Ram, gpu, cpu, hd

I bought a new laptop, my old one was getting old so i bought a HP:

HP Envy 17-J011sp
Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Quad Core
12GB RAM
Nvidia® GeForce™ GT 740M (2 mb)
HD SATA 1 TB 5400 rpm
17" Full HD 1920x1080

I am very happy so far. I run games quite well.
17" screen is great (for a laptop), i have a big area to work.
Some games i can run at 1366x720 with ultra detail, some i can go to 1920x1080 medium/high detail
SKyrim as example i can play at 1920x1080 high detail
X rebirth even in 1366x720 is a bit slow, the game is very demanding...

Questions
1)
i think 8Gb of ram is more then enough for everything, i have 12... back in the days there was a rule, that RAM should be upgraded by multiples of 2... 2, 4, 8, 16.... 12 is in between 8-16 ... would i gain anything in upgrading to 16gb? Gaming only, i know that for edit video if would be better, but is not the case, the videos i do, 8GB is more then enough, but for gaming... can i gain anything, i think not.... but

2) The Hd is SATA 1 TB 5400 rpm. Would i gain anything (gaming) in change it for a faster HD? Loading times would be faster, but after loading, the frame rate would be the same i guess....

Is dual channel enabled with 12GB? There's not really any game taking up more than some GB of RAM at once, so you shouldn't notice any difference between 12GB or 16GB. 8GB would have been enough already for gaming.

The HD doesn't matter during gaming, so a 7200rpm HD wouldn't make a difference. The only difference you would notice would be with an SSD, but then only like you mentioned, whilst loading and booting, and not during gaming.

Your 2GB GPU, the GT740M, is only a middle class GPU. That might be your bottleneck for gaming with higher details.

Anyway, how much did you pay for it?

Well here in Portugal we usually pay much more then the rest of Europe, It was 1099 euros, but had a discount od 50 euros, so it was 1049 euros
The GT740M is not the best, but going to a 745M or 750M would put the laptop in 1280/1380 euros.
It was the best i could found, i wanted a 17" screen with a GT740M (minimum) and it was the cheaper one. We don't have much 17" laptops around to choose.

And yes the GT740M is a middle class, but i used to play in a old radeon with 5 years, so the difference is huge !!
I tested "metro the last light" yesterday and at 1366x768 was very nice, i will try at 1980x1080 but i don't expect miracles... i will have to reduce detail

Very nice spec for a laptop. Yes the GPU is middle spec but that is still good enough to run all but the latest games in their highest settings.

Regarding ram, I was reading some tests in a magazine this month where they performed benchmarks on a lot of games and application using 4GB and then 8GB of ram. Having 8GB only increased performance by 3%, and so they concluded it really wasn't completely needed. However 4GB is now the minimum and 8GB is good for some overhead. Therefore having 12GB is way more than you need. You only need this much or more if you were video editing, 3D rendering etc.. I do this which is why I have 32GB, but you don't need it for gaming.

Putting SSDs in my PCs was the best upgrade I've ever done - it made everything feel so snappy and responsive and breathed new life into even an aging system. It's about the simplest upgrade possible too.

The lappy feels great - boots super quick and sleep/hibernate etc work properly now.

You should totally put an SSD in there - it would fly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by J T

Putting SSDs in my PCs was the best upgrade I've ever done - it made everything feel so snappy and responsive and breathed new life into even an aging system. It's about the simplest upgrade possible too.

The lappy feels great - boots super quick and sleep/hibernate etc work properly now.

You should totally put an SSD in there - it would fly.

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Yep, absolutely. I bought a 128GB SSD two years ago, it's a bomb :thumbs:

Yes SSD should be a great upgrade, but they are expensive.... it was difficult to give so much money to the laptop, i will no be able to upgrade to ssd in the next times. But sure, it will be in my priorities.
Thanks

You can also get Hybrid drives too. :thumbs:

Linky

Hybrid drives are a really good idea at the moment as you get the best of both worlds. The onboard controller also learns your most accessed files and caches them in the built in SSD memory, meaning the more you use the drive the faster access with be to often used files, plus you get the added bonus of a mechanical drive for cheaper mass storage, and (in theory) longer lifespan for re-writes.