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I have a laptop with Win64 bit system with intel i3 processor on a Sandy bridge platform. I have recently replaced my hard drive with a SSD. Now I am also thinking to upgrade my RAM from 4 to 8 GB, however not sure if I could see any visible improvement with that?

I am basically a home user and uses this laptop for normal use watching movies, browsing, MS office applications etc.

Would it make any sense or can I see any performance upgrade if I change my RAM from 4 to 8 GB, in the presence of SSD hardrive?

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  • You question basically asks for people's opinions, which is off-topic on Super User. Any possible answer would depend on the details of your system, exactly how you use it, and what performance you find lacking or want to improve, which only you know. So answers would be speculation and could go in many possible directions, which is also off-topic. However, nothing you describe sounds like "performance" is relevant, unless you currently open too many applications concurrently and the system can't handle it. If you are having a specific performance problem, ask for help on that.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Feb 1, 2015 at 3:20

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Based on your usage of the machine you will see very small or not at all change in performance of your machine when upgrade from 4GB to 8GB. But if you use RAM "hungry" application this can change

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    As an addition to this answer, I will mention, that since you've upgraded to a SSD, you will get good performance on your virtual memory, so you could try raising the amount of virtual memory to (for example) 4 GB if you do experience performance issues.
    – Kristian
    Commented Jan 30, 2015 at 11:27
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Whether you'll gain from a RAM upgrade depends on what your computing needs are. I've got a laptop with 2 GB installed, and it does 98% of what I do on my desktop machine with 4 GB -- but there are a couple programs I run (GIMP, Path of Exile) that would benefit, even on the desktop system, by upgrading RAM (unfortunately my MB is maxed with the 4 GB).

You may want to install a small CPU/RAM monitor of some kind so you can tell if performance issues are related to inadequate RAM, processor saturation, or possibly even video bottlenecks (the latter almost always in games or image/video editing). If your motherboard will support it RAM is the easiest upgrade, followed by video; some motherboards offer relatively easy CPU upgrades (PGA socket CPUs are a breeze, old-style sockets are a major pain, with lever-operated ZIF type in between), while others (mainly laptops) have the CPU soldered in and you'd have to replace the entire motherboard (or in a laptop the whole machine).

Overall, it's likely you'll see a very small increase in performance, if any, in most software going from 4 GB to 8 GB -- but if you play a game with high RAM demands or edit very large images or do a lot of video transcoding, doubling your RAM could be like a major system upgrade.

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