I have a 2020-era laptop with an i7 processor and an RTX 2060. I don't really game, but I do a lot of web browsing and work with media files. The laptop still performs well overall, though Firefox and Chrome can noticeably slow it down. Would upgrading from 16GB to 32GB of RAM help, or is the slowdown more likely caused by the CPU or the laptop's thermal and power limits?
1 Answer
The best way to tell is to monitor your RAM and CPU usage with a tool such as HWiNFO while the slowdown is happening. If memory usage is close to full and the system starts using the page file, 32GB should make multitasking and browser-heavy work smoother. If RAM usage stays comfortably below the limit while the CPU is maxed out, adding memory probably won’t help much. Laptop i7 chips can also be significantly limited by power and cooling, so the model’s actual performance may be lower than its name suggests.
So the upgrade will mainly help if my memory is nearly full, but it won’t fix things if the CPU is what’s being overwhelmed?