Does an everyday use laptop benefit from 8GB RAM?

[pete6032]

I use my laptop for streaming netflix or sports online, MS office, Outlook, web surfing with 5-6 tabs open. It has Win 10 and 4GB RAM. Would I benefit from 8GB? I don't game or do media editing.

i5 2467m processor

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Probably. (Web browsing isn't the "lightweight" task it used to be - the online sports pages are so script-heavy that they can eat a lot of RAM.)

If you want to know for sure, open up Resource Monitor and leave it open to the Memory tab while you're doing stuff. If you see frequent* activity in the "Hard Faults/sec" graph, then your workflow/workload would benefit from more RAM.

*Occasional hard faults are normal - inevitable even. Even on a machine with plenty of RAM, you'll see a spike show up when you're switching applications or manipulating large files. But if you get blips on the graph when you're just working within a single program (surfing the web, using Outlook, whatever) then you have a problem.

 

[whm1974]

I consider 8GB to be the minimal amount of ram that computers should come with. If you don't have already, get an SSD as that would increase the overall performance of your laptop then anything else.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, 8GB should be a minimum standard nowadays for usability. I run out of RAM fairly often on my Bay Trail Atom dual-core laptop, that only has 4GB on it, as well as my AMD APU quad-core laptop, that also only has 4GB installed.

Also, get an SSD, if you haven't already. That can largely mitigate the need for more RAM, within reason. (If you're actively "thrashing" the VM pagefile, even with an SSD, you're going to see slowdown and pauses. But at least the machine won't lock up solidly unusable, like with a HDD.)

 

[UsandThem]

Agree with the above. If you run a 64 bit OS in 2017 (especially Windows 10), 8GB is the standard amount for the vast majority of people's needs. Some people (e.g. enthusiasts) will say that 16GB is the new defacto standard, but I personally don't believe we're quite there yet, except in certain PC uses like editing, content creation, and a few newer PC games.

Now PCs with 4GB will still work, but Windows will be forced to hit the page file often, and that takes away from the overall responsiveness.

 

[piasabird]

I find running windows defender helps a little bit. Probably over time it is just spyware and and whatnot that can slow you down. Often when you download software they give you free firmware. A lot of the problem is just the OS. Microsoft is the biggest bug you can install. Having open networks also causes problems. It lets all the trash inside.