Question Help me understand RAM for general computing and games.

[ibex333]

So I have an older computer with a 4th gen Intel i7 CPU and 8GB RAM. It is running an AMD R7 250 video card. (low profile)

If I up the RAM to 16GB DDR3(which I can do right now) just what exactly will I be gaining in terms of performance? I know multitasking can be increased. But I don't care about that since I usually run no more than 2-4 things at same time.

This machine is also used to run older games and emulators. Will any of those see a jump in FPS or graphics fidelity due to an extra 8GB? I doubt it, but you tell me.

What else can I expect to improve with a RAM upgrade on such a machine?

 

[Shmee]

Most likely you won't get any improvement in older games, though it depends on how old. You will be able to have more tasks open/active, but if this wasn't a problem before, adding system RAM probably won't do a whole lot. Of course all this depends as well on what OS you are running on this, and what other programs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I agree with @Shmee , for the most part, other than to say I consider 16GB to be a base-line RAM amount in 2023 for AAA gaming. Though i don't know how many AAA games released recently that you can play on a Radeon 250.

 

[igor_kavinski]

What else can I expect to improve with a RAM upgrade on such a machine?

If you are using Windows 8 or Windows 10, it should lead to more caching of frequently used data and less thrashing and paging activity of the storage device. Should prolong the life of the SSD/HDD.

If it's Windows 7, it generally doesn't do a lot of caching but I've noticed system responsiveness being much better with 16GB RAM. Every time I've used a system and it felt slow, 9 times out of 10, it had 8 GB RAM.

 

[mindless1]

^ Huh? More ram does not decrease SSD writes. More reads does not wear out an SSD.

Win7 does a lot of caching... if you have sufficient memory to do it.

Based on the description of the system usage, the main thing you may notice is caching of game levels, so level reloads are much faster. However the noticeable amount faster has decreased in the era of SSDs, compared to having to load off a HDD that which wasn't cached in main memory. If the game is very old (> 10 yrs? Depends on the type of game, thinking larger world, FPS) and doesn't have many GB footprint per level then you won't notice this.

Again depending on how demanding the games are, I'd upgrade the video card first, but ram is cheap (like $18 or $35 if you have to replace what's there due to only two slots to reach 16GB) so if you intend to keep the system more than another year or two, I'd upgrade the memory to at least 16GB.

 

[igor_kavinski]

^ Huh? More ram does not decrease SSD writes. More reads does not wear out an SSD.

It does reduce writes by reducing paging activity.

Didn't say anything about reads causing wear on SSD but yeah reads will cause wear for HDDs.

 

[mindless1]

Reads don't cause significant wear on SSDs... unless you set up some very, very extreme scenario which does not apply to anything but a high traffic web server, and even then, there is no solid data I'm aware of to substantiate that. Ratings are for TBW.

Paging activity is pretty much irrelevant in the modern era of systems with 8GB or more. If you get that much paging, you'd know from day 1 that you needed more memory for the certain tasks you're doing.

Wearing out an SSD due to this issue, is a non-issue.

Here's a crazy idea, look at task manger during the most demanding uses and see if you're running low so limited caching, or in my case I knew I needed more memory doing multiple simultaneous 4K video edits and windows told me running low...

 

[TheELF]

If you can manage to make the rams work in dual channel you will gain some bandwidth and latency which should improve some things but if nothing you run takes advantage of it then you will also not notice it.

 

[mikeymikec]

So I have an older computer with a 4th gen Intel i7 CPU and 8GB RAM. It is running an AMD R7 250 video card. (low profile)

If I up the RAM to 16GB DDR3(which I can do right now) just what exactly will I be gaining in terms of performance? I know multitasking can be increased. But I don't care about that since I usually run no more than 2-4 things at same time.

This machine is also used to run older games and emulators. Will any of those see a jump in FPS or graphics fidelity due to an extra 8GB? I doubt it, but you tell me.

What else can I expect to improve with a RAM upgrade on such a machine?

Run Task Manager while gaming, pause during game, alt-tab out and go to the Task Manager performance tab as quickly as possible. If it's reaching >75% RAM usage then you probably ought to have more RAM, because what you're seeing may or may not be the peak RAM usage for your system (Windows's memory usage varies depending on what maintenance tasks it semi-randomly decides to undertake at any given moment). Windows starts taking action to curb memory usage at a point of memory usage that I don't entirely understand, just working on experience. With SSD-booting systems it's much harder to tell, for example the other day I encountered a Win10 system with only 3.4GB addressable RAM and 99-100% memory usage and it was painfully obvious then, whereas a system booting from a HDD and exhibiting say 80% memory usage probably exhibiting a performance hit in my experience.

Task Manager will also tell tell you CPU usage, GPU usage, GPU RAM usage among other things.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

As someone who has actually done almost the same as the OP wants to do and can say that any difference in performance in regard to retro-gaming is marginal. But as others have said it does depend on the game.

Eighteen months ago I went from a Win7 64bit PC with 8GB DDR3 RAM (4 x 2GB) to 16GB (2 x 8GB), often used for retro-gaming, and have I notice any performance benefit? No.

Most truly retro games (I'd class that as 20 years old) are going to be way within the spec of almost anything a PC built/bought in the last 15 years would have. That could mean as little as 2GB of system RAM.

IMHO 16GB of system RAM is overkill for any retro gaming use. The 8GB the OP has now but with a better GPU ie. one with more than 1GB memory would be far more likely to provide noticeable benefits and not just for gaming.

However that of course requires finding a compatible one, at a reasonable cost with drivers available for whatever OS is being used.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Some people are extremists.

Emulators Online - free Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Apple Macintosh emulation

emulators.com

Check out the video on that page. Hundreds of games running at once!

What if someone wants to do that with PSX games? Or PS2 games? Nintendo 64 games? Some people like to bump against the limits of their system, just for the heck of it.