Adding System Ram: one more stick or putting in new stick?

[ghlnknjc]

I just purchased a Acer M3450 running AMD Quad Core 4100 with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. It came with 6 gig of ddr 3 ram. It has four ram slots with only three used (3x2gig). I would like to add more ram up to at least 8 gig.

What will work better performance wise, adding one more stick of 2 gig making all dual channel or putting in just two 2x4 gig sticks in the dual channel mode.

THANKS

[whs]

It won't make any noticeable difference one way or another. Your current 6GB will probably never all be used nor will be the 8GB.

[DustinH]

It won't make any noticeable difference one way or another. Your current 6GB will probably never all be used nor will be the 8GB.

Have to agree. Unless you are maxing out your RAM and actually need it, you won't notice a difference. But, it'd be cheaper to go with a single 2 GB to fill that last slot. Probably not any noticeable difference in speed with 2 vs. 4 sticks unless you are doing benchmarks.

[J_B_MVP]

I would be adding one 2GB stick rather than changing to 2X4GB. I also agree with whs regarding you never using the full memory capacity. My PC has 7GB memory (it originally came with 3GB hence the odd 1GB) and I rarely use more than 50% of my available memory.

[Digerati]

Oddly, I just got notice of this thread today - so sorry for coming in late.

I find it very odd that computer came with 6Gb when the specs say it is a dual-channel motherboard. That just seem like a strange marketing decision. I wonder if that model had a triple channel board in a previous revision.

Oh well. That said, I agree with J_B and the best solution is to add another 2Gb stick - one with the same specs as the 3rd stick, so all memory can operate in dual-channel. It is not likely the extra RAM by itself will yield any performance gains, but having all the RAM run in dual-channel mode might - depending on how you use your computer. Most of the performance gain may NOT be apparent - but rather background processes may get done quicker. And in theory with more RAM available (since Windows will use any RAM it can find) it should bang on the slow hard drive's Page File less - and that's a good thing.

What will work better performance wise, adding one more stick of 2 gig making all dual channel or putting in just two 2x4 gig sticks in the dual channel mode.

Assuming the sticks are otherwise the same, in terms of performance, 2 x 4 in dual-channel will offer the same performance as 4 x 2 in dual channel. So it is a waste of money to replace your 3 perfectly good sticks. However, your integrated graphics is probably your biggest bottleneck right now.

So, after you bump up your RAM, start building your budget again so you can replace your integrated graphics with a decent card. But note you will probably need to replace the power supply first, with a good, 80+ Certified PSU from a reputable maker because graphics cards are often the most power hungry components in our systems.

[vasudev]

I think if you hv option to add dedicated graphics card, then adding this will provide more performance boost . Chk ur WEI now , what r the values now? Chk after adding a better dedicated graphics card! As advised above can also add a 2 GB RAM to make it 8 GB!