Seems 4gb vs. 8gb makes little difference in iMacs?

[richpjr]

It is a zombie thread, but having said that... I noticed a big difference when upgrading from 4 to 12 gig, but I do a lot of heavy photo and sound editing with lots of apps open. As mentioned above, it all depends on how you use your computer.

 

[yustas]

There looks to be very little difference in performance (really, almost none!) between an i5 with 4gb vs. an i5 with 8gb. This seems a little crazy.

Nothing crazy at all. Think of RAM as gasoline. Just because your gas tank is larger than in another car, it does not make your car faster. The car simply needs a certain amount of gas to travel a certain distance. If you add a second tank of gas to your car, it is not going to go faster, it will travel further. Same with RAM. RAM simply allows software to run, not faster or slower, but just to run. If you do not have enough RAM, some programs will not run.