RAM mainly affects performanceif the system is running out of it. The entire PC starts to slow down when it islow on memory.
Besides capacity, RAM with appropriatespeed, latency, and memory rankwill boost your system’s performance. Furthermore,memory stick alignmentalso plays a crucial role in making your system faster.
But this does not mean you may add more and faster RAM to exponentially improve performance. RAM only improves performance when certain criteria are met.
To check the performance difference, I have done benchmarks on a setup with the following specifications.
This gave me accurate data on how RAM affects performance. So let’s look at these aspects and how they affect overall system performance.
RAM Capacity And Performance
Your system will work fine as long as the memory usage stays below the maximum memory limit. When the system reaches close tomaximum memory usage, you will begin to noticelags and stutter.
Once it exceeds total RAM usage, the OS will resort to apage fileto store application files. Thisbottlenecks the CPU and the GPU.
This is why asystem low on RAM slows downwhen you run multiple applications simultaneously. If your system is constantly low on memory, increasing RAM will get rid of any bottlenecks, making yoursystem perform better.
So what does this mean?More RAMallows you to run multiple applications simultaneously.If you are gaming, you will get stable frame rates.
Remember thatincreasing RAMwill notimprove your average FPS. Your average FPS remains the same. However, you will see significant improvement in 1% and 0.1% low FPS in games.
This does not mean, you may double your memory capacity and expect double performance.RAM has a diminishing return when it comes to capacity.
If a system uses a maximum of 12 GB memory, a 16 GB memory will suffice. In this case,upgrading to 32 GB RAMdoes not affect performance.
Let’s consider an analogy,
Imagine your RAM as a workbench. A small workbench means low storage for things that you require constantly. Larger workbenches allow you to spread out components and access them with ease.
