Is upgrading to 8 GB worth it?

I just ordered my Vaio Z and am wondering if I made a mistake by paying $300 to upgrade to 8 GB from 4 GB (2 dimms in each case).

I have read since that most usage will not use even the 4 GB and that I will barely ever get beyond the 6 GB usage (which was a $150 upgrade).

I know I could probably save a little money ($100 - $150) buying upgrades elsewhere, but that is not my concern. I got financing and I might as well just get it now rather than later.

My only question is whether I will see discernible differences in boot time, in LIGHT HD video editing and viewing and in the CS4 photoshop editing I will do every once and a while.

If I will use the memory and it will give me discernible improvement I will keep things as is, if not, I may just cancel my order and reconfigure.

I look forward to your thoughts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW (I did order it with an SSD 2 drive array)
Regards,
Mario

 

cs4 is not 64bit so you wont be able to benefit from your extra ram.
i also doubt if boot up time will be significantly decreased by extra ram.
you may be better served with a fast hdd/ssd for both bootup and photo/video editing.

 

Boot times are mostly related to the hard drive speed. The CPU has the biggest effect on video encoding. Photoshop can be memory intensive, particularly if you're working large files. Unless you're working with large files or running apps that are memory intensive like VMs, I personally stick with 4GB and see how it goes. You can always upgrade later if needed. You can probably buy 8GB less expensively at internet retailer and you could sell your old memory to offset the cost.

 

RAM doesn't really affect boot times since those primarily depend on your HDD.
The only instance where RAM would matter in boot times is if you'd have 1GB or less on a modern OS (in your case, it will not matter).

CS4 is 64bit actually and can make use of more RAM.

I'd say you did make a mistake by paying $300 for that RAM upgrade since you could have gotten it for a WAY lower price tag if you did it on your own (you could have rather used the $300 to spend on an SSD which WOULD in fact improve boot times).

Other than that, as far as productivity goes ... well, you can easily open up multiple programs and not worrying that you will run out of RAM anytime soon, plus you won't experience slowdowns if/when your RAM usage reaches it's peak due to superior memory management in Win 7.

You might also see a difference in that HD video editing ... but I wouldn't call it 'huge' by any means.

Bottom line is, the extra ram doesn't hurt and in some cases you will see the benefits of having more than less.
Although it stands that you should have bought the RAM upgrade yourself

 

Although the CS4 suite is not 64bit entirely it does contain Photoshop 32bit AND 64bit versions. Both versions will be installed if you are running on a 64bit system. Photoshop 64bit in the CS4 suite WILL use more than 4GB of memory. If it will be an improvement for the OP is something I can't answer.

I have CS4 and am running Photoshop 64bit as I type this.

 

Hmm, so the only place I would see benefits of having that much memory is when working with extremely large (over 1 GB) files, specifically video files, and with extremely complex photo editing?

At the most I MAY be working with 1-2 GB video files, but mostly to do some cut and paste, cross fading and text. Perhaps I may apply a process or two to help with the image, but nothing really extensive. It would be basically vacation video editing: Coverting HD to SD for youtube and sharing and perhaps some editing on the plane. Nothing much.

The only other thing I would want it to do is play HD flawlessly, which is not memory intensive.

Other than that it is just plain old office products (running multiple at once) and web browsing.

I do like to run a BOATLOAD of programs at once (I must have ADHD). A typical day will see me having the following windows open at once:
Firefox open with at least 8 - 15 windows open to different things.
Internet Explorer possibly with 3 pages (for pages that dont play nice with mozilla)
2-3 Microsoft word pages.
2-3 Powerpoint
A winflash file(notecards)
Photoshop with 2-4 pictures (graphics for notecards)
and then play an HD video without closing anything)

I would like to do all that, in Windows 7, without having ram be an issue. If 4 gigs can do that, then I did make the wrong choice and I will have to reconfigure the machine.

As far as the price. It was going to cost me at least $240 + shipping for the memory at new egg and that is for OCZ Laptop Memory Model OCZ3M13334G. Now that is, potentially a $50 savings but I dont know if it is upgradable, if it is as good as what comes in the zaio, etc. I would just rather pay the $50 extra.

BTW, I did get an SSD drive. I went with an 2 disk array.

 

I too expect 4GB will be fine for your usage.

 

Well I wouldn't have too much remorse over it. It isn't a super upgrade, but it may serve you well down the line. (the extra ram) If you were to lower to 4 I don't think you'd suffer much if at all.

The SSD is really what will give you a boost. Remember that some SSD's have trouble with the types of reads that video demands, so you may not see strong benefits under that application (this varies by SSD model).

Sounds like you have a premium system.

 

I agree with the SSD comments TBH. The extra RAM is nice, but you wont really notice a speed boost by having more RAM, since it seems the applications you wish to use wouldnt even touch on 4GB most of the time.
If its speed you are after, you need an SSD.

When RAM is full up, what does the OS do? It writes to a page file, which is on your HDD. This is slower to write to and access then RAM. Therefore, if you have an SSD, and your SSD is as fast as RAM anyway it gives you the best of both worlds.

 

THANKS FOR THE RESPONSES EVERYONE!!!

Yeah, I went pretty premium and am a little leery about it.

I usually go midgrade, but unfortunately we have this weird lapse of time when you cannot get a midgrade machine that has:
-WXGA+ resolution (preferably (1600X900)
-Ability to play HD FLAWLESSLY (or do Rudimentary HD editing)
-Be very light, fast and still have great battery life.

I thought by now (its been 5 years since I bought my last laptop (though I have built at least a desktop a year), one could get a computer that could do this for @ $1200. WRONG!

The only thing I could get is the Zaio Z.
The Envy 14 is too heavy and I suspect wont come within 45 minutes of the Z's 3.5 hours playing a DVD. The Dell e6410 and Lenovo T410s had screens that were much worse and were heavier, though their battery life came somewhat close. (They also were not as sexy ) Nothing else came close (Shame on you dell for not renewing the XPS 13 or 14 and giving HP and Sony a run for their money! ) And when I saw their price tag I went

So I began climbing up the budget Hill and before I knew it, my thinking changed. I started saying to myself, "If I am going to spend this much might as well get the 256 GB drive (cha ching $300 upgrade), and, might as well get the 8 GB memory (cha ching, another $300), if I am willing to pay $2200, why not $2800? Especially since I will get a 15% discount. Hell the more I spend the more I save!"

Oh the consumerism gods were smiling!

Now I feel like I have to do some penance:confused2:

Did I get carried away? Yes.
Did I make the wrong decision, I dunno.

At least I did not get the bluray burner for $500

 

$300 for 2x4GB dimms is not that crazy. It used to be much more.

 

But at 15% savings you could have saved another $75............

 

Thanks ifti!
OK, so it seems I made the right choice in upgrading the SSD to a 256 dual disk array (2-128 GB drives) (upgraded from a 128 GB array (2-64GB SSDs)), even though I don't really store any files in the machine (30-40 GB at most) . (Really - I am still not sure if I should have just stuck with the 128, since they are both array configurations. At this pint the largest drive I have had in my laptop is 80 GB, I usually just keep larger files in 2.5 external drive(s) (I think I will start up another thread on this question.)

It seems that maybe I should have just stayed with the 4 GB of memory. Seeing that ifti is asserting that the SDD array can provide additional "memory" at the same speed.

 

Awesome:laugh:

 

Correction, it's not totally 64bit. However, it is where it counts the most. So the additional ram will be of some benefit.

While there's no real mistake in upgrading your RAM, it may not have been the most practicable thing to do since you only intend to use your editing software occasionally. Also, as others have stated, you could have gotten it much cheaper aftermarket.

No it's not. I paid around $240.

 

oops! Double post. Please delete

 

i may have missed it in your posts, but you are using a 64-bit OS right?

 

The Z only comes with 64-bit.

 

Especially when you consider it's Sonystyle.com

 

upgrading to 8gb is not a mistake, but paying 300 for it is a big mistake. you could just do it yourself for less then 250.

i just migrated from 4gb to 8gb ram, boy im glad i did that. now everything loads faster and i could not be bothered to close any web pages ( yeah i open lots of pages in opera or chrome)

when playing games, i like to alt+tab alot, with 4gb, after few times of doing that, i will stuck with a black screen and have to force shutdown.

 

What games do you play? I have CS: Source open now and Firefox with 20 tabs, Skype, and MSN on 3GB and I've never had any low memory errors. I've run the same with 8GB (desktop) and have noticed no benefit in extra memory for these tasks. There are very few reasons to need more than 4GB of memory, such as VM, intensive/3D Photoshop or rendering...

 

for my case just cause 2 + using the jdownloader for downloading stuff and the background.

at least jdownloader is still ok compared to december, IDM is the worst...

 

If I may add, my Windows Index rating also went up a point..though I'm not really sure why

 

That index was a freebie. Uncle Bill does not want you to be disappointed

Lots of ram is fun if you use ram disks or as mentioned, PShop with Big digital camera files to edit with the overhead.

The heavy PS hitters are desktops with 16 Gigs or more memory

If the price is right..why not if you have the need?

 

Remember too, superfetch, prefetch, disc cache and other things will use unallocated ram. These off load as the ram becomes more populated. If you start stretching out the 4GB you have you are unloading the ram being used by these other features that keep the system humming along. With 8GB you are less likely to unload those features stored information.

So with this as you hit the 4GB you still have 4GB for those other feature sets and keep their system enhancements running smoothly. So even if you are at only say 80-90% ram usage with 4GB, 8GB has its place.............

 

i would get 4GB at least.. if u really need more cheaper to upgrade urself later on..

 

I apologize in advance if my responses have already been given...I read the first few and thought I would respond.

The upgrade is expensive because 4GB sticks are very expensive...you can not upgrade from a pair of 2GB sticks to a pair of 4GB sticks for this price...it is a GOOD price. The 8GB matched pair will cost you close to $500 and you will not be able to sell your used sticks for more than about $50-75 each.

One of the major bottlenecks in a computer is virtual memory, where the computer uses the hard drive as memory. More real memory will greatly reduce or even eliminate the use of virtual memory in everyday use.

My Vaio has 8GB of factory memory. I have a 256GB Crucial SSD. I have prefetch and superfetch turned off. I got rid of my paging file and all disk indexing. My Vaio laptop is blazing fast. The SSD barely runs most of the time and thememory humms along at idle (Windows 7 Pro 64 bit) with about 1.4GB of memory used, but when I load up 3 or 4 programs and perform normal work, this machine uses ove 4GB of memory and continues running VERY fast. I have opened and edited 8 photos at once using Adobe Elements and my memory usage approached 7GB for a short period, but the computer never really slowed down. This is much different than my prior machine, which always bogged down with 4GB of memory.

You did not make a mistake, in my opinion. Have fun with the new laptop!

Bill

 

You can upgrade to 8GB yourself for half of $500. Also, I doubt you'd be able to sell your 4GB sticks for $50-75, as they would be used, and you can find cheaper new kits.

 

You clearly are the next guy to design W8? You both created and lacked the issues you talked of.

You are not qualified to seriously comment on what you just have. You created your dilemma.

Yea let's get rid of PF and talk about RAM usage? Glad you did not crash. Did you benefit? You do not have a clue. Anyway thanks for the comment but it is anecdotal or pedestrian at best.

Do you know about...............never mind...............

 

I have 4 GB of ram currently and I struggle every single day to work, especially with Photoshop. Photoshop takes up 1.5 GB, Firefox takes up .5 gb and Winows Vista takes up 1.6 gb (usually), if you do the math that's less less than 300mb of ram for anything else, if I open most other programs everything comes to a stand still. I've ordered a computer with 16GB of ram. 8GB-12Gb is a good range to have.

 

Actually, Photoshop CS4 is 64Bit

 

On Photoshop - it really depends with what kind of files you work.
I cannot create a 3 exposure 21MP HDR on my 4GB Vaio - I can create a 3GB HDR and the max panorama I can save is about 100MP - but if you use plenty of layers you'll have large files too.

HD video editing - if the software is 64 Bit it should benefit from additional RAM, but maybe its set to use the HDD/SSD as a Cache and won't need.
I got Pinnacle Studio 14 to edit my 5D MK II's files - and it doesn't use more than 800MB RAM if I am not mistaken.

For RAM intensive tasks in RAM reliant software more RAM = better, the question is here, is your software RAM reliant and your tasks RAM intensive

 

Unless you have a specific reason/application for 8GB its probably not worth it. I got 8GB of ram for my work laptop since I multitask a lot, sometimes use VM's, and sql server seems to eat memory with large script files, but even then sometimes I doubt my choice. The price premium for 8GB is huge over 4GB.

For my gaming laptop I got 8GB and well it was probably a waste, but whatever.

 

This kind of post is really not needed. He stated his experience. There's nothing wrong with that. I like to read about other people experiences. Furthermore it is related to this thread. What do you have to offer? What you think? What you read? How do I know it's true? He stated his experience, which is what actually happens in real life. Whether getting rid of PF or is good or not, is not for you or me to decide. It didn't crash his system, so obviously it's something that worked.

@OP, IMO, looking at what you use your laptop for, it is worth it. You can benefit the extra RAM.

 

Can you benefit from it? yes. Could you benefit more from $300 dollars worth of pixy-stix? This is the question.

 

oh yeah i forgot about photoshop cs4. it has both a 32 and 64 bit application.

in cs5 however photoshop, after effects, and premiere pro are all 64-bit. AE and PPro will definitely benefit from the extra ram

 

there's no point upgrading to 8gb.. i'm running firefox with a bunch of tabs opened and msn.. and i'm using 1.29gb, i'd be hard pressed to ever go up to 3gb

it's like upgrading to a 1tb hard drive when you have a hard time filling up 500gb

 

There is more than just Firefox to use up RAM - and if you check my post above I can easily fill the 3GB that my Vaio can use...
(With Photoshop which the OP apparently uses)