What's it do? I'm presuming increases performance and gets rid of unnecessary processes?

Hmm, ok. I ask for my Asus EEE netbook which has 2gb of DDR3 and an empty SD card slot.

That's probably a perfect candidate, SD cards are cheap as hell.

Just go grab a 4 gig stick and see if it improves your performance.
If not you've only wasted minimal $$

im running an ssd.

BLAM, POWER USAR!!!!!

Ram is so cheap these days, Computer Alliance usually have deals on their laptops which mean you get a free upgrade to 16gb in an i7 machine.

With a netbook it might help... I guess?

anandtech have a few benchies:

Some of those "free ram upgrade" deals for laptops from stores like that consist of them adding the cheapest ram they have at hand to the stock ram already in the system without ever testing it, potentially causing system instability.

Happened to a friend of mine who bought a high-end asus laptop with free ram upgrade from another store despite my recommendation to keep the laptop as stock as possible for stability... blue screens galore, memtest failed instantly. I opened up the laptop, removed the mixed-ram and voila ...

Sure could be, but after installing some propper graphics drivers and running some benchmarks, and a global 3 year warranty from asus, and a neat mark on my account with computer alliance which says "Treat very nicely" because of the 30+ thousand dollars from this year alone that's gone into that store on the account, i'm sure they'll treat me pretty nice if they have packed it with fudge.

Ram isn't important so much these days, previously it used to have to worry about it being right clock ratio's and so on for the FSB but as long as they haven't gone the worst brand, then RAM barely has any issues anymore. Furthermore, because with a 16gb ram upgrade, you use every slot, every piece of ram is replaced with the new 4gb modules meaning that they use 4 pieces of the same RAM so there's no mix and match.

I saw another which was like a 14gb upgrade, wtf. 3x4gb and 1x2gb module, most retarded upgrade ever, you lose your dual channel. I even asked the guy "Yeah why would I do that, i'd lose the dual channel" and he's like "no it's still dual channel" and i'm like "How does it run dual channel with an odd piece of ram"

Edit:

Unfortunately not too useful for this thread as we are talking 2GB of ram. The benchmarks I've come across show minimal improvement with 1GB and pretty much zero benefit at 2GB and higher. It's mainly 512MB systems that get the benefits.last edited by parabol at 13:04:43 27/Oct/11

It's pretty useful in this thread, it basically details that readyboost isn't going to give you much benefit if you have more than 512mb of ram, answering hardware's question, "If not, why not?"

but as long as they haven't gone the worst brand, then RAM barely has any issues anymore.

Oh I have nothing against the specs or price/brand of ram these days - most just work if you stick them in a machine by themselves.

My issue is that these "free" upgrades can consist of mixing ram, which I've always found to be risky due to differing tolerances even if the specs are the same on paper - and even riskier when yum-cha ram is in the mix. But if you can confirm the models of the ram before purchase or as you say, confirm they'll have to replace all the sticks, then by all means go for it.

My previous comment was about an upgrade from 8 to 12GB .. which in my friend's system consisted of 2x4GB (stock) + 2x2GB (no-name), a deadly mix!

last edited by parabol at 13:36:42 27/Oct/11