What benefits would i see gaining an extra 8GB of RAM

[Benc12]

So i have 8GB of RAM, and ive been told that i should consider 16GB but i wasn't told why. So what benefits would i see upgrading my RAM? if anyone could explain

 

[Lutfij]

It'll help you with multi tasking. Outside of that if you want to run your system/memory in dual channel mode, you should consider a dual channel kit, like a 2x8GB kit and move forward. I say this quite often, don't mix and match ram sticks. If possible try and pick the same identical stick of ram and pair them accordingly on your motherboard slot(s). If possible a kit would ensure that they are matched as a pair from the factory.

On another note, if you're on Ryzen, dual channel apparently helps speed the system up with the Infinity fabric liking dual channel and DDR4-3200Mhz ram kits.

 

[Gallarian]

That totally depends on what you are using your system for.

For gaming, you will see slight benefits in most games (1-2%), a significant benefit in a small amount of RAM intensive games, and absolutely no difference in non-RAM intensive games.

The best thing to do would be to find specific benchmarks for the games you play and make your decision based on that.

For Workstation applications, that RAM increase could have a very large impact on performance depending on the application.

For general home office use, there would be no point in upgrading from 8GB unless you frequently find yourself opening about 50-60 tabs on Google Chrome.

 

[Rdslw]

It'll help you with multi tasking. Outside of that if you want to run your system/memory in dual channel mode, you should consider a dual channel kit, like a 2x8GB kit and move forward. I say this quite often, don't mix and match ram sticks. If possible try and pick the same identical stick of ram and pair them accordingly on your motherboard slot(s). If possible a kit would ensure that they are matched as a pair from the factory.

On another note, if you're on Ryzen, dual channel apparently helps speed the system up with the Infinity fabric liking dual channel and DDR4-3200Mhz ram kits.

in general it depends how much ram you use. if you use 8 GB or less then gains are nicely described above.
a lot of tabs in browser, or many apps at once will slow down if you're low on ram.
In general what does not fit in ram goes to pagefile on disc. this might be up to 10000 slower than ram (if disc is HDD).
Your OS prioritize stuff so it does not feel as much slower, but if you go 10GB ram+ then OS cannot do much.