rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > RAM is still (to me) the most cost effective upgrade to an existing > system.
yes this is true, but the bottle neck could be the cache or the disk IO. If you have slow disk, RAM can be advantage. If it is the cache, may be it is time to upgrade the system (cpu and/or mainboard). For me personally the most impressive boost was the SSD. I do not have any CPU or RAM hungry applications - except when compiling but this is done on a server, so the desktop is not affected. 8GB RAM is sufficient for the desktop. If I put another 4 or 8 it will consume them with time as well. This is what modern Linux kernel does. It will free memory whenever it needs. But I would not have big addvantage. On the PC I call "the server" I started with 16, but because of running virtualizations I upgraded to 32.
