Question 8GB or 16GB

[NigelJ]

My laptop, a four year old HP Pavilion 14, has 4GB of RAM. It has the option to take up to 16GB. I realise that increasing to 8GB would speed it up, but would going to 16GB make any noticeable difference over 8GB?

 

[Lutfij]

HP Pavilion 14
You might want to pas son the model and SKU to your laptop. HP have a number of Pavilion's in their portfolio with a 14" screen.

As for your predicament, what sort of tasks do you perform with your laptop? In 2025, you should aim at 16GB's of ram, if your laptop supports it. As for what kind of ram you drop into your laptop, that's where the need for your laptop's model and SKU comes in. If it has ram slots worth populating and if your laptop can accept more ram at a higher frequency.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I realise that increasing to 8GB would speed it up, but would going to 16GB make any noticeable difference over 8GB?

It doesn't increase performance.
It allows

running more apps simultaneously,​

web browser to have more tabs open,​

running more memory demanding apps.​

​

If your current workload/current apps work fine, then increasing ram wouldn't improve anything.
Anyway - for a modern pc I'd consider 16GB to be minimum.

 

[boohoo2u]

I agree with the other people comments, it does depend on what you are using it for. If you was buying a new laptop now then 16GB is standard.
I remember going from 4GB to 8GB and the difference is most notable, as when you ran out of 4GB memory it paged it out to your hard drive hence feeling slow. When I went from 8GB to 16GB it is less notable but does depend on what programs you are using.
If you go to the Task Manager, click on Performance tab, then Memory, it should give you an idea of your current usage and what memory is left available.
Also remember that if your Laptop uses onboard graphics, then some of your memory will also be used up for this purpose.

 

[DRagor]

Few months ago one of my RAM sticks broke and I was forced to live on 8GB for a couple of weeks. That was an abysmal experience. Windows would occupy 4GB and Firefox eat the other 4 leaving me out of RAM even before I started any real program. IMO 16 is an absolute minimum today, with 32 being the reasonable target for any machine that is supposed to run a couple of years if you value your comfort of PC using.

 

[Bob.B]

My laptop, a four year old HP Pavilion 14, has 4GB of RAM. It has the option to take up to 16GB. I realise that increasing to 8GB would speed it up, but would going to 16GB make any noticeable difference over 8GB?

Depends on what you do with the pc.
Better to have too much ram than not enough ram.

 

[drivinfast247]

IME going from 4 to 8gb RAM does in fact increase performance as apps aren't constantly going into pagefile due to lack of memory.

 

[Misgar]

Windows would occupy 4GB and Firefox eat the other 4 leaving me out of RAM even before I started any real program

As @faalin said in a recent post, if you "appear" to be using all available RAM, disable SysMain. It stops Windows pre-loading programs it thinks you might need, only to flush them out when you load something else. It made a difference on an old laptop with only 4GB RAM, before I upgraded to the maximum 8GB.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/percentage-of-memory-usage-on-application-is-wrong.3871539/

If your current workload/current apps work fine, then increasing ram wouldn't improve anything.

Sometimes fitting a second SODIMM results in double the memory bandwidth if the BIOS switches from Single Channel to Dual Channel mode. Maybe only a 5% difference in real terms, but it can make Windows seem "snappier". You might not use the extra RAM, but you've made the memory interface faster.

If you remove a single 8GB SODIMM and fit a matched pair of 4GB modules, you have the same amount of RAM but with 4GB + 4GB you might get double the bandwidth. Not guaranteed on all laptops. Some remain in Single Channel even with two identical SODIMMs, just to be annoying.