Extra RAM...worth it?

hi all,

i currently own a Sony vaio VGN-FZ17G laptop (specs at end of post). i recently bought it after consulting fellow users here, and i appreciate your advice very much.

however, my laptop, for which i often use for gaming, often has some difficulties coping with games, new and old. as a result, I was considering adding 1GB of RAM to it. my concern is that it will not have any noticeable impact on performance, and it will end up as a waste of money.

advice? opinions? feel free to share

thanks

Laptop's specs
http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/vaio/vgn_fz17g_e.jsp

 

Vista will fee much smoother with more RAM. If the programs don't use it then Vista's pre-fetch will use the RAM to cache programs which it expects you to use.

John

 

how about the performance of the computer with the extra RAM in gaming? will there be much difference between performance in games?

 

Are there any pauses during gaming while the program accesses the hard disk? If so, more RAM will reduce the likely hood of this happening. I don't think the extra RAM will improve the GPU performance.

John

 

With your OS I strongly feel 2GB's of RAM is a good thing. I would like to tell you it is your GPU but you say it happens with both new and old games, so the 8400m GT should handle old. I don't think adding more RAM will solve all the problems but it could not hurt, so go for it. And as John said watch if the HDD gets hits while gaming, either you are short on RAM (doubt) or something is running in the background which can have same effect, bad performance.

 

there will be improvements but significant enough to be too noticeable (it'll add to your turbocache but with 128 bit bus width, its pretty much going to do nothing). your computer is balanced for light gaming as it is, so you'll probably have to tone down some settings.

 

I own a sony vaio VGN-FZ15G. I can tell you an extra gigabyte of memory made a big difference.

For the first month I had my FZ I only had one GB of memory and I can never fully max out BF2 (I couldn't turn that filtering stuffing on and some things had to be set to medium). Now with the extra gigabyte of memory with some helping out the graphics I can max out the settings and get an extra 20 or so frames. I had a similar experience in the medal of honor:airborne demo, I could go from low to medium graphics settings.

When you install extra memory don't be put off that in task manager the memory usage as a percentage seems to be really high compared to before, your FZ is utilizing the extra memory which you will notice.

So with my experiences hell yes I would get another GB of memory.

 

After I put an extra 512mb to my 1024mb,(I had 2x512, and I thought I ordered 2x1GB, but only one showed up so another one is on the way right, how stupid of me) my lappy was like so much faster.
With 1GB, I was constantly at less than 200mb of ram free just doing internet.
So defiantly worth upgrading to 2GB

 

more ram is always better. no one can get enough ram ^^

 

thanks guys for your opinions. i guess i'll end up getting that extra gig of RAM