Question Recently upgraded laptop RAM, system seems to be performing worse

[Jask]

Have a lenovo ideapad S540, that has 4gb soldered ram and another 4gb stick by default. The manufacturer has stated that you can have up to 12GB (so change the stick to an 8GB), but other users have managed to upgrade to 20GB successfully (so changing stick to a 16GB).

I have changed my stick to a 16GB stick with the same RAM speeds, etc, and windows seems to recognise it on task manager. However, have been gaming recently (overwatch), and there are constant stutters. The RAM usage on task manager never seems to max out, and neither does anything else, so I can't figure out why this is performing worse.

Things I've tried so far:

• Updating drivers
• Running windows memory diagnostic - it started, but midway through, I think failed to complete and restarted

Anyone know how I can fix this?

 

[rgd1101]

how full is the ssd?
what the cpu/gpu temp and usage during the game?
ram/ssd usage?

 

[Jask]

how full is the ssd?
what the cpu/gpu temp and usage during the game?
ram/ssd usage?

SSD has about 100gb free, so 850gb ish used
Gpu temp is 74 degrees pretty consistently, which is about normal, which is what it jsed to be
RAM usage seems to be about 44% ish, gradually goes upwards

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The first 8GB (4x4) will operate in dual channel mode which gives an improvement in performance. The remaining 12GB will operate only in single channel mode which will somewhat hobble things. In other words, you're seeing exactly what you should be seeing with this configuration.

 

[Jask]

The first 8GB (4x4) will operate in dual channel mode which gives an improvement in performance. The remaining 12GB will operate only in single channel mode which will somewhat hobble things. In other words, you're seeing exactly what you should be seeing with this configuration.

Understand the dual channel stuff, what confuses me is that before upgrade, it performed perfectly fine with only 8gb total in dual channel, it's strange that now after upgrade there is some severe stuttering even with a combo of dual & single channel going on, because the performance drop off with single channel shouldn't be so significant that it's causing regular stutters - for the most part, the performance differences should only be visible when you are performing benchmarking. It seems to be some other issue that I can't understand.