4GB or 6GB of RAM?

[Pickled-sausage]

Its been a long while since I was in the market for computers. But back when I upgraded a desktop in like, 2004, I was under the impression when one is replacing RAM you are to fill your slots with equal capacity RAM (so, for 8 gigs you want 4 and 4, not 6 (if that exists) and 2). This was just what I understood, not necessarily the reason behind it much like how magnets work.


So, I'm in the market for a laptop under $500, would the difference in performance be equal between 4 and 6 and 8, or is there a bottleneck due to most laptops having a 4GB+2GB arrangement, where there would be a sort of bottleneck at all in the performance where I would perhaps be better off with simply 4 gigs? Or are the 2 generally shared with graphics or something else?



Update: I'm looking at i5 processors, with 64 bit windows 8.

 

[captaincharisma]

depends on what you are going to be doing with the laptop. if it will just be surfing the web and e-mail 4 will be enought. the only time you will need more than 4 if if you plan on using it for gaming or video editing. as for the GPU sharing ram i don't know if there are some laptop GPU's that take up some of the system ram so mabe somone else could chime in with that

 

[flexxar]

The difference in performance is so small that it isn't worth worrying about. The more ram, the better. Tests have been done that proved that even when your system doesn't use over 5GB, having 16GB vs 8GB of ram significantly reduced page file writes. This resulted in longer ssd life and more performance.

 

[Pickled-sausage]

depends on what you are going to be doing with the laptop. if it will just be surfing the web and e-mail 4 will be enought. the only time you will need more than 4 if if you plan on using it for gaming or video editing. as for the GPU sharing ram i don't know if there are some laptop GPU's that take up some of the system ram so mabe somone else could chime in with that

Some gaming, I'm mostly looking for student usage though, and given that the common HDD seems to be 5400 rpm I'm not sure if the boost in RAM is even that helpful for gaming given my HDD. I have read some things about quarter stroking however....

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"The difference in performance is so small that it isn't worth worrying about. The more ram, the better. Tests have been done that proved that even when your system doesn't use over 5GB, having 16GB vs 8GB of ram significantly reduced page file writes. This resulted in longer ssd life and more performance."


Interesting, I wonder if that helps battery life at all?