is it worth upgrading to 8GB RAM (from 4GB) with an SSD?

[daonei]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a Phoenix Pro for my Lenovo X201 Tablet and I'm loving the boot/shut down speeds and also how quick and quiet the SSD is!

One question: I currently have 4GB of RAM installed, but do you think upgrading to 8GB would be worth the price? How much more of an improvement would I see considering I already made the SSD upgrade? FYI, I'm currently running an Intel Core i7 L640 @ 2.13GHz.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Danny

[Roylion15]

This model may be solded with win7 32 Bits version , but there are some variant that come with win 7 x64 ...

Thus 8 GB will be not supported because 32 bits windows os can only use +/- 3,5 Gb.

To use 8 Gb you need a 64 bits OS, see if your system is x86 or x64 first.

if x86 (32 bits) You should see if can find Lenovo 64 bits version recovery disks for this model to install win 7 x64 and the replacement of the existing ram 2x2GB by 2x4Gb = 8GB more expensive

You can always install 8GB before upgrading to x64 version but with none benefits.

[daonei]

Thanks for your response. Yes, it is a 64-bit version so it supports up to 8GB. I just want to know whether I'd see a dramatic performance upgrade going from 4GB to 8GB considering installing an SSD. Just want to know whether it'll be worth the $150 or so to upgrade.

[red123]

If you use programs that need more than 4 gigs of RAM, then yes you will see a noticeable performance boost.

[FooDaddy]

Unless you run big programs that chew up tons of ram (or a lot of little ones) you probably won't see much of a performance boost. However, the more RAM you have, the less likely Windows is to hit its page file--which in turn will mean less writes to your SSD, prolonging its life.

I have systems with 4GB and one with 8GB, and I only really notice the difference 8GB makes when I'm running Photoshop-64 with a lot of BIG files open.

Bottom line? Go for it. If anything, you'll be more future-proof with 8GB to play with.

Hope this helps!

[tekio]

First, I'm going to start off by stating I've not read every response to this question; so, please forgive me if I'm restating a lot.

If you are running a 64-bit o/s 8gb will be seen by the O/S, if not about 2.78GB will be seen.

As far as performance increase it all depends on the tasks you are performing, and the way the operating system is setup. In a server type environment, the more memory the better, especially with a lot of clients rapidly connecting and disconnecting with network services.

As far as Windows in a consumer perspective, performance increase percentage greatly decreases with everything above 4-6 GB. even on a gaming system. Multitasking is going to be the biggest noticeable difference with everything above 6GB. For example, I use vmware a lot, and sometimes have as many as three VM running simultaneously. 8GB (or more) of RAM
really makes a huge difference in that case.

[refried]

I use win 7 x64 with 8 gigs of DDR2 800 ram. i have my page file on the SSD (Pro Phoenix 120) set to 1gb. I have no way of knowing if my page file gets used or not (anyone know how to tell?) but in general, I don't see much of an increase from when I had 4 gigs.

I like to think I can open and run more programs, and I game quite a lot, but I don't think I'd buy the 8 gigs again because I don't see a noticible difference. When I bought this ram it only cost me 80$ for 8 gigs of quality Corsair ram so I figured why not?

[nailzs]

I don't use a page file at all with 4 gigs and have never ran out of memory no matter how many programs I have running in the background. I did buy another 4 gigs of GSkill Ripjaw DDR3-1600 anyway though