I have invested a good amount of money into a new 15.6’’ laptop that has some of the best specs out there for a relatively low price. It has everything that I would want from a computer. With the jump from 1gb ram to 16gb ram and a quad-core processor, I’d assume that the speed would be drastically improved and there wouldn’t be random lag spikes.
With that being said, I want to ensure that 16gb will be more than enough for the various programs that I will be running in the background. I’m not a fan of 1gb ram, with it lagging while nothing is running, so I would like to know how fast other computers are before I buy the new one. After all, the purpose of me buying this laptop is to free myself from the “laggy experience”, no?
How much ram does your computer have, what do you use it for, and how fast is it?
Unless you are going to be gaming or doing video editing or other memory intensive applications then most people will get by without issue on 8GB RAM. Obviously your OS is also a determining factor as you know it has to be 64bit to utilise more than 4gb and what it is a minimum requirement for that as that would reduce the available RAM for other tasks.
Though if the deal is good (difference between 8 & 16 isn’t great) on 16GB of RAM why not. Most laptops have only two RAM slots if you went with 8GB then to get more you would probably end up replacing the old RAM, not a great economic deal.
I have already decided on 16gb over 8gb. I will be running multiple VMs so the extra ram is needed.
As for this computer, it runs on Vista (32bit). The new one ships with Windows 8 (64bit) and is a gaming laptop that was recommended to me by a friend of mine that owns one.
I am wondering how different users with different amounts of memory fare with their computers so I can get an understanding of how many things one can run without lag.
On my system, when I’m stressing it, I usually have Chrome open with 5 or 6 tabs,
Have just completed and edited a video with Screencast-O-Matic am in the process of
uploading it to YouTube or Google Drive (Screencast) is still open and doing the upload) and am busy back on the forum while waiting for the upload to finish.
At that point, the extra ram and the faster OS would be nice even if what I currently have is a lot faster than the old clunker.
Video manipulation usually takes more ram than most programs, so I can see how it’d stress the computer.
Chrome is actually faster than Firefox on this computer and does not lag as frequent as Firefox (which always lags, no matter how many tabs I have). I can run about 20 tabs without lag on Chrome, but that’s because I don’t usually multi-task. If I don’t look at a tab for a few minutes, then go back to that tab, there is about 8-20 seconds (Just tested with the average being 2-12 seconds. It’s usually longer while multi-tasking) before the tab resumes its previous state. Is that normal?
Well apparently Windows 7 uses less resources than Windows Vista. I tested 720p on a family member’s netbook (win7 32bit 1gb ram) and it runs just fine with very few frameskips after the video was cached.
I have a computer at the senior center that had XP with i gig of Ram.
It ran like a dog with arthritis. Once I switched it over to Windows 8.
the arthritis was gone.
My Win7 64 bit machine is used for 3D gaming and does just fine with 6GB of DDR3 1333 dual channel RAM. 512mb of that is dedicated to the graphics. I also have set the page file to a fixed 512mb and have had no problems. The XP and Vista machines both have 2GB and run well that way, especially the XP one which only has DDR memory. The Vista one has faster DDR2 RAM.
There could be driver problems between XP hardware and Win8. Especially for laptops which many times have manufacturer specific drivers for some of their features. I ran the upgrade advisor on my Win 7 laptop and even it showed problems in going to 8. I wasn’t going to do it anyway but that just shows how driver problems can come up. I believe in using the OS the computer was designed for.
Amazing that with all the systems I’ve converted to Windows 8, I never ran into a problem
except my Dell Vostro Mini and even that one was eventually converted once I was able to change the
“unchangeable” Screen size: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=93544.msg840792#msg840792
Specs in signature, got an extra spare set of 8gb for a total of 16Gb, still undecided about wether or not to throw it in my system, or wait until the warranty is up.
Donovan, I’m a fan of Win7, but the jump from Winxp to 7 without atleast 1.5 - 2.5Gb of ram would cause quite a lot of idle lag, my girlfriend has a laptop with 1gig running 32bit Win7 and that seems to lag during general use, freezing, etc, my gaming desktop, i.e this one, the max I’ve been able to get out of my ram was 6Gb during a bad Gmod server which added 40 Processes, (Due to a plugin, going off topic), but you get the picture.
The drivers I’m talking about are the ones for special keybord functions like volume control, shortcuts to browsers, or other programs, brightness, etc. Many laptops have these features and the manufacturers don’t always provide drivers for Windows versions other than the one the machine was built for and came with. Yes, you can use the machine without those features but why should you have to?
That’s amazing! It’s nice to know someone that has experience with 3D gaming.
Do you think that the XP computer is faster than the Vista computer?
I don’t use XP. I was just using that as an example.
The leveno laptop that I will be getting has 16gb ram and comes with Windows 8. I am assuming that any computer can run decently with 4gb and more advanced multitasking can be done with 8gb ram.
I am still unsure rather I want to keep Windows 8 or downgrade to Windows 7, however.
Here are the specs:
Processor: 3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor (2.40GHz 1600MHz 6MB)
Operating system: Windows 8 64
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT750M GDDR5 2GB
Memory: 16.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz
Display: 15.6" FHD LED Glare Wedge 1920x1080
Hard Drive: 1TB 5400 RPM+16GB SSD
Battery: 6 Cell Lithium-Ion
Network Card: Intel Centrino Wireless N-2230
Bluetooth: Bluetooth Version 4.0
Warranty: One year
Form Factor: Notebook
Camera: Integrated HD Camera
HDMI: HDMI (Out)
Like I said, I will be using this laptop for heavy multitasking work, VMs, gaming, etc, and I want it to last for the next few years. I plan on getting a 128GB SSD for the new laptop and putting the OS on it for faster boot times, etc…
It’s 300$ off this week. That’s a really, really good deal and it features everything that I’d want from a new computer.
Desktop, Win7X64 with 16GB of RAM, I use it for Watching and editing videos and the web.
Laptop, Win7X64 with 8GB of RAM because that’s all it would hold. ;D
