Ya, that's still a bit whimpy depending on the scene. I'm on an HP Envy system so pretty similar to what you have. I really have to keep watch on memory usage whereas my main system back home it's rarely a concern w/ probably 8x RAM and 20x GPU power.
I've been setting up a "stress test" scene of sorts to see what I can get away with on the HP. In Layout, I frequently use the "W" key to bring up to Stats panel. The different VPR modes have significant affect. I usually stick to a wire mode and use the Ctrl-F9 to toggle.
I do use the Hub but haven't had issues with it in recent builds but it could be a factor. I've seen significant amount of memory freed up just by doing a simple scene save. When the scene size gets up to the point of not happy with VPR, I go through a routine of loading the scene, saving it in Wireframe mode then clear the scene. Open the scene again from the Recents list then check memory with the "W" again. If the Free Memory is below 1 Gb, expect VPR to crash. If you've a couple Gb's free, you should be fine.