I was wondering if adding 4GB of DDR3 ram to my PC will increase FPS in video games. I'm using a Lenovo ThinkCentre E73 with the following specs:
- Intel Core i5 4460S @ 2.90GHz
- 4.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz
- No Discrete GPU
3 Answers
No, only in very specific cases. Most likely you're having FPS issues because you're using a CPU with an integrated GPU.
You could run either the Windows builtin Performance Monitor or just open your task manager during gameplay to see how much RAM is being used. If it's maxed and you hear (assuming you have a mechanical HDD) a lot of swapping the RAM upgrade could be worth it. As it is, it's more likely that a discrete graphics card would proof to be more beneficial.
Yes, it will. It will help if you have dual channel, since integrated GPUs use your processor's RAM, and having them dual channel will make them work twice as fast.
If you add 4GB of RAM you should see an increase in performance, plus your computer will run a bit smoother(maybe) and allow you to have more programs open, which is what more RAM will usually help with, like your game and Chrome with YouTube running, Discord, etc…
3Yes, in case of a single-channel memory configuration.
In most cases it's about the memory topology, not the amount of installed RAM. Hence "just more RAM" will not always be true.
The integrated GPU (iGPU) of a CPU needs:
- memory to save textures (and other data)
- a lot of bandwidth to access this data
If you previously had a single-channel memory configuration then correctly installing a second DRAM module will enable the memory controller to operate in dual-channel mode for more bandwidth. There are platforms with triple/quadruple-channel memory, then it's best to populate all of the channels for best performance.
Inversely, having an unbalanced memory configuration (e.g. 3 memory modules on a dual-channel system; modules of different size) may lead to suboptimal performance.
Separately, there is memory interleaving that allows spreading of load. Also DRAM modules have "memory ranks" (single-rank: 1R; 2R, 4R). Four 1R modules on a dual-channel system should give the same performance as two 2R modules. Mixing differently ranked modules may negatively impact performance too.
Do you need more RAM as in size?
If you have enough memory then you do not need more and it won't increase FPS (otherwise you run into swapping aka paging). On Windows you can estimate by looking at the Task Manager. There is no definite answer to this as it depends on workload.
