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> The general public isn’t asking for a hundred gigs, but I’d love to see the baseline rise up a bit. It doesn’t feel like we’ve budged meaningfully here for ye

by ollien 4y ago

> The general public isn’t asking for a hundred gigs, but I’d love to see the baseline rise up a bit. It doesn’t feel like we’ve budged meaningfully here for years. Or is that just me? While the baseline of 8GB hasn't risen, I do think the floor of what we'd consider "unnecessary" has risen. I remember in 2018 I was building a new desktop and I spent a pretty penny on 32GB of RAM; folks on r/buildapc said that was a waste. Now and days I feel like I've seen a lot of higher end builds that feature 32GB or even 64GB. Just my 2c; I don't have stats to back this up or anything...

RajT88 4y ago
32gb is totally worthwhile. I don't know if I need 32gb exactly, but I desperately needed more than 16gb.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  at least on linux, any unused ram is going to be used for your buffer cache. get as much memory as you can afford.
erulabs 4y ago
My primary workstation has 128GB and it is for sure unnecessary. Even with multiple projects running each of which spins up a dozen containers in k3s, and a background game of Rimworld as well as all the electron apps that life requires these days, I rarely ever breach 64GB much less 100GB. The only real use is writing horrifying malloc experiments and having a couple extra seconds to kill them before OOMing.
- gambiting 4y ago
  I work in video games development and all our workstations have 128GB of ram - I consider that the bare minimum nowadays.
- inciampati 4y ago
  I routinely use this much RAM for work. And it's not malloc experiments lol. I need 200ag to 500G for my research work. Most of our systems have 384G and this is just enough. If I could only have a laptop with that much...
- TillE 4y ago
  Containers are relatively resource-efficient; if you need to run a bunch of actual VMs for testing (eg, Windows), you can easily find ways to use 128GB.
malfist 4y ago
I wonder if something like vista is needed to move the needle on consumer RAM again. Pre-vista, windows required 64MB of RAM, and you could fudge it a bit even lower if you knew what you were doing. Vista _required_ 1GB of RAM, and recommended 2. OEMs were selling 64MB desktops right up until vista was released. Today, windows 11 requires 4GB or ram. If windows 12 (or whatever they're going to call the next windows, they're not too good at counting) required the same sized jump between XP and Vista, it'd require 64GB or ram.
- NovaVeles 4y ago
  That may be the case but the question is, what big change to the end user could they pitch to justify such a leap in the requirements?
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > Today, windows 11 requires 4GB or ram That's gotta be painful, though, unless you only ever use a single browser tab.
  - anthk 4y ago
    A bit of bullshit. Ublock Origin, git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters, enable that config to either Firefox or Chrom* based browsers. Under Windows you can set he env vars properly to the desktop shortcuts as pure arguments for the exe. Seriously, I tried with > 10yo Celeron netbook and it was perfectly usable once you set up ZRAM/zswap and Ublock Origin. Oh, and some tweaks on about:flags to force the GL acceleration. OpenGL 2.1 capable, go figure, and yet browsing it's snappy on the Celeron.
- hnuser123456 4y ago
  Hm... I had a Celeron machine running XP ~2004-2007 that had 512MB of RAM, and it wasn't hard to run out, eventually upgraded to 768MB but I was still jealous of my friend running XP with 1GB. Then, I built a Vista machine in 2007 with 2GB to start, and it was clearly not enough, immediately filled the other 2 slots to go to 4GB.
- einr 4y ago
itronitron 4y ago
256GB of RAM has its uses. I'd rather go with that than having to fiddle with a 'distributed system' that requires another level of care and feeding.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Does it though? I made another comment but for home use I can't even max out 64 GBs. The only thing I can think of that'd ever max out my RAM is some sort of training task (even though I'd expect to run out of VRAM first). But those are the kinds of tasks that do best on distributed systems since you don't really need to care about them, just spin it up, run your task, and tear it back down
  - ehutch79 4y ago
    Just because YOU do not have a use case, does not mean NO ONE has a use case. Your experiences are not the indicative of everyones experiences.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      You're getting upset and going all caps over your own misunderstanding.... > The general public isn’t asking for a hundred gigs, but I’d love to see the baseline rise up a bit. It doesn’t feel like we’ve budged meaningfully here for years. Or is that just me? This was the comment that kicked off the thread. Some people felt 32 GBs was the new baseline, and then out of left field comes _256 GBs_ For any amount of RAM, someone somewhere will be able to use it. But that's the kind of deep observation I expect from a toddler. If we're going past kiddie pool deep observations of plain fact, no, the baseline wouldn't be anywhere near 256 GBs of RAM based on how people use computers. (And before you attack me for your own poor understanding of language again: People as in the human collective. "People don't need" is not the same as "no one needs".)
      - ehutch79 4y ago
        I'm replying to you and YOUR post. Capitalization for emphasis. I was commenting on how you seemed to make yourself the arbiter of how much ram one could ever possibly use.

by ollien 4y ago

RajT88 4y ago

32gb is totally worthwhile. I don't know if I need 32gb exactly, but I desperately needed more than 16gb.

waynesonfire 4y ago
at least on linux, any unused ram is going to be used for your buffer cache. get as much memory as you can afford.

erulabs 4y ago

My primary workstation has 128GB and it is for sure unnecessary. Even with multiple projects running each of which spins up a dozen containers in k3s, and a background game of Rimworld as well as all the electron apps that life requires these days, I rarely ever breach 64GB much less 100GB. The only real use is writing horrifying malloc experiments and having a couple extra seconds to kill them before OOMing.

gambiting 4y ago
I work in video games development and all our workstations have 128GB of ram - I consider that the bare minimum nowadays.
inciampati 4y ago
I routinely use this much RAM for work. And it's not malloc experiments lol. I need 200ag to 500G for my research work. Most of our systems have 384G and this is just enough. If I could only have a laptop with that much...
TillE 4y ago
Containers are relatively resource-efficient; if you need to run a bunch of actual VMs for testing (eg, Windows), you can easily find ways to use 128GB.

malfist 4y ago

I wonder if something like vista is needed to move the needle on consumer RAM again. Pre-vista, windows required 64MB of RAM, and you could fudge it a bit even lower if you knew what you were doing. Vista _required_ 1GB of RAM, and recommended 2. OEMs were selling 64MB desktops right up until vista was released. Today, windows 11 requires 4GB or ram. If windows 12 (or whatever they're going to call the next windows, they're not too good at counting) required the same sized jump between XP and Vista, it'd require 64GB or ram.

NovaVeles 4y ago
That may be the case but the question is, what big change to the end user could they pitch to justify such a leap in the requirements?
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> Today, windows 11 requires 4GB or ram That's gotta be painful, though, unless you only ever use a single browser tab.
- anthk 4y ago
  A bit of bullshit. Ublock Origin, git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters, enable that config to either Firefox or Chrom* based browsers. Under Windows you can set he env vars properly to the desktop shortcuts as pure arguments for the exe. Seriously, I tried with > 10yo Celeron netbook and it was perfectly usable once you set up ZRAM/zswap and Ublock Origin. Oh, and some tweaks on about:flags to force the GL acceleration. OpenGL 2.1 capable, go figure, and yet browsing it's snappy on the Celeron.
hnuser123456 4y ago
Hm... I had a Celeron machine running XP ~2004-2007 that had 512MB of RAM, and it wasn't hard to run out, eventually upgraded to 768MB but I was still jealous of my friend running XP with 1GB. Then, I built a Vista machine in 2007 with 2GB to start, and it was clearly not enough, immediately filled the other 2 slots to go to 4GB.
einr 4y ago

itronitron 4y ago

256GB of RAM has its uses. I'd rather go with that than having to fiddle with a 'distributed system' that requires another level of care and feeding.

BoorishBears 4y ago
Does it though? I made another comment but for home use I can't even max out 64 GBs. The only thing I can think of that'd ever max out my RAM is some sort of training task (even though I'd expect to run out of VRAM first). But those are the kinds of tasks that do best on distributed systems since you don't really need to care about them, just spin it up, run your task, and tear it back down
- ehutch79 4y ago
  Just because YOU do not have a use case, does not mean NO ONE has a use case. Your experiences are not the indicative of everyones experiences.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    You're getting upset and going all caps over your own misunderstanding.... > The general public isn’t asking for a hundred gigs, but I’d love to see the baseline rise up a bit. It doesn’t feel like we’ve budged meaningfully here for years. Or is that just me? This was the comment that kicked off the thread. Some people felt 32 GBs was the new baseline, and then out of left field comes _256 GBs_ For any amount of RAM, someone somewhere will be able to use it. But that's the kind of deep observation I expect from a toddler. If we're going past kiddie pool deep observations of plain fact, no, the baseline wouldn't be anywhere near 256 GBs of RAM based on how people use computers. (And before you attack me for your own poor understanding of language again: People as in the human collective. "People don't need" is not the same as "no one needs".)
    - ehutch79 4y ago
      I'm replying to you and YOUR post. Capitalization for emphasis. I was commenting on how you seemed to make yourself the arbiter of how much ram one could ever possibly use.