RAM affecting APU's

[actlvate]

So right now I have a budget build PC that has an APU instead of a discrete GPU. I do plan on getting a discrete GPU in the future, but for now I'm wondering how much of an increase in performance on games I would get with 4 more GB of RAM. Right now I have 4 GB of DDR3-1600 RAM. I've heard that the RAM helps the APU take advantage more of the integrated graphics, but I'm wondering how much of an upgrade the extra 4 GB of RAM will be. Thanks!

 

[bgunner]

APU's use the system ram for vram so if you have 4 GB of ram you will end up with 3.5 GB of usable system ram. The loss of the 512MB of ram could cause you to run low on ram causing freezing. Adding more ram prevents the freezing issue because you have enough ram for the system to use.

APU's actually respond better to higher frequency ram. Example you have 1600 MHz ram if you swapped to 1866 MHz or if able to 2133 MHz there will be an increase in iGPU productivity. Adding more GB's of ram just prevents low ram amout issues but will not speed up the iGPU.

 

[robax91]

As long as the stick you add is identical in speed and other specs, you should see an improvement using 2 sticks because running memory in dual channel helps out with certain tasks. You might get a few % in performance boost on your iGPU by adding a second stick, with single sticks being about $40 or less, it's not really a huge investment.

 

[bgunner]

As long as the stick you add is identical in speed and other specs, you should see an improvement using 2 sticks because running memory in dual channel helps out with certain tasks. You might get a few % in performance boost on your iGPU by adding a second stick, with single sticks being about $40 or less, it's not really a huge investment.

This is assuming the system has 1x4 GB stick and not 2x2 GB sticks. Running Dual channel lets the system see the ram ram as 128 bit and not the 64bit that is seen with single channel. The actual increase in memory performance is around 10% by using Dual channel over single channel.

 

[actlvate]

As long as the stick you add is identical in speed and other specs, you should see an improvement using 2 sticks because running memory in dual channel helps out with certain tasks. You might get a few % in performance boost on your iGPU by adding a second stick, with single sticks being about $40 or less, it's not really a huge investment.

This is assuming the system has 1x4 GB stick and not 2x2 GB sticks. Running Dual channel lets the system see the ram ram as 128 bit and not the 64bit that is seen with single channel. The actual increase in performance is around 10% by using Dual channel over single channel.

i currently am running on a 1x4 GB stick, so I think for less than $40 the upgrade to dual channel would be worth it, thanks!