Will RAM improve my 3D and After Effects experience?

[jjpadinske]

Ok I have an AMD Phenom 2 x3 2.7 ghz, Radeon 4670, and 4 GB of PNY Optima ddr3 1333, I want to upgrade since I started to use After Effects and Maya but im wondering how much difference adding another 4GBs of Ram will do, is it worth the $40? I also play alot of games and love having many applications open at once so that will help there but I would imagine running 2d and 3d programs which require rendering and such would greatly be increased performance wise by more ram, one day ill get around to upgrading the GPU but that will be way to expensive for right now, so basically I guess im asking would you upgrade in my situation?

 

[LoneWolf_53]

4GB for $40 sounds like a bargain to me.

Then again I recall paying three hundred bucks for 2GB not so long ago.

 

[someguynamedmatt]

I personally just added another 8GB of DDR3 (G.Skill Sniper to be exact) on sale from NewEgg for $72 plus a free 2gb flash drive. I haven't received it yet, but now is a perfect time for a RAM upgrade.

In fact, NewEgg is having a 15%-Off Desktop memory sale as we speak right now, so if you find something you like, I'd go ahead and order it as soon as you can.

I could list page after page of recommended memory, so I'll just say this: You can't go wrong with G.Skill, Corsair, Mushkin, and Wintec. I'm really sorry to them, and they make great power supplies, but I can't really recommend OCZ's memory after seeing their failure rates. Just pick something you like that has good reviews and you should be okay. 😀

@LoneWolf
Hah, yep, so do I. I also recall paying $156 for a 4GB kit of Corsair Basic DDR3-1333. And that was pretty much exactly one year ago... man... I just couldn't have waited one more year to build this.

 

[Zenthar]

Monitor your RAM usage with the task manager and see how close you get to your current 4GB ...

 

[blackhawk1928]

^+1
Also, an increased amount of ram might or might not give you a performance increase depending on if you are low on ram right now, however, if you get faster ram, like higher frequency and lower latency, that could increase performance as well .