reduce the startup apps. I have six necessary ones (ATI gfx, sound and security) and one personal use one, from a list of 34 (28 disabled). Also disabled a fair chuck of unnecessary services. Boot time is less than a minute (mechanical drive), and boot memory usage is 1.2GB. It used to be less with another gfx card.

You would be amazed at how much carp is loaded when you boot up, and I recommend you look into that first.

unless ram prices have shot up in the past 3 months thats a very high price for the ram.

but regardsless you should see an improvement from 2 to 4 gig of ram. although if your windows install is 32bit it may not all get utilised.

I'm OK with disabling startup programmes and have disabled a lot, but I've always been reluctant to touch the services as it's hard to see what some of them do and I don't want to mess up my system.

Check out black viper's wiki on them. Very informative.

In reply to a post by GeoffB:

I'm OK with disabling startup programmes and have disabled a lot, but I've always been reluctant to touch the services as it's hard to see what some of them do and I don't want to mess up my system.

As already posted, Black Viper's guides are very good. Do a couple at a time and if you do mess up, just boot to Safe Mode and re-enable them.

There is some evidence that shows that machines with 8GB RAM respond, and wake from hibernation etc faster than machines with 4GB. Then again, it's from RAM suppliers (Corsair and i forget the other). Allthough real world users do report it's true to an extent.

One thing i can vouch for, and i definetley notice, which is to be expected really, is that with 8GB RAM over 4GB, the machine responds quicker, when you have multiple applications left open.

A lot of people got into the habit over the years (particurlarly before 4GB was seen as the baseline) of closing an application when they weren't using it. Of course back then, the swap file located on the mechanical hard drive became inundated, but even when 2GB machines became the norm people still close applications.

These days (and as has been pointed out it depends what applications you use) the number of applications you can now leave running, without even bothering to close them, has dramatically increased, to the point where you can actually disable the swap file, or (as some apps still need to know its there even if they dont actually use it) at the very least make it tiny, as the extra RAM will pick up the slack. So, long gone are the days of staring at the HD activity light waiting for the page file to catch up.

After my own testing, I found I do notice a (what I would personally deem) significant difference when using 8GB over 4GB and i've now go into the habit of leaving pretty much all apps open, whereas before i used to close them. I'm a home user so the apps i'm talking about are the more common ones.

On that basis, i'd personally say yes, its worth going up to 8GB.

BUT...

You have another option (assuming you dont already have one), which would give you a far more noticable affect on performance: an SSD drive which you will install the OS on.

So, even in view of all the above, and again assuming your machine doesnt already have an SSD, i think overall you would be better putting that £40 toward the cost of an SSD. Smaller ones are fairly cheap nowadays, you could still keep your existing mechanical hard drive[s] for storage, back up, extra programs etc. Of course as yours is an OEM pre built PC, you may be reluctant to reinstall the OS, but you would notice the affects of that SSD, above the transition between 4GB and 8GB RAM (assuming you dont use a lot of intensive apps at once) in my opinion. The mechanical hard drive is still usually the bottleneck in most of todays PC's.

Of course if money is no object, get both

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Apr-12 13:40:31)

There is no need for paging today. I run 12GB with no page file. I could probably get away with 8GB and I can go up to 24GB if necessary. I tried an SSD but found it very unreliable. One reason for disabling the page file was to avoid hammering the SSD. I have now gone back to an HDD and, frankly, I have noticed very little performance degradation. Loads of memory is the way to go, imo. I would only consider using an SSD in a laptop to conserve power and they would need to be a lot more reliable than they are now.

In reply to a post by RiffRaff:

These days (and as has been pointed out it depends what applications you use) the number of applications you can now leave running, without even bothering to close them, has dramatically increased, to the point where you can actually disable the swap file, or (as some apps still need to know its there even if they dont actually use it) at the very least make it tiny, as the extra RAM will pick up the slack. So, long gone are the days of staring at the HD activity light waiting for the page file to catch up.

I never disable the swap file, and given the amount of spare hard drive space these days, I allocate a minimum and maximum to prevent HDD thrashing. My current 4GB of memory system has 4096 allocated as min, and 5120 as max (4GB - 5GB). It's important to allocate at least the amount of system memory for memory dumps. Windows recommends 6139MB for some reason, but I've never come across any issue to explain why.

No problems, and no HDD resizing.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

I would suggest you consider tidying your system prior to increasing from 4GB, as I feel it is plenty. Newer Windows versions use almost all memory by caching the thing you will use more often (Superfetch). This is a good thing, but the startup services and apps will occasionally impact on system performance.

Yeah, Win 7 has a pretty small footprint. My server at home runs well enough in only 1GB of RAM. Not saying that adding RAM isn't beneficial but 2GB should be ample for a casual user and anything over 4GB is probably overkill for most people.

There is no need for paging today.

I said that didn't i

As said in my other post also, some apps still require the page file to be there, even though they wont need to use it (adobe springs to mind, unless they changed this in recent times).

My main PC consists of 3 short stroked Seagate 500 GB .12 HDD's in RAID0, and a 1.5TB Seagate LP for storage and back ups on an intel SATA 2 RAID controller (motherboard) and an icey box backplane. It is regularly defragged. It outperforms single drive systems (obviously) and is somewhat more responsive when loading large/multiple files, but it just can't compete with an SSD's access times, which are basically 0.1ms. In the real world this is reflected best with boot times.

Waking from hibernation is certainly seemless, with little or no HDD activity. I don't personally feel the need to upgrade to 16GB but again, i'm a home user.

The best time to test how responsive your system is, is shortly after your machine has booted, so programs are loaded from HDD into RAM. Testing after that will give skewed results as the program is now already cached in RAM by Windows. That point where you wait for the HDD to move around and load the program, when compared with an SSD, is noticable imo, though i agree more RAM is always good, that said, that old sweet spot of diminishing returns rears its head.

Did you update the SSD's firmware? and did it support TRIM etc.

There is certainly a lot of compelling evidence all over the web, in both review articles and real user forums, that SSD's significantly reduce boot times, though with the advent of more RAM, and more reliable Windows hibernation etc code, means its easier to leave the machine in hibernation rather than cold boot. Allthough we all need to reboot now and again with updates etc.

Early SSD's were not too good, and cheapo models were drastically worse than higher end models, but i thought overall, as technology/production costs came down, it evened out somewhat now, in as much as cheaper SSD's are not too shabby now - a lot of it comes down to the firmware and how regular manufacturers update them.

The common set up a lot of poeple use, is an SSD for the OS and a few core programs, and regular HDD's for lesser used programs, back ups and storage, mainly because of the price per GB/£ between SSD capacity and HDD capacity (excluding the South East Asian floods effects). This gives the fast boot time, and highly responsive OS, caters for multitasking with bundles of RAM, while allowing the larger HD capacity for less used programs/back ups/storage.

Its true to say most mainstream vendors still ship with mechanical HDD's. Some now ship mainstream 'family' PC's with 8GB at reasonable prices others still go with 4GB.

If i were building my PC today, i would definetely include an SSD of some capacity (smaller rather than larger) for a set up as described above, and 8GB RAM.

I think a lot depends on the amount of multitasking the OP does or intends to do, and wether he intends to upgrade in the future, an SSD has more chance of being carried over to a new system, than RAM (because RAM can be far more picky about working with motherboard x than an SSD, imo).

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Apr-12 17:18:18)

I never disable the swap file, and given the amount of spare hard drive space these days, I allocate a minimum and maximum to prevent HDD thrashing. My current 4GB of memory system has 4096 allocated as min, and 5120 as max (4GB - 5GB). It's important to allocate at least the amount of system memory for memory dumps. Windows recommends 6139MB for some reason, but I've never come across any issue to explain why.

No problems, and no HDD resizing.

I experimented with disabling and encountered no problems. I thought of it as 'one less piece of windows running in the background using resources'. But another forum i frequent had a number of poeple that did encounter problems with programs that expected the page file to be there, adobe as i said before, no idea if they fixed that or even saw it as a problem.

In reply to a post by RiffRaff:

I said that didn't I?

I never read your posts.

In reply to a post by RiffRaff:

Did you update the SSD's firmware? and did it support TRIM etc.

It is at latest firmware and does support TRIM (OCZ Petrol 128GB). TBH, it could have been the mobo's SATA 3 controller. In the end, I had so many file corruptions that I couldn't be arrised to find out.

Not really up on SSD chipsets etc, but i stopped buying OCZ a few years back because of RAM issues.

If its a lesser chipset that may account for some things. Last time i looked, intel SSD's were pretty much the bees knees allthough some of their newer ones use sandforce chipsets.

This article is recent, and mentions OCZ Petrol as perofrming poorly so i would guess its on a bad chipset; theres a lot of other hits on google about that disk.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/opinion/storage/3354205/i...

I would RMA the disk anyway, assuming still under warranty.

It would be handy if the OP was able to see a machine with large RAM and an SSD in person, to evaluate for himself if the difference in performance was noticable or not, unfortunately most small vendors, and big vendors like pcworld [/spit] don't include SSD's. Youtube has a number of comparison videos.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Apr-12 17:40:50)