Type and amount of RAM

[us545us]

I'm looking to upgrade my RAM. Is a lower number of RAM but higher quality better than a lot of low quality RAM better? If that didn't make sense Ex. (16 gb of low quality vs 8gb high quality) which one should I go for?

 

[DRagor]

Amount is always more important. Only after you have enough RAM that your software needs, its 'quality' starts to matter.

 

[Traditore]

It depends whether you specifically would ever need 16Gb for games or programms. Why would you get a lot of RAM if it's never fully used. Amount of RAM above 8Gb is unnecesarry for browsing, general multimedia and it won't improve anything.

If by quality you mean manufacturer - the difference is minimal. If you mean performance characteristics, then, of course, the rule of thumb is to always get the best ram compatible with CPU and motherboard, e.g. you buy the best suitable 8Gb of RAM because you can always add 8Gb more when you have money.

 

[13thmonkey]

It depends whether you specifically would ever need 16Gb for games or programms. Why would you get a lot of RAM if it's never fully used. Amount of RAM above 8Gb is unnecesarry for browsing, general multimedia and it won't improve anything.

It's not a matter of whether you need 16, but whether you need more than 8, and if you are regularly nudging 6-7 (which is easy to achieve) when gaming, you can bet that you'll soon hit 7.9 and then you hit page file. You might never get to more than say 9, but you'll be feeling the effects of only having 8.