Performance Increase?

Greetings!

I Currently have 6 gigs of RAM in my Windows 7 system and am wondering what I might expect in terms of overall performance increase if I upgrade to 16 gigs of physical RAM?

Thanks,

Brian

 

Thanks for the input.

I use my system mostly for day to day tasks (email, web browsing, word processing, Excel, etc). However, it's not unusual for me to have 4, 5, or even 6 applications at once and switch between them regularly. That's why I was wondering if more RAM would help.

My system is pretty quick now, but I'm always looking for better performance.

The best speed increase I ever experienced was when I upgraded my 64 meg video card to a 256 meg card on my old AMD system. I thought about upgrading the video on my current system, but I'd need to upgrade the power supply too. The reason I mention this is I'm thinking about adding a second monitor.

I do play games from time to time (Warcraft III, Starcraft II, Unreal Tournament 3 & 4, COD, Halo, etc.) They all run fine with my current configuration, but again, better performance is the goal

Thanks again for your advice,

Brian

 

16 GB is too much IMO. Anyway if you really need that boost your motherboard is your only limitation.

 

Hi , at 16GB ( 4 x 4GB modules) probably a BIOS halt , according to the vendor your DX4831 series desktop supports a maximum of 8GB total installed ram memory

http://support.gateway.com/s/desktop/2009/gateway/dx/dx4831/DX4831sp2.shtml

however if using 1066MHz modules you can realise a 30% increase in internal ram memory speed by upgrading to 1333MHz modules ( 4 x 2GB ) - this should reduce time to process tasks

 

also , if not done so , update the BIOS driver as this is noted as improving turbo boost performance

in case you are wondering
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...ology/turbo-boost/turbo-boost-technology.html

 

Great tips, thanks! I was unable to find what my system's RAM limit was. I was not aware that faster RAM modules would be compatible. That seems like a good route to go.

One of the main reasons I thought about upgrading to 16 gigs is that when I first explored Windows 7 two years ago I read a number of articles that stated 6 gigs of RAM was the absolute minimum you'd want to have for that particular operating system. That said, I have a few friends running laptops with only 4 gigs.

Taking Arie's advice (well, interpreting it) re: a faster hard drive... I have three drives on my system. 1) the internal 1T the system came with, 2) a 3T running on USB 2.0 and 3) a 500 GIG (also USB 2.0) which I use only to backup data.

The 3T drive has USB 3, so I added a USB3 card to my system. With my main data drive plugged into a faster interface I am noticing a relatively significant speed increase when multitasking and multiple programs are accessing data from that drive.

I will also upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs and use faster modules.

Thanks again for all the advice.

Brian

 

A side question Arie. Is there a point where the RAM could be increased to where it would be possible to disable virtual memory? Or is virtual memory one of these things that HAS to be there?

It was a "Damascus road" experience for myself when I figured that point out a number of years ago now. What is also interesting is that a component supplied in an OEM PC will often be out-performed by a retail version of the same component eg a graphics card. The reason for this is simple: If a component isn't running at full performance, its less likely to fail and consequently the OEM will save on warranty claims.

OEMs are very good at what they do. They will build a PC to perform a function -- JUST... Problem is that when the user starts to add more and more software, the performance often falls dramatically. Its the same old story -- you get what you pay for.

 

Thanks Arie.

That's handy to know.

Like a lot of other things though, for most people, its a question of compromise. Otherwise people can easily go OTT and spend money that its not really necessary to spend with no real performance boost to show for it.

 

I fully agree there. In India, I have seen people throwing tons of money on fancy gadgets & top of the line motherboard but when it comes to PSU, they settle for the cheapest one they can find. Needless to say, it goes kapoot soon.