from Hacker News

32GB of RAM is becoming the standard

by abixb on 1/13/24, 12:06 AM with 64 comments

  • by palata on 1/13/24, 12:43 AM

    More RAM is becoming the standard because software developed with more RAM is less efficient. And developers tend to have powerful computers "because it's their job", which encourages them to write inefficient code.

    > 16GB RAM is also a practical capacity for general tasks such as web browsing, office work

    16GB RAM to read and write text and see images... I think it just says it all.

  • by nothercastle on 1/13/24, 12:19 AM

    Meanwhile your Mac still ships with a shitty 8gb by default

  • by voidwtf on 1/13/24, 1:34 AM

    Somehow this thread has attracted a large number of the “Apple sucks, look how much they charge for X” crowd. It’s ok to fanboy about your favorite hardware and software, but it’s also ok to have differing opinions. I use Windows, macOS, and Linux. I use macOS because I enjoy the casual experience significantly more, I prefer it for browsing and productivity and 8Gb of ram is plenty for that use case. I use Windows for software development and gaming, I have 128GB of ram in that system because it’s nice for games and running Hyper-V without compromising. I use Linux for self hosting, proxmox, docker, and more and that system is a retired R720 with 192GB of ram.

    The article is objectively correct, RAM is cheap these days, some apps waste ram, some apps just realize that there no reason not to stretch their legs a bit to offer a better experience. Chrome often gets the short end of the stick, but Chrome does objectively well with RAM considering how inefficient modern web development is. They’re doing the best they can in the modern web dev landscape.

  • by mikewarot on 1/13/24, 3:02 AM

    Why wouldn't you spend as much on RAM as you would on your CPU? It seems kind of silly to skimp on RAM or SSD space these days.

    There will always be some application that comes along and can use the hardware that you didn't imagine. I remember a friend saying that the 48k in his Apple ][ was enough ram for any program... as long as you didn't go filling it up with graphics and that kind of nonsense.

    It's amazing how small code is compared to the data it operates upon.

    You need all that RAM to virtualize operating systems, because running native code is dangerous.

    The observant may wonder why running native code is dangerous. Why doesn't the operating system defend itself?

  • by mannyv on 1/13/24, 12:40 AM

    Bloat is the new svelte.

  • by 6R1M0R4CL3 on 1/13/24, 4:42 PM

    my lenovo has soldered ram, and i went for the maximum which is 64 gb 32 gb would have been more than enough, but since it's soldered, i had to go for the maximum so in 10 years from now, the laptop can still work well. it comes with lddr5 ram which is much, much faster than what so-dimm slots would have gave me. added bonus : ldd5 soldered uses much less power...

  • by charleslmunger on 1/13/24, 1:25 AM

    >computers with little RAM have to swap this data to the hard drive

    The hard drive? What machine is sold with a hard drive as swap in 2024?

  • by transfire on 1/13/24, 1:23 AM

    “Modern operating systems such as Windows 11 or macOS use additional RAM very efficiently”

    Hahahhahahhahhukaufkauf! (Excuse me while I clear my throat) Uh… my 7Mhz 512KB Amiga generally had a better UX.

  • by Koshkin on 1/13/24, 12:49 AM

    My first PC had 8MB of RAM, and it was a real screamer! (I hadn’t tried running emacs on it, though.)

  • by AniseAbyss on 1/13/24, 12:55 AM

    Phones come with 12 nowadays. But honestly most people don't need high end PCs.