Do you need more ram if the task manager doesn't go over the limit?

[Bruno Vincent]

I use task manager to see how high my RAM goes does some tasks like opening multiple tabs etc...

I have 6 GIGs of RAM in old laptop with SSD Samsung and Pentium B950.

Now I have noticed that after opening about 30 tabs my ram gets close to 6, like about 5.94 and so on.

Does this mean that my need is about 6 gigs?

Would I benefit from 16 or is it just wasting 10 gigs or RAM just "waiting" there?

 

[SoggyTissue]

computer uses what you give it.

you may exceed that 6GB because windows will pagefile the rest.
pagefile = a file put on your hdd/ssd that 'emulates' RAM just very slowly. prefetch and superfetch are programs that goto this file first, before looking for stuff on the hdd/ssd. information in RAM and pagefile show as availible memory in your resource monitor.

This is a reason for NOT turning off pagefile.

you have ssd, so a pagefile on it (though reducing lifespan of the drive) will work relatively as fast as your RAM (relative means about 10x slower, but better than a hdd which would be 50x or more slower / inaccurate but to highlight the difference)

the benifit of 16GB RAM is so that you can play a game (in RAM) and browse the web (in RAM), whilst skyping/discord (in RAM) whilst watching a video about how to clear a level (in RAM - buffered stream) ...
if you have 6GB, every time you swap between the game/video/maybe web browser; your computer will be using pagefile and you will notice a small 'lag' when switching. 16GB will be plenty and switching between everything will be almost instant (as its all in RAM and none in pagefile)