I use Win7 and find 8gb is a decent performance boost with SSD. 4gb is bare minimum on Win10.
I have 16gb on a i7 thinkpad w530
I have 16gb on a i7 thinkpad w530
RAM question
- Thread starter Hokiefyd
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I just went from 6Gb to 16Gb on my Win 8.1 HP 17 Pavilion laptop. Made a big difference especially on start up and shut down. But I also fubared the keyboard ribbon cable lock tab. Stupid HP makes you completely disassemble the thing to put in ram. The slots are on the bottom of the MB and no access door on the bottom.
Quick question is yes. Windows 10 is pretty good at caching/preallocating RAM based on the amount available. Install more RAM, you'll most likely idle with more "in use" than you did before.
As far as the most bang for the buck upgrade, go with others say and upgrade to an SSD.
As far as the most bang for the buck upgrade, go with others say and upgrade to an SSD.
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I went from xp with 4gb to win 7 and 8gb....and a 520mb graphics card....very fast now
Originally Posted By: NateDN10
Yes. The OS uses the hard drive as a (much slower) backup for RAM - this is called a paging file. Otherwise the computer or at least a specific application would crash as soon as applications requested more RAM than was available.
OSes also preemptively fetch data from hard drive to RAM, and may not remove data from RAM after an application exits, if free space is available. This is to improve performance.
So, long story short, if you're just doing basic web browsing and that sort of thing you probably won't notice the difference. But if you have many applications open or are doing more intensive things like video/photo editing, CAD, video games, you'll definitely notice an improvement with additional RAM.
This,
Most operating systems use all the memory. They may use some of it for file system caching and holding program code (not the data, the actual program)
When they are under pressure for RAM, they can release pages devoted to file system caching and code pages for programs that are no longer running.
Once they run out of these options, they will begin to use the on disk swapping/paging area to relocate pages of memory as needed.
The more memory you have, the longer it will take to get to that condition, if ever.
On another thread, I wrote up my comparison of RAM access and disk access. It was an example I used back in the 1990s when I taught Solaris administration.
The bottom line is the difference in magnitude is minutes to months. What would take a minute in 60ns RAM (and RAM is faster today) takes about 4-5 months on disk (10ms access)
Yes. The OS uses the hard drive as a (much slower) backup for RAM - this is called a paging file. Otherwise the computer or at least a specific application would crash as soon as applications requested more RAM than was available.
OSes also preemptively fetch data from hard drive to RAM, and may not remove data from RAM after an application exits, if free space is available. This is to improve performance.
So, long story short, if you're just doing basic web browsing and that sort of thing you probably won't notice the difference. But if you have many applications open or are doing more intensive things like video/photo editing, CAD, video games, you'll definitely notice an improvement with additional RAM.
This,
Most operating systems use all the memory. They may use some of it for file system caching and holding program code (not the data, the actual program)
When they are under pressure for RAM, they can release pages devoted to file system caching and code pages for programs that are no longer running.
Once they run out of these options, they will begin to use the on disk swapping/paging area to relocate pages of memory as needed.
The more memory you have, the longer it will take to get to that condition, if ever.
On another thread, I wrote up my comparison of RAM access and disk access. It was an example I used back in the 1990s when I taught Solaris administration.
The bottom line is the difference in magnitude is minutes to months. What would take a minute in 60ns RAM (and RAM is faster today) takes about 4-5 months on disk (10ms access)
I just upgraded my Mac which had survived on 4GB for 5 years. This particular computer has four ram slots. You have to fill them in pairs. It came with two slots filled with 2 GB each. Now, it has 4x4GB or 16 total. I purchased from Ramjet and the order was filled promptly and accurately. BTW, they had specs on all macs, number of slots and all the different combinations you can possibly use. Of interest, they have tested Apple products to twice the specified factory capacity and offer products for this. For example, mine was spec'd at 16 max but they have tested and sell a package for 32 total (4x8).
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Originally Posted By: Indydriver
I just upgraded my Mac which had survived on 4GB for 5 years. This particular computer has four ram slots. You have to fill them in pairs. It came with two slots filled with 2 GB each. Now, it has 4x4GB or 16 total. I purchased from Ramjet and the order was filled promptly and accurately. BTW, they had specs on all macs, number of slots and all the different combinations you can possibly use. Of interest, they have tested Apple products to twice the specified factory capacity and offer products for this. For example, mine was spec'd at 16 max but they have tested and sell a package for 32 total (4x8).
Actual Apple ram amounts in computers with slots tend to be on the conservative side, especially since to put in the maximum amount you will often need to be very picky about RAM selection.
There are also some oddball maximum amounts-as an example a lot of the MacBooks and non-unibody Macbook Pros max at 6gb. Going back to the PPC days, there were a couple of computers that would max at 384-they could take 1x128mb and 1x256mb.
My mid-2012 MBP has a processor that can theoretically support 32gb of RAM. The issue, though, is that it supports a maximum of 8gb per channel and the computer only is set up to use 2 channels. This means that it maxes at 16gb, or at least according to the processor spec sheet. 16gb DDR-3 modules are running $150-200 each(compared to about $30-$40 for 8gb modules) so I don't want to experiment
BTW, for Mac RAM I usually direct people to Other World Computing. They only deal in Mac products and do a lot of in-house R&D to support the stuff they sell.
I just upgraded my Mac which had survived on 4GB for 5 years. This particular computer has four ram slots. You have to fill them in pairs. It came with two slots filled with 2 GB each. Now, it has 4x4GB or 16 total. I purchased from Ramjet and the order was filled promptly and accurately. BTW, they had specs on all macs, number of slots and all the different combinations you can possibly use. Of interest, they have tested Apple products to twice the specified factory capacity and offer products for this. For example, mine was spec'd at 16 max but they have tested and sell a package for 32 total (4x8).
Actual Apple ram amounts in computers with slots tend to be on the conservative side, especially since to put in the maximum amount you will often need to be very picky about RAM selection.
There are also some oddball maximum amounts-as an example a lot of the MacBooks and non-unibody Macbook Pros max at 6gb. Going back to the PPC days, there were a couple of computers that would max at 384-they could take 1x128mb and 1x256mb.
My mid-2012 MBP has a processor that can theoretically support 32gb of RAM. The issue, though, is that it supports a maximum of 8gb per channel and the computer only is set up to use 2 channels. This means that it maxes at 16gb, or at least according to the processor spec sheet. 16gb DDR-3 modules are running $150-200 each(compared to about $30-$40 for 8gb modules) so I don't want to experiment
BTW, for Mac RAM I usually direct people to Other World Computing. They only deal in Mac products and do a lot of in-house R&D to support the stuff they sell.
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