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Guardsman

Is it better to have more RAM or faster RAM in a Win 7 64-bit system ?

debitcardmayhem

Guardsman wrote: »

Is it better to have more RAM or faster RAM in a Win 7 64-bit system ?

In what respect ...If you have problems then describe, if no problems it is a moot question

Guardsman

There is no problem im just interested in knowing the answer.

debitcardmayhem

Guardsman wrote: »

There is no problem im just interested in knowing the answer.

More is better, generally but then that is dependant on what you use it for.

fwor

More is better if you don't have enough, but there comes a point at which having more gains you nothing at all. For example, for most "average" non-demanding users, going from 1GB to 2GB will probably see some improvement (mainly at startup and when opening and switching between applications).

However, the same user would probably see no gain at all going from 4GB to 8GB. On my laptop, with 400MB reserved for graphics and just a browser and an email application running, I'm using only a third of the available 4GB - obviously I will gain nothing by adding more memory in that situation.

Faster RAM will always be better, irrespective of how much you have, provided the motherboard can clock it at the faster speed. The snag here is that the gains probably won't be particularly noticeable, because the thing that really tends to slow PC response is disk and other external i/o, and not RAM latency.

debitcardmayhem

One caveat to my earlier post -
faster Ram means means more Ewes being serviced , more Ram means .....never mind:rotfl:

GunJack

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

One caveat to my earlier post -
faster Ram means means more Ewes being serviced , more Ram means .....never mind:rotfl:

:rotfl: :rotfl:

Ectophile

If you haven't got enough RAM, then adding more will make a huge difference. If you have more than enough, then adding more will make only a marginal difference (Windows can use spare memory for cacheing files so there may be a little improvement).

Before buying faster RAM, check what your motherboard supports. There's no point in buying fast, expensive, RAM if the motherboard can't run that fast.

Mr_Toad

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

One caveat to my earlier post -
faster Ram means means more Ewes being serviced , more Ram means .....never mind:rotfl:

Now that was mildly amusing :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Ewe can be proud of it

Mr_Toad

Back to the OPs question.

I have 12GB RAM in my work machine when delivered they had 4GB RAM.

I work with some huge spreadsheets where small changes cascade through thousands of rows. With 4GB they took ages with 12GB they are a lot quicker. Also encoding video files is a lot quicker with more RAM.

For general everyday use the extra RAM makes no noticeable difference to performance so it depends if you have a specific need or not.

bod1467

Also depends on what RAM slots you have. My laptop (Intel HM65 motherboard) came with 1x 4GB RAM module. I replaced this with 2x 4GB matched RAM modules.

Whether it is relevant or not I don't know, but my RAM score in Windows Experience Index went from 5.6 to 7.9. I suspect this is more to do with dual channel than more RAM.