8 GB vs 12 GB ram for laptop?

[wreck1]

Just ordered HP laptop i7 gen8. It came with 8 GB ram but 12 wasn’t too much more so I opted for 12. So I will have 1x4 and 1x8. Did I make a mistake? Not so much worried about potential waste of money because I may not notice any speed difference but I’m starting to worry that this configuration of 12 may actually be slower than just 1x8? Any thoughts?

 

[Jophish17]

My honest opinion: your first mistake was buying an HP. Mine is trash. I like the Yoga’s and even MacBook Air (as much as it pains me to say) that I’ve used for work much, much more.

 

[Lightbulb]

My honest opinion: your first mistake was buying an HP. Mine is trash. I like the Yoga’s and even MacBook Air (as much as it pains me to say) that I’ve used for work much, much more.

Since you brought up the Yoga, today I should receive my Lenovo Yoga C630 Chromebook and was wondering others thoughts. I know virtually nothing about laptops or Chromebooks and ended up getting 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash storage.

 

[alentrekin]

Flash is a must. 8 would be fine for nearly everything but the extra 4 might future proof you for beefy apps or games plus multitasking. You arent going to see any noticeable "performance" improvement.

 

[bravejason]

... the extra 4 might future proof you ...

I think future-proofing is hopeless. There is seemingly no amount of memory you can add to your laptop that the software guys can’t find a way to waste.

My biggest complaint with computers is that today’s hardware is incomparably faster than the hardware of 20 years ago and yet I still have to wait for software to load. Yes, the software does more, but I’m not convinced it does that much more. For example, surely spreadsheets and word processors don’t really do anything more computationally difficult today than what they did 20 years ago. Graphics, maybe, are an exception, but even there I remain to be convinced.

 

[RamblinCharger]

8 vs 12 won't make a big difference unless you're running some heavy programs (something like video editing). Like others have said, the best thing I have done to improve my laptops over the last few years is put in SSD's. It makes a huge difference. I think having a quality i5 or i7 along with 8gb ram and an SSD will give you a quality laptop. Brand doesn't matter IMO.

 

[alentrekin]

I think future-proofing is hopeless. There is seemingly no amount of memory you can add to your laptop that the software guys can’t find a way to waste.

My biggest complaint with computers is that today’s hardware is incomparably faster than the hardware of 20 years ago and yet I still have to wait for software to load. Yes, the software does more, but I’m not convinced it does that much more. For example, surely spreadsheets and word processors don’t really do anything more computationally difficult today than what they did 20 years ago. Graphics, maybe, are an exception, but even there I remain to be convinced.

I cannot agree more. Often there are some anti-trusty problems with the way that software requirements are designed. For example, MSFT Sharepoint 2013 is built to require 32GBR for optimal performance. So you either had to migrate to Sharepoint on 0365 with degraded features, live with a deprecated prior version, buy a subscription to Azure for the load, or buy all new hardware. It was known that it ran just fine on 16GBR, and was acceptable at 8GBR but the incremental crippling was built into the business model. They escape anti-trust by leaving the pure hardware business, but their partner "ecosystem" is as direct an indirect funnel as there could be. It would just be harder to prove the case given the dispersed accounting.

And I agree that Brand (especially the final manufacturer) is meaningless. If you get the specs most folks are recommending, you'll be fine. My work machine was $700 and I could play current-gen games no problem. It just has a crappy Acer plastic shell and a bargain bin keyboard (I use my own) wrapped around high quality internals.