Wondering if I should upgrade mostly for gaming and some programming. Now Ive read a lot of opinions, and people are right that most games use 2gigs tops... But it seems to me windows caches more to hdd with 4 gigs, and correct me if I'm wrong but my gtx 460 will borrow ram if it needs it. Anyway, I'm sure someone here can address my concerns. Oh by the way I game at 1080p.
Just go for it. The pagefile will be used less and the system will feel snappier. When your GTX460 runs out of VRAM, system RAM will be used to make up for that. But as GDDR5 is a lot faster with lower latencies, FPS will be lowered significantly.
It's funny how 4GB isn't enough today for multitasking or gaming... It would be wise to upgrade, 8GB is a sweet spot and it's cheap.
Ya it seems to me like windows 7 just started wanting more ram at some point, and windows 8 is the same performance wise (task manager makes it seem like it uses less ram, but it doesn't really).
I'd say go for the 8GB. You may not make use of it all of the time, but with RAM, its always good to have the buffer zone there in case you do. I guarantee there will be times in modern gaming where you'll dip into the RAM over 4GB's worth.
If you multi-task with lots of apps, yeah, more RAM the better. Not sure you'll see a big difference when gaming, more of a slight difference.
As everyone has said, 8gb ram is the way to go. You will notice an immediate difference with regards to speed and response time. It is the sweet spot as eclap already mentioned. Don't hesitate and go for it.
I upgraded, and I feel it in some games that don't necessarily use alot of ram. I think windows just behaves different with the extra ram, not using the pagefile so much. Then of course the ram gets shared with the vram, at 1080p some games actually need it when streaming to avoid any stutter. I remember when 4 gigs was the sweet spot, doesn't seem that long ago. But then again I wasn't using a 1080p monitor either.
Future games are likely to make use of larger amounts of RAM. There is no point going to 8 GB if you aren't using x64 Windows.
one guy told to another guy who told me that having 8 Gb of RAM allows you to have a ton of pr0n tabs opened at any time. i am just saying!
I guess soft pr0n would be pictures of a HD8970/GTX 880, and hardcore pr0n would be filling the motherboard slots? . SLI/Crossfire would be a MMF, hence why it works awkwardly most of the time.