Question Affect of going from 16GB to 32GB

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Just wondering - have any of you noticed much of a difference in your systems when going from 16GB of RAM to 32GB?

 

[Charlie98]

For most of 2010-2020 I've been spec'ing systems for basic use with 4GB RAM. In the later years I noticed that Win10's memory usage peaks higher than it used to and so on 4GB systems I was sometimes seeing 75-80% memory usage without any apps open. At that point I decided to make my minimum recommendation for basic use to be 8GB, because even a single tab in use in Google Chrome will chew up in the neighbourhood of a gig of RAM.

I hadn't thought about that... I went from W7 (on my older builds,) to W10 on my new one, and have since upgraded one of the Sandy machines to W10. Interesting...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

At that point I decided to make my minimum recommendation for basic use to be 8GB, because even a single tab in use in Google Chrome will chew up in the neighbourhood of a gig of RAM.

Yeah, I'd set 8GB as recommended minimum spec today. RAM is cheap-and-cheerful, and I certainly wouldn't build or purchase anything lower.

My older Apollo Lake laptop (ASUS N403NA) does make do with 4GB, but it's running minty flavoured Linux with xfce. Windows? Forget about it. Unusable due to Windows Update.

I hadn't thought about that... I went from W7 (on my older builds,) to W10 on my new one, and have since upgraded one of the Sandy machines to W10. Interesting...

Don't forget 10 adds memory compression to Windows, so it may just run a bit better then 7/8(.1) on lower spec hardware with on the fringe RAM.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Don't forget 10 adds memory compression to Windows, so it may just run a bit better then 7/8(.1) on lower spec hardware with on the fringe RAM.

In theory only. I've had better luck running Windows 8.1 Bing Edition smoothly on older hardware. Windows 10 loves to thrash the storage a lot.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In theory only. I've had better luck running Windows 8.1 Bing Edition smoothly on older hardware. Windows 10 loves to thrash the storage a lot.

With a proper (NVMe) SSD it should be negligable. I'd rather not try to run either 10/11 from a HDD or eMMC. Been there. Haven't the patience required.

Poor storage performance hurts a lot more then CPU grunt.

 

[Hotrod2go]

As a PC gamer, little point in trying to source dual ranked 16GB kits these days - they are rare no doubt. So 32GB was a no brainer for me considering the vast number of kits on the market for yrs already in this capacity are all dual ranked. Dual ranked kits make for more frames per second, critical to smooth game play!

 

[Insert_Nickname]

As a PC gamer, little point in trying to source dual ranked 16GB kits these days - they are rare no doubt. So 32GB was a no brainer for me considering the vast number of kits on the market for yrs already in this capacity are all dual ranked. Dual ranked kits make for more frames per second, critical to smooth game play!

Rather then trying to source dual ranked 8GB DIMMs, you can just buy 2 4GB DIMMs instead. So you get 4x 4GB rather then 2x 8GB. It'll cost a bit more, but 4GB DIMMs are ultra cheap, so not that much overall.

Of course, this sacrifices a bit of upgradability and you need a mainboard with 4 DIMM slots. But you can always add larger capacity DIMM while keeping 2 of the 4GB ones. So you'd get 24GB if you add a 16GB kit f.x.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Ah, I see, you are buying from Amazon. Check Ebay, they are much cheaper there. i7 3770k starts at around $70. Also, the 4790k can be had for around $100. Less probably with best offer.

God that's still rough, $100 for an 8 year-old i7-4790k on the wrong end of the bathtub curve that gets smoked by a $105 brand new i3-12100F.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've been curious about that, too. I still have 2 i5 2500K systems running, both were built originally with 2x4GB RAM cards and were completely fine. I have since upgraded them to 4x4GB RAM, just because I scavenged the DDR3 RAM from systems I changed platforms on, but even doubling the RAM made very little difference. Granted, I'm not a tab monster, and don't normally handle large audio or video files, etc.

My newest system... which isn't very new, anymore, is a R7 2700x... which I built with 2x16GB RAM. All else being equal, that is to say my use of the PC vs the older ones, 32GB of RAM was a complete waste of money... the new system seems to use more RAM, but I don't know if I've ever seen it go over 8-9GB in my version of heavy use. Sure, I don't have a page file, anymore, but other than having all that RAM setting there, picking it's nose, waiting to be used... I don't see any real world difference. I can attribute the newer system's snappiness to a more modern processor just as much as too much DDR5 RAM.

Since Vista was released, Windows will do a certain amount of tailoring of memory usage based on the memory available; in those days I often saw 2GB RAM systems hold system memory usage at 1GB and then increase to about 1.5GB when the RAM was upgraded to 4GB, and it remained that way for many years until Win10 started to bloat with more recent feature updates. If you go from 4GB to 8GB on a recent version of Win10, you'll notice that the base memory usage will often be higher than 4GB.

I think the jump from 4 to 8GB RAM on Win10 would be a lot more noticeable on HDD systems. TBH I haven't noticed an appreciable difference when upgrading an SSD system from 4 to 8GB, but reducing wear and tear on the SSD is worth something and when Windows is using the extra memory there surely has to be a performance advantage over a hypothetically identical system with only 4GB RAM.

 

[dlerious]

In theory only. I've had better luck running Windows 8.1 Bing Edition smoothly on older hardware. Windows 10 loves to thrash the storage a lot.

Could that be Windows indexing?

 

[mikeymikec]

Could that be Windows indexing?

Unless a lot of personal data is coming and going, when indexing has caught up, it's done. Win10 booting off a HDD is insanely slow, like a minute and a half to get to the desktop then another 5-10 minutes to settle down and reach optimal performance.

 

[dlerious]

Yeah, that's the idea. They are much cheaper that way. Older tech doesn't get much cheaper when you buy it "new" from stores, sometimes it even gets more expensive due to rarity. With an older CPU, buying used is the way to go usually, you already get pretty good buyer protection on Ebay, even if there isn't a 3 year warranty. Usually the CPU will either be obviously DOA or unstable, and you will get your money back right away, or it will be fine and will last for years.

My jaw just about hit the floor when I looked at replacing my motherboard and upgrading a few things for my Phenom system about 5 years ago. One look at the prices and a new system didn't seem so costly any more.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Win10 booting off a HDD is insanely slow, like a minute and a half to get to the desktop then another 5-10 minutes to settle down and reach optimal performance.

True! (Unfortunately, grumble, grumble, clients that buy budget laptops, grumble.)

 

[linkgoron]

If you use your PC for anything programming related, 16GB won't be nearly enough. Especially if you have docker instances running. Chrome is also terrible. However, I've always liked being on the safe side with RAM - I already bought 32GB of RAM 7 years ago when I bought my 6700k PC (still going strong).

 

[Hotrod2go]

Rather then trying to source dual ranked 8GB DIMMs, you can just buy 2 4GB DIMMs instead. So you get 4x 4GB rather then 2x 8GB. It'll cost a bit more, but 4GB DIMMs are ultra cheap, so not that much overall.

Of course, this sacrifices a bit of upgradability and you need a mainboard with 4 DIMM slots. But you can always add larger capacity DIMM while keeping 2 of the 4GB ones. So you'd get 24GB if you add a 16GB kit f.x.

In theory, that sounds correct but your placing more stress on the memory controller to access all 4 dimm slots (if the board actually has 4 dimm slots) better for the memory controller to access only 2 dimm slots that are dual ranked. Having 24GB is going to result in unbalanced sets of RAM, the system will either boot with it or not & even if it does boot, extensive testing of the RAM will be needed to guarantee stability.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In theory, that sounds correct but your placing more stress on the memory controller to access all 4 dimm slots (if the board actually has 4 dimm slots) better for the memory controller to access only 2 dimm slots that are dual ranked.

Ah, no. Ranks are independent of DIMMs. It doesn't matter if they're on separate DIMMs. Except that more DIMMs will use more power. But we're talking maybe 1 or 2W, so it's completely negligable.

More ranks also equal more performance due to greater parallism. Think of it as a sort of RAID. The downside is that you loose some frequency due to the number of ranks that have to be addressed. So latency can suffer if you don't compensate with tighter timings.

For all out performance you want 4 ranks per channel with as high frequency and as tight timings as possible. For minimum latency you want a single rank with the same. You just need to choose which is appropriate for your workload.

Having 24GB is going to result in unbalanced sets of RAM, the system will either boot with it or not & even if it does boot, extensive testing of the RAM will be needed to guarantee stability.

That is just wrong. Having 3 ranks per channel is no different to having 1, 2 or 4.

 

[Golgatha]

My laptop was the only system in my house without 32GB of RAM in it. I recently found a 32GB kit for $95, so I upgraded. I upgraded because I felt I needed to at this point. Just running a few game launchers and a couple of web browsers was eating up 7-8GB. Add a game on top and you're in the 12-16GB usage range easily. System feels a bit snappier too after the upgrade, but that might just be placebo effect, as the speed and timings of the RAM have not changed.

 

[Hotrod2go]

Ah, no. Ranks are independent of DIMMs. It doesn't matter if they're on separate DIMMs. Except that more DIMMs will use more power. But we're talking maybe 1 or 2W, so it's completely negligable.

More ranks also equal more performance due to greater parallism. Think of it as a sort of RAID. The downside is that you loose some frequency due to the number of ranks that have to be addressed. So latency can suffer if you don't compensate with tighter timings.

For all out performance you want 4 ranks per channel with as high frequency and as tight timings as possible. For minimum latency you want a single rank with the same. You just need to choose which is appropriate for your workload.



That is just wrong. Having 3 ranks per channel is no different to having 1, 2 or 4.

Disagree, I think you should get your facts straight about how ranks & dimms work, a quick refresher can be found here & here.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Disagree, I think you should get your facts straight about how ranks & dimms work, a quick refresher can be found here & here.

Well of course. What do I know. I've only been at this for 30-odd years.

 

[shady28]

I went to 32GB back in 2020 when I last upgraded. The difference is quite noticeable and often on otherwise mundane applications - like Outlook.

Some folks here also don't understand what that memory chart in Task Manager is telling them.

Click on the memory usage block in task manager after running for a while, then mouse over the area at the bottom under memory composition.

That memory does get used.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Normal folks aren't as perceptive to slowness as enthusiasts are. We can even "feel" when the CPU reaches 100% for a few seconds because of mouse lag or some browser tab getting stuck a bit or not loading immediately. For people like us, 32 GB matters a lot. For the rest, max 16 GB is enough.

 

[Ajay]

Unless you are running VMs, doing photoshop or rendering, there is very little return with 32 gb

I agree. I just enabled paging on my wife’s system(16GB) when I built it and she can keep all her stuff running, including a ridiculous number of Chrome tabs and PDFs.

 

[mikeymikec]

I went to 32GB back in 2020 when I last upgraded. The difference is quite noticeable and often on otherwise mundane applications - like Outlook.

Some folks here also don't understand what that memory chart in Task Manager is telling them.

Click on the memory usage block in task manager after running for a while, then mouse over the area at the bottom under memory composition.

That memory does get used.

View attachment 65245

Re standby/caching - Yes, but does it result in a noticeable performance difference is the question.

The fact of the matter is that peoples' computer usage differs drastically. For example, largely because I grew up with systems whereby resources were relatively low (especially RAM), my habit involves shutting down stuff that I'm not currently using. I'll hit an absolute peak of 30-ish tabs when doing up a computer build quote for a customer but when I'm done, I close all those tabs. Most of the time if I even have a browser open (Firefox, rather than more memory hungry browsers like Chromium derivatives), I'll have fewer than ten tabs open.

I also use Thunderbird rather than Outlook (and Outlook is a memory monster in comparison), and at most I'll probably have six apps open simultaneously with say an average of three. Back when I was using Windows, I used MSE/Windows Defender rather than third party stuff. Another person here was saying how they have their browser open while they're gaming, and as a general rule I wonder why on earth anyone would do that. Aside from a completely useless set of resources used, there's also the potential for CPU spikes from some dodgy web page or say graphics hardware acceleration in the browser messing with the game, plus what I already said about my thrifty roots. I've thought about being less thrifty but I honestly can't see what purpose it would serve; the less stuff I have open, the easier it is to find what I'm looking for, and I find browser bookmarks far easier to handle than a multitude of tabs. I use VMs but not for long and I shut them down when I'm done.

Now, let's flip the usage scenario. Ballpark OS (Win10) average memory usage at 4GB. A friend of mine once said they typically have 50 tabs open in Chrome, that's probably 4GB RAM used. Add Outlook, probably another 1GB. Add a third party 'Internet Security' product and there goes another 1GB RAM. Throw in a VM that they can't be bothered to close, another 4GB RAM gone. It definitely all adds up.

I bet that if I was using Win10 (rather than Linux) as my primary OS that the overall memory footprint on my system would be about half yours. As it currently stands, even though I'm using the reputedly "bloaty" KDE, overall memory usage is currently... 1.5GB.

Back to the point about caching - it's an old argument. Logically a modern OS should aim to immediately consume as much RAM as possible and cache the hell out of everything. However, my bet is, especially with the adoption of SSDs, is that it doesn't result in a sufficient performance boost to justify the extra management work. I'm sure that someone at Microsoft/whatever-other-OS-maker took the time to try out RAMdisk'ing the entire OS and apps into an obscene amount of RAM and found that while there was a performance boost, there's plenty of other performance obstacles to be overcome before it was a worthwhile boost to consider rolling out to the masses.

 

[igor_kavinski]

including a ridiculous number of Chrome tabs and PDFs.

What would be your definition of a ridiculous number? I have both Chrome and Firefox tabs open, let's say 300 (since only one tab should be active at any one time, the other tabs shouldn't strain the system) but unchecked, this can cause the memory to balloon up to 95% usage and then either Chrome (I seriously suspect it's Chrome because the Chrome process starts showing high disk activity in MB/s) or Windows starts paging to free RAM and even on a SATA SSD, it can lead to an unresponsive system. Few times, things got so bad that only thing I could do was CTRL-ALT--DEL to bring up Task Manager but even Task Manager became unresponsive. After something like 15 minutes, I was able to use Task Manager to kill some of the biggest memory hogging processes. This is with 32 GB RAM.

 

[Ajay]

What would be your definition of a ridiculous number? I have both Chrome and Firefox tabs open, let's say 300 (since only one tab should be active at any one time, the other tabs shouldn't strain the system) but unchecked, this can cause the memory to balloon up to 95% usage and then either Chrome (I seriously suspect it's Chrome because the Chrome process starts showing high disk activity in MB/s) or Windows starts paging to free RAM and even on a SATA SSD, it can lead to an unresponsive system. Few times, things got so bad that only thing I could do was CTRL-ALT--DEL to bring up Task Manager but even Task Manager became unresponsive. After something like 15 minutes, I was able to use Task Manager to kill some of the biggest memory hogging processes. This is with 32 GB RAM.

I did add a chrome extension that seems to unload tabs that are idle for a certain amount of time - maybe that’s the trick? Paging the an NVMe is frankly unnoticeable. I remember paging out on Win 4.0 to slow 5400 RPM HDDs - it grated on my nerves till I bumped my memory up to 512MB.

 

[Furious_Styles]

What would be your definition of a ridiculous number? I have both Chrome and Firefox tabs open, let's say 300 (since only one tab should be active at any one time, the other tabs shouldn't strain the system) but unchecked, this can cause the memory to balloon up to 95% usage and then either Chrome (I seriously suspect it's Chrome because the Chrome process starts showing high disk activity in MB/s) or Windows starts paging to free RAM and even on a SATA SSD, it can lead to an unresponsive system. Few times, things got so bad that only thing I could do was CTRL-ALT--DEL to bring up Task Manager but even Task Manager became unresponsive. After something like 15 minutes, I was able to use Task Manager to kill some of the biggest memory hogging processes. This is with 32 GB RAM.

300 is ridiculous, you're a winner!