Does upgrading from 2GB to 4GB RAM on an i5 improve performance?

Question

• Core i5 2.3 Ghz processor
• 512mb ATI HD 4570
• 2GB 1333 RAM
• 64bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

Will adding another 2GB to my present 2GB improve my laptop's performance ? And in which aspects ? Will it be better for gaming?

Solution 1

That's entirely dependent on what you use your computer for.

If you're running out of memory it will, if not it won't (or will give at most a modest benefit from additional caching.

To see if you're using more than 2GB of ram:

1. Open task manager.
2. Go to the Performance tab.
3. Look at the value listed as Commit (GB).

It will be in the form A/B. B is the total physical + virtual memory you're using and can be ignored for now. A is the amount of memory you're currently using. If A is above 2GB you're exceeding your available memory and will benefit from adding more. If it never reaches 2GB more ram won't help.

In general if you're only running Win7 and a game at a time 2GB will probably be sufficient, your GPU is likely slow enough to preclude running games that have high enough system demands to need more than 2GB. If you leave a number of other programs, or just a web browser with a large number of open tabs, running while you game you're much more likely to run out of memory.

Solution 2

It might improve performance if you run memory-hungry applications (and nowadays even web browsers are memory hungry), but probably not by that much.

I doubt you will get a noticeable difference in games since the real bottleneck is and will be your GPU.

Solution 3

Gaming performance is highly subjective and depends on a number of factors. Going from 2GB to 4GB should certainly improve performance by increasing the amount of data that can be stored in RAM and reduce the use of virtual memory. However, other factors, such as your video subsystem (graphics card/GPU) and speed of your hard drive may have a larger impact on overall gaming performance. You're unlikely to see much performance improvement from adding RAM for non-memory intensive tasks, such as web surfing or using Office applications.

Comments

[mohsen.21]

Thanks a lot. My "A" value goes up to 2600mb while running Darksiders. Taking the cost of 2GB RAM being about $40 here in South Africa, I'd say it will be worth upgrading. Also I think its a waste having a core i5 and 64bit which can't do much with only 2GB of RAM.. Thanks again for the advice :)