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I have a pc with 4 gb of ram. I am thinking of buying 16 gb of ram because it might help windows 7 cache more "stuff" and I would browse stuff faster and maybe it would allow games to cache all data as I play and decrease disk reads.
Does windows 7 need a fixed amount of ram space for cache or does windows 7 use all the ram it can? Will installing 16 gb of ram make a significant impact on my experience?
Uğur Gümüşhan
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 1 216
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Windows will be able to use as much RAM as you install, as long as you're running a 64-bit version. 32-bit versions are limited to 4 GB of RAM, which they then dedicate 0.25 GB towards reserved space, so it will appear as 3.75 GB of usable RAM.
Whether or not the extra 12 GB of RAM will impact your experience depends on the programs you are using. More recent games (within the last 5 years) will probably work better on the system than before. Browsing the internet may not be faster, mainly due to the fact that the typical bottle-neck is the modem/router, and not the PC being used.
Kruug
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 5 078
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Superfetch will analyze your usage patterns and loads the data into the RAM which you access very often. There is no specific amount Windows tries to cache.
magicandre1981
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 86 560
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If you're running a x64 version of Windows7, you can use 16gb of ram.
Remember that it's an huge quantity of memory, and you (probably) won't need it unless you use some specific software (video render, server applications).
8gb are enough, and I don't think you will see any improvement over this quantity (modern games usually use 2/3 gb of ram).
AndreaCi
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 1 310
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If you have a 64-bit version of Windows, you can add as much RAM as your machine can hold. It's cheap, and it can't hurt. Windows will use all RAM that's not being used for something more important as a disk cache. So it will provide some increase in performance. For typical users, there is essentially no benefit for amounts over 8GB.
David Schwartz
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
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For playing video games all you need is a good graphics card (basically).
The amount of ram won't help as much, what sort of games are you playing? Do you have an onboard graphics card currently? I would strongly suggest upgrading to a dedicated graphics card. It will speed up a lot of things.
Sanchit
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 127
nvidia gt425m with 2gb graphics memory – Uğur Gümüşhan – 2013-02-18T15:41:56.617
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Windows is very cache happy and will expand the disk cache to use all the available (free) RAM if there is no pressing need from applications, up to the amount that your edition of Windows can use. On a 12GB system with Windows 8 I have seen the disk cache get up to 9.8GB, the remainder being apps I was using.
Windows 7 Home Premium can use up to 16GB, Ultimate can use up to 128GB.
I have 12GB of RAM and I do notice a difference in loading times from 6GB on large "open world" games like Skyrim. Traveling between areas is noticeably faster as it is already in the cache though with a fast hard disk the differences in speed is quite small. Games that load levels completely may initially load a bit faster but I would expect them to have no real benefit after that.
Mokubai
Posted 2013-02-18T14:55:05.007
Reputation: 64 434
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What will make a difference with that much RAM, is the RAMDisk you could install. http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk .
You can then put your TEMP folders and cache folders on there, which will make a large difference. RAM can easily read and write at 2GB/sec.