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worth upgrading from 2gb RAM to 3gb or 4gb?

post #1 of 23
7/23/08 at 11:43am
Thread Starter 
hey, as the title suggests, is it worth upgrading from 2gb to either 3gb or 4gb? i have an asus M51S, vista 32bit and with 2gb it runs great, playing games like half-life 2, cs: source etc, but i have a bit of money saved and thought for a bit of a cheap upgrade i might put some more ram in...

i assume there will be some improvement, but will it be noticeable in everyday use? or only during really intense computer usage? any feedback from anyone who has done this would be appreciated..

thanks
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post #2 of 23
7/23/08 at 4:20pm
What do you mainly use your notebook for? Actually, it doesn't really matter, if you're gonna take the time to upgrade, go with 4GB.
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post #3 of 23
7/23/08 at 5:32pm
You can never have too much RAM...
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post #4 of 23
7/24/08 at 4:27am
No point in going from 2 gb to 4 gb esp. in a laptop. I challenge someone to show me a screenshot on a laptop where they legit use more than 2 gb of ram. The most I have EVER used was 1.2 gb and that was in XP with 4 resource-intensive apps running.

I just built a desktop (dual 3.8 ghz, 3.0 gb/sec 7200 rpm hdd, 8800 gt SLI) and it runs crysis in "high" 4x AA on 2 gb of ram. But it does use 800 mb of video memory so good thing I got a gb

I don't get why people think that 4 gb is the magical key to getting more performance...it's not unless you routinely run 6 instances of photoshop, crysis, and hl2 all at the same time (which a laptop couldn't even do b/c the gfx card is weak).....oh and 16 tabs worth of firefox.

It seems like the "recommended" ram amount keeps being arbitrarily increased every year as harware vendors make a higher amount "standard".
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post #5 of 23
7/24/08 at 9:32pm

Re: worth upgrading from 2gb RAM to 3gb or 4gb?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jacksplatt11 View Post
hey, as the title suggests, is it worth upgrading from 2gb to either 3gb or 4gb? i have an asus M51S, vista 32bit and with 2gb it runs great, playing games like half-life 2, cs: source etc, but i have a bit of money saved and thought for a bit of a cheap upgrade i might put some more ram in...

i assume there will be some improvement, but will it be noticeable in everyday use? or only during really intense computer usage? any feedback from anyone who has done this would be appreciated..

thanks

Probably not, but you may under a few circumstances.

-If you write software with extremely long build/link times, you might want to.
-If you expect to keep you want your laptop to be usable in the (kindof but not too distant) future.

If your not a software developer or hardcore gamer, I'd suggest you don't worry about it.
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post #6 of 23
7/26/08 at 3:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dr/owned View Post
No point in going from 2 gb to 4 gb esp. in a laptop. I challenge someone to show me a screenshot on a laptop where they legit use more than 2 gb of ram. The most I have EVER used was 1.2 gb and that was in XP with 4 resource-intensive apps running.

I just built a desktop (dual 3.8 ghz, 3.0 gb/sec 7200 rpm hdd, 8800 gt SLI) and it runs crysis in "high" 4x AA on 2 gb of ram. But it does use 800 mb of video memory so good thing I got a gb

I don't get why people think that 4 gb is the magical key to getting more performance...it's not unless you routinely run 6 instances of photoshop, crysis, and hl2 all at the same time (which a laptop couldn't even do b/c the gfx card is weak).....oh and 16 tabs worth of firefox.

It seems like the "recommended" ram amount keeps being arbitrarily increased every year as harware vendors make a higher amount "standard".
right now with 3gb of ram i am using 67% in vista and that isnt doing alot. i have pushed it over 80 when gaming and doing other things.... and yes i did notice a difference going from 2 to 3 gb
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post #7 of 23
7/26/08 at 11:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dr/owned View Post
No point in going from 2 gb to 4 gb esp. in a laptop. I challenge someone to show me a screenshot on a laptop where they legit use more than 2 gb of ram. The most I have EVER used was 1.2 gb and that was in XP with 4 resource-intensive apps running.

I just built a desktop (dual 3.8 ghz, 3.0 gb/sec 7200 rpm hdd, 8800 gt SLI) and it runs crysis in "high" 4x AA on 2 gb of ram. But it does use 800 mb of video memory so good thing I got a gb

I don't get why people think that 4 gb is the magical key to getting more performance...it's not unless you routinely run 6 instances of photoshop, crysis, and hl2 all at the same time (which a laptop couldn't even do b/c the gfx card is weak).....oh and 16 tabs worth of firefox.

It seems like the "recommended" ram amount keeps being arbitrarily increased every year as harware vendors make a higher amount "standard".
You sound like Microsoft and Intel back in the mid-90's. Remember the 'No one needs more than 64MB of RAM' fiasco?

I've seen Age of Conan consume over 2GB of memory by itself with Vista eating up nearly 1GB of memory on top of it. I couldn't live without 4GB of memory. I had to RMA 2GB of my 4GB about a month or two ago and I almost drove myself crazy waiting to get back up to 4GB. Vista 64 needs at least 4GB IMO.
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post #8 of 23
7/26/08 at 5:21pm
vista 32bit will not see over 3.25GB ram or something around that. anything more is placebo. anything less is depending on how you use your computer. 2GB is still the sweet spot in cost/performance.
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post #9 of 23
7/26/08 at 6:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by themessenger500 View Post
vista 32bit will not see over 3.25GB ram or something around that. anything more is placebo. anything less is depending on how you use your computer. 2GB is still the sweet spot in cost/performance.
this

ram will get cheaper once ddr3 is main stream, buy it then

and trust me, ram is by far the least of your worries


youd be better off getting a better video card, better proc, before adding ram from 2gb
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post #10 of 23
7/26/08 at 6:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by themessenger500 View Post
vista 32bit will not see over 3.25GB ram or something around that. anything more is placebo. anything less is depending on how you use your computer. 2GB is still the sweet spot in cost/performance.
Maybe only 3GB if you have 1GB worth of video card memory in the system with the new generation of cards coming out.

But still 3GB is better than 2GB in some scenarios but I agree, 2GB is the sweet spot. But, considering there's only about a $25 difference between 2GB and 4GB. I'm not sure we can justify price/performance at 2GB anymore.
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post #11 of 23
7/26/08 at 11:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melodis View Post
Maybe only 3GB if you have 1GB worth of video card memory in the system with the new generation of cards coming out.

But still 3GB is better than 2GB in some scenarios but I agree, 2GB is the sweet spot. But, considering there's only about a $25 difference between 2GB and 4GB. I'm not sure we can justify price/performance at 2GB anymore.
there is very little preformence increase with 4gb of ram

but there in lays the 25$ you mentioned


with ram as cheap as it is, why not..........but

you have to realise thats more money going into a rig that some day will be way outdated if not already


gaming on laptops is kinda pas'e? i think is the word?

its hard to game on a laptop because new cards come out monthly almost, and you have to keep spilling cash, desktop is the way to go to game really, and will always be that way


id really rather have a better proc, more fsb, more l2 cache, and a beefy video card, than 4gb of ram vs 2gb
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post #12 of 23
7/27/08 at 10:06am

just do it

just upgrade, ram is cheap. but if u dont have a 64 bit os installed dont go higher then 3 gig.
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post #13 of 23
7/27/08 at 10:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MoodyH4L View Post
just upgrade, ram is cheap. but if u dont have a 64 bit os installed dont go higher then 3 gig.
hard drives are cheap too, should he upgrade that?


proc's are cheap too!! havent been this cheap in a while, mebe that too?!


i bet he does not have a wifi-n card, he should do that too, since they are cheap!



see where i am going? if you do one thing may as well do the rest
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post #14 of 23
7/27/08 at 9:19pm
To reply to a few posts. 1) I've never heard of vista using 67% of ram "just sitting there". Right now I'm using 711 mb / 1918 mb (36%) RAM and that's with FF running 3 tabs, thunderbird, and a few other progs. 2) I AM running Vista Ultimate x64 with Aero and Glass enabled and it clearly doesn't need 4 gb of ram to run well.

And I'm not saying no one will ever need 4 gb of ram, I'm just saying that right now there really is no point if one simply takes the time to close programs you aren't using (Like who is going to play a game, browse the internet, chat on IM, edit some videos, and convert movies all at the same time).

To agree with soulsaver, ram is the least of your performance problems. Back in the day when going from 256 mb to 512 mb, yes, that was needed. But you honestly can't tell me that in 4 years, programs have become 8x bigger.
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post #15 of 23
7/27/08 at 11:32pm
Don't take my word for it.

http://http://www.tomshardware.com/r...op,1775-5.html

The more ram you have (up to 4GB in Vista 32 and 8GB or more in Vista 64 makes Vista run smoother & snapier.

A faster hard drive nor a better video card will make your general windows Vista experience just feel snapier like the additional ram will. Now, maybe a faster proc with more cache on it might improve the experience more than the memory, but it's doubtful at a cost of $25 you'll be able to afford the next level of proc.

Trust me, I understand the point you're trying to make about 'well, if you're going to upgrade this, you might as well upgrade this for a few dollars more as well.' But from my practical experience (Vista 64 w/ 4GB of RAM vs 2GB of RAM) I wouldn't go back to 2GB of RAM if someone paid me. It was the best upgrade I've made in my machine in 3 years. And I've been using the same proc now since November of 2005.
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post #16 of 23
7/28/08 at 12:04am
I've turned off my page files, and vista didn't explode on me or run out of memory (although I wouldn't consider doing that if I was running intensive apps). Still on Vista Ultimate 64, I'm only using 38% of my RAM....not even close to 2 gb let alone 4 gb. That article doesn't even say that a system runs faster with 8 gb....it states the obvious that more available = more reserved and more total theoretically means a more stable system. You can read the comments....no actual benchmarks in that article. And on modern hdd's it wouldn't exactly be the end of the world if the pagefile were used.

And the point would stand, why would I want to use an OS that NEEDS an insane amount of ram to function properly. Heck you can run linux on a system from 1996 with blazing speed.
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post #17 of 23
7/28/08 at 12:24am
The cost of RAM is steadily going up again I notice, if you will be using this laptop for another year or 2 just go buy the extra RAM.
DO note though that having more memory also means using more battery power.
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post #18 of 23
7/28/08 at 1:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melodis View Post
Don't take my word for it.

http://http://www.tomshardware.com/r...op,1775-5.html

The more ram you have (up to 4GB in Vista 32 and 8GB or more in Vista 64 makes Vista run smoother & snapier.

A faster hard drive nor a better video card will make your general windows Vista experience just feel snapier like the additional ram will. Now, maybe a faster proc with more cache on it might improve the experience more than the memory, but it's doubtful at a cost of $25 you'll be able to afford the next level of proc.

Trust me, I understand the point you're trying to make about 'well, if you're going to upgrade this, you might as well upgrade this for a few dollars more as well.' But from my practical experience (Vista 64 w/ 4GB of RAM vs 2GB of RAM) I wouldn't go back to 2GB of RAM if someone paid me. It was the best upgrade I've made in my machine in 3 years. And I've been using the same proc now since November of 2005.
vista experince aside, OP is asking about his games he plays

also, vista ultimate uses a lot of graphic crap, so a video card/nice proc/nice mobo/2-4gb of ram would be a plus

each part means something, but to what extent is the end users question to answer for him/her self
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post #19 of 23
7/29/08 at 1:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by drewbar View Post
The cost of RAM is steadily going up again I notice, if you will be using this laptop for another year or 2 just go buy the extra RAM.
DO note though that having more memory also means using more battery power.
Actually, having more memory means more battery life. With more memory your notebook has to access the hard drive less to access the page file (or you can even turn the page file really extending battery life).
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post #20 of 23
7/29/08 at 1:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dr/owned View Post
I've turned off my page files, and vista didn't explode on me or run out of memory (although I wouldn't consider doing that if I was running intensive apps). Still on Vista Ultimate 64, I'm only using 38% of my RAM....not even close to 2 gb let alone 4 gb. That article doesn't even say that a system runs faster with 8 gb....it states the obvious that more available = more reserved and more total theoretically means a more stable system. You can read the comments....no actual benchmarks in that article. And on modern hdd's it wouldn't exactly be the end of the world if the pagefile were used.

And the point would stand, why would I want to use an OS that NEEDS an insane amount of ram to function properly. Heck you can run linux on a system from 1996 with blazing speed.
I'm writing this response on a 1998 850MHz machine with 1GB of RAM on Ubuntu Linux.

I can guarantee you, it's not blazing fast. But, it does a decent job for web surfing.

As for the article not saying it works faster, that's what the entire article is about. Unfortunately in regular Tom's fashion they kind of get lost in their own article but to make it simple, the more memory Vista has access to, the more it uses to become faster and more efficient. I don't think you can 'measure' snappiness with a benchmark, but I know when I use 2GB my comp is MUCH slower. Particularly when I ALT+TAB out of games to check email or browse the web.

Before I had 4GB of RAM, if I ALT+TABBED out of Age of Conan it would take my comp a couple of minutes before I could even remotely do anything including ALT+TABBING back into the game. Two minutes is a long time for your toon to sit idle in a PVP game. With 4GB of RAM I can ALT+TAB out, start an application, and ALT+TAB back into the game in less than 20 seconds. That's the power of more ram.

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