0

We use Firefox and some other memory intensive applications and with i3 I tend to have 8-12 GB RAM( upgrade from 4GB to atleast 8GB RAM).

However with SSD laptop do I still need more of RAM? Laptop can use SSD as faster way to virtual memory. I've newly purchased 4GB RAM with SSD having good performance, I'm wondering should I upgrade it to 8-12 GB RAM as I would do normally?

1
  • 1
    An SSD doesn't require more RAM, and it doesn't remove the potential need to add more ram either... However, the improved performance of an SSD vs. HDD can somewhat obscure the need for more RAM - as data is now more readily available, and machanisms that preemptively put data into RAM (like prefetch) don't provide the clear benefits (at the cost of increased RAM usage) that they would have done with a spinning disk.
    – Attie
    May 28, 2020 at 15:54

2 Answers 2

0

An SSD can compensate for limited RAM, but is by no means a direct replacement.

Plenty of RAM means you can have more (and larger) programs open and still have the system switch between them immediately without perceptible delay.

Reducing the amount of RAM will mean that programs either get pushed out to the swap file or you have less of them open at once. An SSD might be faster than a HDD for switching back to paged out tasks, but by no means will it be as fast as having actual RAM.

An NVMe SSD might be able to read at up to 3GB/s, but modern RAM set up in dual channel on an up to date processor can do up to 30GB/s. A SATA SSD might manage up to 500MB/s. There are worlds of difference between the three things.

An SSD can make a memory starved system usable but it is still limiting what you can do by not being able to keep everything in RAM. It is better than running off an HDD at the very least.

1

You need to evaluate your machines and performance. Upgrading a machine to an SSD drive will not slow down a machine because of memory.

That said, 8 GB is a reasonable minimum on a 64-bit machine for an average office worker or personal machine. That will work fine. If needs are bigger, install more memory. We have lots of users running 8 GB and in no way hampered.

2
  • sorry for confusion, i meant to say that will SSD will do the need of upgrading RAM from 4-8 or 4-12GB?
    – user5858
    May 28, 2020 at 15:28
  • SSD will improve the performance of a given machine with the RAM installed. Having done that, and then as I observed earlier, you may want more RAM for the operation of the machine, but SSD does not drive this need.
    – John
    May 28, 2020 at 15:32

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .