can someone help me understand how old is my laptop compared to today and also if i upgrade to 16GB ram if any change would be made?

my computer seems ok but sometimes i understand it could be faster, when i open many browsers etc i notice it

thank you!

 

It depends on if you old pc is ram deficient ( using more or close to max of what you already have ) . If not, you will not notice any difference.

 

these are the specs from intel website. It is from Late 2017. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...78550u-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-00-ghz.html

These are the memory specs:

Memory Specifications

• Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type)32 GB
  
• Memory TypesDDR4-2400, LPDDR3-2133
  
• Max # of Memory Channels2
  
• Max Memory Bandwidth37.5 GB/s
  
• ECC Memory Supported ‡No

The improvement you will see may depend which memory type you already have installed. An additional 4gb might not very noticeable, but it can provide some more stability; and as low as it currently is, anything additional will help. Depending on which Memory Type is already installed, you might want to go as far as to replace all of it with DDR-4 type:

LPDDR3 has a lower clock speed, a lower bus width, and a higher latency than DDR4, so LPDDR3 is much slower. LPDDR3 uses slightly less power than DDR4, so it would be beneficial for longer battery life, though the difference is usually not significant.

The real concern is usually not if it will improve, but rather how much money it costs you to get that improvement and if it is worth it to you.

 

starting number 8 means 8th generation Intel, current gen is 13 so it's roughly 5 years old,
I don't think going from 12GB to 16GB ram would make big difference, make sure your laptop has SSD and not HDD as primary drive

 

That particular CPU was released in August 2017.

 

i second @tzzsmk : check your exact hard drive model
Because when RAM is nearly full, memory will be swaped on HDD/SSD

A slow SSD, or worst an HDD, will be the main bottleneck.

 

You can check out the benchmarks here. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ It will give you an idea on how fast your CPU is in comparison to the most recent ones. You will find that your CPU is rated around 5900 points: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-8550U+@+1.80GHz&id=3064
which is around 10 times less the points than the most recent top Intel Desktop CPU's scored. It does not mean that you necessarily need an update, but you would definitely benefit from it, if you can afford it.
If you don't use e.g. a lot of Kontakt libraries, 12 GB of ram should be fine. The benefit from having more memory might not be too big. That said, you should monitor your memory usage, and if your memory is completely in use and the computer has to swap to disk a lot, that will slow down the whole machine a lot. Nevertheless, I would suspect the limiting factor to be the CPU, mostly.

 

You have 12GB. So it Is 4GB + 8GB
Try 16GB - 8 + 8 (same sticks). Then you have your Memory running in DUAL Mode.

... or am I wrong?

 

The original post makes it sound like he has 12 and is considering upgrading to 16. But either way, DDR4-2400 is inexpensive enough that he could max it out to 32gb 2 sticks, for around 50 bucks. That will be a noticeable improvement.

 

Last edited: Jul 6, 2023

Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type)32 GB is for the i7
Can his Laptop handle 32GB? Accept it 16GB sticks? (Mobo , Bios)

 

Until there is a crappy hard drive, bottlenecking everything

 

We have no additional model specific information, but in late 2017 an SSD was probably considered an "upgrade". But with the RAM so low, it can contribute to even slower speeds due to paging. A mechanical drive of the time is maybe not even 7200 rpm.

 

The i7-8550U gets around 6K points in the PassMark performance test, which makes it 3 times slower than the current gen processors.

My advice is to look for a lighter browser, like Firefox with the uBlock Origin add-on. It stops all the ads, and saves a lot of CPU cycles.