Does More RAM = Better Performance?

Now that RAM (Random Access Memory) is more affordable, filling up all those RAM slots in your computer is a fairly easy. Though having more memory is definitely good, does the performance boost justify the extra investment?


To find out the benefits of having more RAM, we decided to setup our testbed with different amounts of memory while using the same kind of memory modules. These were then put through a series of synthetic and real world tests.

Our setup used an Intel DP67BG motherboard with a Core i7-2600K processor and a MSI GTX470 Twin Frozr II. For the RAM we used a total of four individual Kingston KVR1333D3N94G memory modules with 4GB each. Following that we ran though our test using four different memory setups: 4GB, 8GB, 12GB and 16GB.


In order to test the effectiveness of different amounts of memory, we used a number of programs to benchmark the performance of the computer. The programs we used included PCMark Vantage, SiSoftware Sandra 2011, WinRAR, POV-RAY 3.7, Batman Arkahm Asylum, Mafia 2, Crysis: Warhead, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Media Converter 7 and Media Espresso 6.