Is it would be really matter to upgrade from 12 GB to 16 GB?

TukangUsapEmenq · September 4, 2022

In a nutshell, I just got a heck of a deal of a GTX 1650 (MSI Gaming X 4G) from a friend and the thing's still on the way with courier. Obviously, I would (finally) game a bit more after months of using my PC with iGPU. Yes, I do well aware it will bottleneck because of the CPU, but that's what I could have now and I do plan an upgrade later on, and I'll play at 1366x768 anyway. Welp, current specs as below.

Intel Xeon E3-1225 v2 3.2 GHz 4C/4T CPU

ASRock B75M Motherboard

Hynix 8 GB + Team Group 4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM

480 GB Pioneer APS-SL3 SATA SSD // 1 TB Seagate 2.5" HDD

be quiet! System Power 9 500W PSU

Cooler Master T20 CPU Cooler

The problem now lies on the memory (as I highlighted above). I do have 12 GB right now as before when I worked on my capstone design project, I'm in a tight budget and I need more RAM (I could reach 10 GB usage easily lol because lots of browser tabs and apps), plus one of my Team 4GB module turns out to be defective, so I sold it and replaced it with the Hynix 8 GB one. Yes, I'm well aware either that this would affect performance in lots of things as I installed different size of RAM, in fact when I game using the iGPU on Dota 2 it kind of shutters. But in gaming, especially after I got a decent card, how much it would affect the game?

I asked this because, I know my PC hardware is kind-of ancient, Ivy Bridge or such, and I planned to get some more recent hardware later on the next few months or a year later. If I could save some money by not getting another RAM for this PC (if it wouldn't affect that much), I could save it for the next upgrade and getting 16 GB DDR4 instead.

Thanks in advance.

Needfuldoer · September 4, 2022

If you can find an amazing deal on another 8 GB 1600 stick, grab it so all your RAM can run in dual channel.

If it's more than $10, just run what you've got and keep socking money away until you can get something like a Skylake prebuilt.

Chris Pratt · September 4, 2022

RAM capacity doesn't matter unless you don't have enough and start paging to the filesystem. You seem to be getting close to that if you're using 10GB of your 12GB already, but assuming you're not paging yet, then adding more RAM will have not have an impact on your performance.

You should monitor your RAM usage, especially while gaming to verify that you're not exceeding your capacity and not paging. If you aren't, then you're safe to hold out, as adding more will do nothing currently. Now, that doesn't mean you won't start exceeding it next week, since you're getting close, though. So, you can either continue to monitor occasionally or just go ahead and add more to have some safety overhead. Just know that it's likely not going to make a difference in your performance.

TukangUsapEmenq · September 4, 2022

46 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

If you can find an amazing deal on another 8 GB 1600 stick, grab it so all your RAM can run in dual channel.

If it's more than $10, just run what you've got and keep socking money away until you can get something like a Skylake prebuilt.

I planned on Coffee Lake/Zen 2/more recent builds tbh, even perhaps an Alder Lake i3, as I know Skylake would be 'enough' for now, but in the next few years it'd be obsolete again anyway. But it depends if I actually need the upgrade or not, as I don't game and use the PC as much anyway.

28 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

RAM capacity doesn't matter unless you don't have enough and start paging to the filesystem. You seem to be getting close to that if you're using 10GB of your 12GB already, but assuming you're not paging yet, then adding more RAM will have not have an impact on your performance.

You should monitor your RAM usage, especially while gaming to verify that you're not exceeding your capacity and not paging. If you aren't, then you're safe to hold out, as adding more will do nothing currently. Now, that doesn't mean you won't start exceeding it next week, since you're getting close, though. So, you can either continue to monitor occasionally or just go ahead and add more to have some safety overhead.

10 GB is the record of my usage with sh--load amount of Chrome tabs, Matlab, Word, Excel, Premiere, Photoshop, and another else, all opened. Usually it won't even touch 8 GB in total either (in fact it's on 5.2 GB right now). I don't know with the case if I run RDR2/GTA 5/more recent games though (it's a problem for future me), and I'll definitely feel it (it'd shutter like dafuq it would be unplayable, right?) when I don't have enough RAM either.

33 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Just know that it's likely not going to make a difference in your performance.

Perhaps the clarity that I'm looking for. Tagged as the answer.

Chris Pratt · September 4, 2022

6 minutes ago, TukangUsapEmenq said:

I'll definitely feel it (it'd shutter like dafuq it would be unplayable, right?) when I don't have enough RAM either.

Probably, but it's not the lack of RAM really that you're feeling. The CPU is doing work and needs to be essentially fed in order to keep doing that work. The RAM is what is feeding it, so ultimately it can only work as fast as it's given stuff to work on. If your RAM is exhausted, the system must start to page data in and out of RAM using the vastly slower storage of your machine. Even the fastest Gen4 NVMe SSD is order of magnitudes slower than RAM, so this has the net effect of slowing down that feeding process of the CPU. That then obviously affects the ability of the CPU to work as quickly as it can, resulting in things like stutter. It's the CPU that's causing the stutter, and you'll see that regardless of how much RAM you have if it's just not fast enough in general to keep up with the workloads being handed to it. Exhausting your RAM just makes it worse.