• bitwaba@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I remember building my gaming machine in 2008 and put 4GB (2x2) in, then RAM prices tanked 6 months later so I added another 4GB. I remember having lots of conversations where I was like “yeah, 8GB is over kill” but what I didn’t expect is that it was such overkill that when I built my next machine in 2012, I still only put 8GB on it.

    It wasn’t until 2019 that I built a machine and put 16GB in it. I ran on 8GB for over a decade. Pretty impressive for gaming.

    • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      In 2008 a lot of most software was still 32 bit, you couldn’t use more than 4GiB per process. In that sense anything more than that was overkill unless you used a lot of programs at the same time and your OS supported physical address extension (PAE).

      • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        All windows and Linux versions I’ve run since 2008 supported 64 bit. The games I was running might not have, but I can’t really be held responsible for what they want to write. Also, multitasking has always been a thing, and chrome came out in 2008 as well, so the single task 4GB limitations hasn’t really been an issue for a while as far as gaming/regular desktop usage goes(unless, again, the applications you’re running aren’t written to support 64bit/more than 4GB, which you can’t really be held responsible for.)

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Am I the only one around here that maxes out their RAM to the max that the board will take? Sure 128 Gig is overkill now, but the 32 Gig I installed in my last laptop was supposed to be overkill just 3 years ago. I did manage to use my previous laptop for a whole 12 years with only 16 Gig.

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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        6 months ago

        Definitely not, I do the same.

        I installed 64 GB of RAM in my Windows laptop 4 years ago and had been using 64 GB of RAM in the laptop that it replaced - which was from 2013 (I think I bought it in 2014-2105). I was using 32 GB of RAM prior (on Linux and Windows laptops), all the way back to 2007 or so.

        My work MacBook Pros generally have 32-64 GB of RAM, but my personal MacBook Air (the 15” M2) has 16 GB, simply because the upgrade wasn’t a cost effective one (and the M1 before it had performed great with 16) and because I’d only planned on using it for casual development. But since I’ve been using it as my main personal development machine and for self-hosted AI, and have run into its limits, when I replace it I’ll likely opt for 64 GB or more.

        My Windows gaming desktop only has 32 GB of RAM, though - that’s because getting the timings higher with more RAM - particularly 4 sticks - was prohibitively expensive when I built it, and then when the cost wasn’t a concern and I tried to upgrade, I learned that my third and fourth RAM slots weren’t functional. I could upgrade to 64 GB in two slots but it wouldn’t really be worth it, since I only use it for gaming.

        My Linux desktop / server has 128 GB of ECC RAM, though, because that’s as much as the motherboard supported.

      • unique_hemp@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        I have no problems currently on my personal computer with 16GB. If RAM is ever an issue, you can always upgrade (especially if you leave slots empty). Plus RAM generally has a tendency to get cheaper over time, so why waste money now?

    • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      I’m still using 8 for gaming and stuff
      (i built my pc in 2021 and don’t see a huge reason to upgrade it yet except modded Minecraft/skyrim)

      • Optional@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        I too have 8gb and I hate it ( although i do use a lot of browser tabs on second screen it just isnt enough if you wanna do something else on the side :prolly can even do with 4 if I really limited myself and hated every second of it but even 8 isn’t good enough

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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          6 months ago

          8 is enough if you’re not multitasking too much
          wanna play a game? close absolutely everything except maybe discord (if you need it), but keep it in the tray
          wanna look sth up while playing? don’t forget to close the browser afterwards

          • Optional@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            yeah I agree thats why i said i hate every second of it ( coz without movies or second screen browser everything gets really boring even the most engaging games ( ofc any newer game is out of the question )

    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I ran my old machine also from 2010 till this year on 8gb. Also for gaming the 2010 i7 was quite fine. The only bottleneck was the VRAM where we somehow went from 1GB being perfectly suitable to 4GB being barely enough. Meanwhile old games sometimes look better than modern games, because they actually put effort into optimizing the graphics.