Dunno, his laptop has been working with no signs of problems for a week now and it was one of those pc stores that made the update (RAM + Harddrive).

My gut feeling is you won't notice the performance hit you take from mixing differently sized memory modules unless you actually run some benchmark and obsess over the numbers. Having more memory, on the other hand, can easily give noticeable benefits.

Stick it in and test it out.

If he's giving away two sticks, I'd take the two. You might be hogging it all for yourself, but the results will be much better.

Also, Kingston and G-Skill are both pretty budget RAM sticks. Keep your Kingston sticks around. You might need them in a few years.

Where would i notice that?

Lol, i just realized i forgot to mention one small detail, i live in a island and he's from the mainland so for the test part would be difficult because mail + he's leaving to Spain in 6 days and we want to avoid unnecessary expenses. :) Yeah, i'm keeping them for a while for the "you never know when you might need it". :)

More memory will be needed for games that use a lot of memory like Kerbal Space Program. More games are coming out that can take advantage of a lot of memory.

It's also handy when you're working with a lot of data -- photo and video editing especially.

If you have a some memory you don't use much and you have a few programs you use a lot, you can get DIMMDrive to turn a bit of that memory into hard-disc-like space and load your games super-fast.

Well, if at least gives me a boost on the framerate (+ 5~10 fps) it would be enough for me. :)

No, adding more RAM won't do that unless your game actively keeps streaming stuff from the drive. Adding more RAM means the game can load more content in it so it has to load stuff less often, like e.g. in an open-world game where you roam around you'd experience fewer loading-times. However, if everything the game needs at the moment is already in memory then adding more RAM won't increase your momentary FPS even by 1.

Basically, adding more RAM allows you to keep more stuff open. If you are like me and you always have a browser open in the background you'll benefit from it. If you play really big games that use lots of RAM you'll benefit from it. If you play small games or you don't keep other applications running in the background, however, you'll likely see little benefit.

Depends on the game and how it implements things, but yes, you might see some reduction in loading-times. Games that stream content while you're playing benefit the most, like e.g. Skyrim or other Elder Scrolls-games. I could give you an in-depth explanation on it, but unless you have programming background or similar you likely wouldn't grasp what I'm going on about. Do say if you want such an explanation, though.

Not really. You could put the whole game in a DIMMDrive ($30 program) if you have enough space. Then you'll see it load a lot faster.

You can see some improvements with things like stutter and maybe even some FPS in some games. Your computer likes to use your memory to pass things to your GPU and its memory, so having a big chunk helps that pipeline. That said, you won't notice an improvement for almost anything.

Marvel Heroes 2015 was a game that helped prompt me to use a 64-bit OS. Just that extra .75GB of RAM made a noticable impact on FPS in that game.

So, in general, adding RAM is going to do nothing. But if you're maxing out, which you may be doing with some software today, then adding RAM will certain add a benefit.

I'd go for the full 8GB, divert 2-3 GB into a DIMMDrive for loading my favorite game, and then enjoy it. That will give you faster load times (by a lot) and give you a little extra oomph for those games that like to cross that 2GB threshold memory (2GB Win7 Kernel + 2GB RAM).

Oh, i get it, i remember playing Fallout 3 and NV on consoles and the initial loadings were fine but the more i'd advanced in the game the game was just becoming this terrible loading simulator (because more boddies on the map + items + etc). Thanks.

you will notice it when you go back from 8 to 4 gig
you wont be able to have as much open as you did before
( i have 12 gig i doubt ill notice it if i go to 16 gig or to 10 gig but i will notice dropping it by half or going all the way back to 4 gig )

you will be able to have lots more open
do more at the same time and reboot less

Personally, even if your DDR-speeds dropped, like, say, from 1600MHz to 1333Mhz and even if you lost dual-channel, I'd still recommend going for more RAM. Sooner or later you'll start to come up with more and more situations where you notice the difference and you'll appreciate that you did choose more RAM. Obsessing over RAM-speeds, latencies and the likes only improve the maximum momentary FPS you may get, but they do nothing to improve I/O-bound stutter and minimum-FPS situations, and it's the minimum-FPS and/or I/O-bound stutter that make the biggest difference in gaming.

That looks interesting (i was watching this review) but for what i understand, that program will put the whole game on the RAM, considering that my only concern is actually TW:S2 than it would be a bit pointless since the game is bigger than the RAM size and, like the guy on that video points out, i would rather save those 30$ for a future upgrade on the harddrive (i think my laptop will die before that and i'll eventually buy a desktop).

Yeah, since i also like to play online stuff while listening to music (and i'm too lazy to close my browser) then i guess that will also help.

im constantly hitting my 32bit browsers upper limit of 3 gig
i have that many tabs open

but it is a good thing not to worry about your system crawling to a halt because you have too much open

if you have a small ish ssd though ( less then 160 gig ) it might be a good idea to turn the windows page file off or half it
because it will match your installed ram
and lost 8 to 12 gig on an ssd is ow