Will upgrading from 1 8gb ram to 16gb of ram increase anything for me?

[mattangle]

I currently am running 8gb of ram (1 stick) with my setup and its doing a great job, however I have a little cash flow right now so I am wondering if upgrading to 16gb will increase my computers gaming speeds/load times/anything really, or if its just a waste of time. I play WoW, Minecraft, LoL some FPS Steam games and Starcraft 2, I'll provide my specs below. Thanks for any advice

Mobo- Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
CPU- AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor
GPU- Asus GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card
RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
SSD- Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
HDD- Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
PSU- Corsair Gaming 800W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
CPU Cooler- Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
OS- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit)

Thanks again in advance!

 

[KoopaCreeper]

It probably wouldn't help much. Unless you edit videos daily and/or like leaving 200+ browser tabs open, you don't need 16GB. It's possible that you'd see a slight performance increase by getting a second module to run in dual channel (exact same model number as the original), but in my opinion it isn't worth it, because that's like $60 for a theoretical 1-2 more FPS.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Today's computers use dual channel RAM and tyu see a performance decrease, though moderate, if not using sticks in pairs. That's why RAM tyopically comes in packages of 2 (or 4) and they are tested and guaranteed to work together at rated speed. When you buy one at a time you lose that performance benefit of dual channel and the 2nd stick that you buy may not and is not guaranteed to work with the old stick so tho likely to work, it's always an iffy situation.

 

[jossrik]

I keep about ten tabs open in Chrome and play games and have my tv running in the background on my computer (not netflix, I'm not streaming while gaming, it's tv shows off my hard drive that I downloaded), Anyhow, a short while ago I had 8Gb (2x4Gb), and my game shut off and the computer told me I had run out of memory. So I upgraded to 16Gb (2x8Gb) and I did notice that everything was a little snappier with the 16Gb. When I had my memory in the wrong channels so it was only running single channel (my little brother built the computer, found out when I did a check with CPU-Z), changed it to dual channel, and there was a noticeable difference in speed. So yes, you will notice a speed increase not only in the 16Gb, but in the dual channel. I recommend that you sell your single 8Gb stick, and get a 16Gb set. In the end, it will cost you about the same as it would just buying another 8Gb stick, but you'll have that guarantee that it will play nice together.

 

[mattangle]

Good thoughts, alright thanks fellas. I need to mull it over and decide whether to switch to dual channel, or just save the money towards a nicer GPU. Thanks again fellas.