To upgrade or not

Currently running win 10 32 bit and 64 bit on my system as a dual boot(see specs). I currently have 4gb of memory installed and my p35 board will take 8gb ram max.

I am using the 32 bit as main boot but could install my programs on the 64 bit os and install 8gb for £89, is it worth it? I don't use any memory hungry programs and have an SSD on both partitions, so is the 8gb upgrade worth it?

You could use Resource Monitor to see how many hard (page) faults you are getting. You will always get some no matter how much memory you have but if you are getting a lot, you need more memory. On Win 7, the quickest way to start the Resource Monitor is Start/Run and then type "resource monitor" (I don't have Win 10).

Remember that since you are using an SSD and the page file is on the SSD, any paging will impact the lifespan of the SSD.

I would add more memory and switch to 64-bit, but make sure that you can find 64-bit drivers for your hardware. I have 12GB and can run without a page file (although Windows Update will sometimes decide to create one for me).

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 19-Jan-16 21:02:46)

I already have 64 bit setup and running. I can only see faults/sec in memory of resource monitor and thats zero with just one blip. 32 bit wont benefit from another 4gb but 64 bit would. I can always keep 32 bit spare because there are no drivers for my microscope or belkin video digitiser but I only use them once in a while.

Am I reading the resource monitor faults graph right?

I'm no expert but if you're not seeing many page faults and performance is OK, then there's no need to do anything. Extra memory will be allocated to the disk cache, but since you're using an SSD...

I am beginning to think it may be a pointless excersize as I only use the machine for email, documents, printing and web browsing. I found some cheaper memory £60 for 4 2gb sticks of ddr2 800 at local pc shop but no gurantee of it being compatible whereas the £90 is from crucial.com and they gurantee compatability with my motherboard.

In reply to a post by Banger:

I am beginning to think it may be a pointless excersize as I only use the machine for email, documents, printing and web browsing. I found some cheaper memory £60 for 4 2gb sticks of ddr2 800 at local pc shop but no gurantee of it being compatible whereas the £90 is from crucial.com and they gurantee compatability with my motherboard.

If that is all you are using your computer for and it is not having any problems with running stuff, which with 4GB it should be fine, then no point in spending money on more memory.

Unless you are into games, photo, video editing or have a load of software opened at the same time then you computer will be fine.

It is surprising how well Win 10 will run on a 2GB tablet device - given that, the race for more memory for "normal" uses seems to have paused.

I'm on W7 64bit with 3Gb of RAM on a SATA HDD. No issues when editing video. I do use an external HD to save the files as my bottleneck is the writing of the new file.

With your SSD and basic use then you shouldn't need any extra RAM.

Thanks for the replies, I very rarely have more than 3 programs open at a time. Photoshop Express does me for photo correction. I dont game so looks like the consensus is 4gb is adequate for my needs, thanks again for saving me £60-90.

In reply to a post by ian72:

It is surprising how well Win 10 will run on a 2GB tablet device - given that, the race for more memory for "normal" uses seems to have paused.

I have had Windows 8.1 running on a 1GB celeron laptop and it worked ok, not my laptop. It have now been updated to 2GB, and to be honest there is no real difference in use.

Still looking at updating it to Windows 10, they are not too sure if they want to and I have not really got the time to do it at the moment anyway.