5 ms·

If you have 24 GB of RAM, then you are certainly a rare breed. Curious, what motivated you to install so much?

• vinkelhake 11y ago
  I've got 32GB in my three year old workstation and 16GB in my laptop. Memory is cheap, so why not?
• xresonance 11y ago
  I've got 64GB, and will double it when I get the other CPU socket populated (bloody expensive Xeons!) This is because I work with giant data sets, in this case, digital video, specifically cinema-quality stuff spit out of a RED camera. I'd do the same with any other large data sets, databases, analytics, etc. RAM is inexpensive compared to the time saved by having data rapidly accessible. Even arguable for web surfing and other light desktop stuff. We can never get more time, but we can make the machines quicker and piles of RAM are a good way to do it.
  • ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Is it ECC protected?
    • beachstartup 11y ago
      almost certainly, if he's running xeons. my xeon mac pro is 6 years old and it has it. i can't imagine running that much ram without ecc. you would kernel panic or spontaneously reboot constantly. not to mention silently corrupt half your work...
      • danieltillett 11y ago
        Would you be more likely to kernel panic with more non-ecc ram? Won’t a bit flip probability be linked to the size of the critical os code size and that should be the same if you have 2 GB or 64 GB of ram?
        • mjevans 11y ago
          If nothing else, the cost savings in no longer having to actually worry about that vector of data corruption are well worth the small delta in cost. I'm actually rather amazed that at least error /detecting/ ram isn't more common.
          • danieltillett 11y ago
            I don’t disagree - it is silent data corruption I really worry about not the odd kernel panic.
          • dgemm 11y ago
            I think consumer CPUs don't support it only to maintain market segmentation for server CPUs.
        • beachstartup 11y ago
          > Won’t a bit flip probability be linked to the size of the critical os code size no, there are a wide range of memory conditions in which a kernel calls panic, and memory doesn't just flip single bits when it errors out, although that's certainly possible.
          • danieltillett 11y ago
            I thought that single bit flips was all that ecc memory protected against [1]. It is not flip errors per say that causes kernel panics (it is not going to cause any problems if a section of unallocated memory has a bit flip), but the probability of an uncorrected bit flip in a critical memory location. I am certainly willing to be corrected, but if don’t see how increasing the amount of non-critical memory increases the chance of a kernel panic. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
• basmithtx 11y ago
  i often find myself using a number of virtual machines at the same time. also, chrome tabs ain't cheap.
• detaro 11y ago
  not the parent, but for me it's not having to think about what I run concurrently. A browser instance with many tabs, VMs running and editing large files in e.g. Photoshop and you'll easily go over 16 GB. If you regularly compile large projects or develop memory intensive apps you might want more. A few people I know were very happy about new Intel desktop CPUs supporting 64 GB instead of only 32 (and get annoyed every time they try to buy a new laptop and discover that 32 GB still is hard to get)
• GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Firefox on linux was sucking down an incredible amount of memory to the point where I was having to restart it daily, after installing the extra ram it would tend to stabilize around 10GB. (only extension I had running was adblock)
  • cesarb 11y ago
    If you were running adblock, you might have hit this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266 ("Very high style-sets memory usage with AdBlock Plus").
  • eru 11y ago
    Adblock is actually pretty memory hungry, if I remember right.