RAM upgrade worth the money

Hi Folks!

I have a laptop having 16GB DDR4 RAM (8 x 2) running in dual channel mode.

There are two empty slots and I was thinking of upgrading it to 32GB DDR4 by buying two x8 GB RAMs.

But is it worth the upgrade...will I get a significant boost in performance.

if the performance increase is excellent then I will buy otherwise not.

Please suggest ?

G

Are you even able to utilise 16 gb fully ?

When you are running your big apps/games, or doing multitasking .. check task manager and see your RAM usage , if it is not close to 90 % usage then you will not gain any performance by increasing more RAM ..

Are you using SSD ? if not, then buy that it will give you a very good performance boost..

gta5 said:
Are you even able to utilize 16 gb fully ?

When you are running your big apps/games, or doing multitasking .. check task manager and see your RAM usage , if it is not close to 85-90 % usage then you will not gain any performance by increasing more RAM ..

Are you using SSD ? if not, then buy that it will give you a very good performance boost..

Here is my Laptop Config:

Core-i7 Skylake CPU
16GB DDR4 RAM
256GB SSD (primary)
1TB HDD (secondary)
Nvidia GTX970M 3GB
Windows 10 x64 Home Edition

now tell me if it is worth the upgrade ?

I haven't found any huge RAM usage in Task manager

G

Zangetsu said:
Here is my Laptop Config:

Core-i7 Skylake CPU
16GB DDR4 RAM
256GB SSD (primary)
1TB HDD (secondary)
Nvidia GTX970M 3GB
Windows 10 x64 Home Edition

now tell me if it is worth the upgrade ?

I haven't found any huge RAM usage in Task manager

No , it is not worth the upgrade then ..

[MENTION=34930]Zangetsu[/MENTION] I have 8GB memory installed on my gaming system, and I usually play AAA (latest titles) on max. settings, 1080p. Even then, the memory rarely uses up to 100%. I have been thinking to upgrade it to 16GB but honestly, there is no need.

You already have 16GB. No need to upgrade at all. You would not see any difference.

Vineet Sharma said:
[MENTION=34930]Zangetsu[/MENTION] I have 8GB memory installed on my gaming system, and I usually play AAA (latest titles) on max. settings, 1080p. Even then, the memory rarely uses up to 100%. I have been thinking to upgrade it to 16GB but honestly, there is no need.

You already have 16GB. No need to upgrade at all. You would not see any difference.

Hmm...my only thought was upgrading RAM to 32GB will ease out some load on the GPU RAM

^ i don't think it works like that. I guess GPU is responsible to give data to its RAM, it doesn't hold any control over main RAM and hence cannot distribute load among its own and main RAM. Moreover, if GPU could send data main memory directly then it has to wait a bit cause of the data transfer, though everything is in the north bridge, i still think data transfer does takes significant amount of time otherwise why would GPU have its own memory. I am still not sure about all this though.

Zangetsu said:
Hmm...my only thought was upgrading RAM to 32GB will ease out some load on the GPU RAM

Well, currently there are very few games which utilize more than 3GB of video memory, which your card already has. If a game requires more than 3GB of VRAM, say 3.5 GB, then 3GB of GPU will fill up first and then 500MB of system RAM. However, you would never want your RAM to be utilized for graphics at all, because system RAM (let's say DDR4) is much much slower when compared to graphics card RAM (GDDR5), and so the performance drops significantly. I hope your laptop graphics card has GDDR5 memory, because we can't be sure when it comes to GC's used in Indian market laptops.

If you ever see a game which requires more than 3GB of video memory, I'd recommend to drop the graphics quality a bit rather than pushing it to max.

yes the GPU has GDDR5 Memory...
I wonder how the 8GB GPU RAM will perform

Zangetsu said:
yes the GPU has GDDR5 Memory...
I wonder how the 8GB GPU RAM will perform

If the game requires lesser video RAM (like 2GB) than system has (lets say 3GB), it would perform same even if system has 1TB of video RAM. The system should at least have same amount of VRAM which game requires. More than that doesn't matter at all.

Vineet Sharma said:
Well, currently there are very few games which utilize more than 3GB of video memory, which your card already has. If a game requires more than 3GB of VRAM, say 3.5 GB, then 3GB of GPU will fill up first and then 500MB of system RAM. However, you would never want your RAM to be utilized for graphics at all, because system RAM (let's say DDR4) is much much slower when compared to graphics card RAM (GDDR5), and so the performance drops significantly. I hope your laptop graphics card has GDDR5 memory, because we can't be sure when it comes to GC's used in Indian market laptops.

If you ever see a game which requires more than 3GB of video memory, I'd recommend to drop the graphics quality a bit rather than pushing it to max.

That is not how it works. The contents meant for GPU memory will not be transferred/ shared to/with the CPU memory. Unless you have sources to back up your claims. [MENTION=34930]Zangetsu[/MENTION] 16gb of system is more than enough for gaming purpose. Adding more ram wont increase your gaming experience. If you face any bottleneck its probably due to the limitation of the graphics card itself and not memory.

Stormbringer said:
That is not how it works. The contents meant for GPU memory will not be transferred/ shared to/with the CPU memory. Unless you have sources to back up your claims. [MENTION=34930]Zangetsu[/MENTION] 16gb of system is more than enough for gaming purpose. Adding more ram wont increase your gaming experience. If you face any bottleneck its probably due to the limitation of the graphics card itself and not memory.

It exactly works like I mentioned before. If GPU memory is full, the GPU starts utilizing system RAM for its purpose. Its not a new feature, in fact its been there from the start of video processor revolution. If you remember integrated video processors, they never have had their own memory, rather than they utilize some fixed space on system RAM for their purpose.

The dedicated graphics cards started having their own memory only because those memory modules are much faster and eliminates much of the data transfer latency which is there in case of using the system RAM. If GPU memory is used up, it starts utilizing system RAM even if outcome is slower performance. In fact, it can go one more level down and start utilizing virtual memory area created on the hard drive if system RAM is also used up, worsening the overall performance. However, its still much better than facing "memory overrun" errors or seeing missing textures in the game. The developers of graphic card drivers have complete freedom to do so.
source:

What happens when you run out of VRAM? - [Solved] - Graphics Card
Running out of video memory - [Solved] - Graphics Card

graphics card - What happens when the GPU memory is not enough? - Super Use

Zangetsu said:
Here is my Laptop Config:

Core-i7 Skylake CPU
16GB DDR4 RAM
256GB SSD (primary)
1TB HDD (secondary)
Nvidia GTX970M 3GB
Windows 10 x64 Home Edition

now tell me if it is worth the upgrade ?

I haven't found any huge RAM usage in Task manager

What are the programs you regularly use?? How many (and what are the) applications you keep opened while you do the main task??

Sent from my ZUK Z2131 using Tapatalk

Unless you are running multiple VMs, 16 GB ram is more than enough as of now.