RAM Upgrade Worth It?

[obscuredbyclouds]

I'm in the market for a new laptop because the graphics hardware on my old machine is damaged (sad times). I came across an HP notebook that seems pretty nice. By default, it comes with 8gb of RAM, but allows an upgrade to 12gb for $75.00. The hungry American consumer in me wants to go with the upgrade, but I'm wondering if it's worth it for that price, or if I'll even see much of a difference in performance.

The notebook has an i7 processor and a decent NVIDIA gpu. I'm a student and will use it for usual stuff like streaming movies, downloading music, searching the web. I'm not an extreme gamer but I play a little league of legends and world of warcraft, and it'd be nice to have things running smoothly at some decent resolution settings. I'll also be dual booting with Linux and doing some scripting for a research project.

A good thing I like is that the computer will actually be sold with Windows 7 (I prefer the interface over Win8). Also, from what I heard setting up a dual boot with Linux can be a bit of a nightmare on Windows 8 with the new boot sequence, while it's really simple with Windows 7. Another question would be: Is there much to worry about with Mainstream Support for windows 7 ending soon? (I think extended support will be to 2020 or something)

Thanks

 

[johnb35]

You won't need 12gb of memory. You won't even use all of the 8gb for what you use it for. Yes, extended support for windows 7 ends in 2020 with mainstream support ending in January of 2015.

 

[obscuredbyclouds]

Thank you very much; I just went with the 8gb

 

[beers]

Side note, if you run into the limit of 8 GB per chance or down the line it would cost you around the same amount in the current market (or a couple dollars less) to purchase an 8 GB stick to bump your capacity up to the same amount you were considering.