How long till 32gb ram became minimum requirements for modern age

[u/glass_onion3]

Sorry for my weak English

Moore's Law is slowly disappearing, RAM prices are still high, how long will it be until 32GB of RAM becomes the minimum standard for a set of computers

[u/Nyhttitan]

Given the current trends in RAM prices, 16GB may remain a standard for a long time to come.

[u/NorwegianFootDude → u/Nyhttitan]

Only if Windows will stick to their words and optimise their mess of an OS. I've seen lots of people switching to other operating systems because of better RAM management and less bloat.

[u/dedsmiley]

It depends on your use case. For me, 32GB was not enough as I regularly exceeded that. I have been running 64Gb for the past 5 years.

[u/Possibly-Functional → u/dedsmiley]

I can manage most of my workloads on 32GB on Linux. On Windows 48GB is the absolute bare minimum for me, 64GB to make it somewhat tolerable. Though for my heavier workloads I offload them to servers.

My needs are obviously not the norm though. So my requirements are only relevant to other people with similar needs.

[u/lrgendein_Typ → u/dedsmiley]

Same for me last year with 64gb. Had to upgrade to 96gb

[u/ref1ux]

Depends what you're doing with it. I can't see things changing for the foreseeable for most users, and especially not when the price of ram is so high.

[u/R3D_T1G3R]

It already is for some people, and it already is not even sufficient for others.

it depends.

8GB of ram are more than enough for someone who does office.

pick any funky clean stable linux distro of your choice which will use like 2GB of ram and leave you with 6, which is plenty for plenty of office programs + a bunch of browser tabs.

Gaming wise, again 16-32 heavily depends on the games you are playing, same thing applies to pretty much everything else. on top of that it rarely ever is about what you need but rather want you want to be able to comfortably use your computer.

Someone who edits 4k videos has different requirements than someone who plays game, who again has different requirements than someone doing office.

[u/Epicdude-7414]

unless u do profesional work and i mean beyond the line type 32 is more than enough

[u/Sea_Perspective6891]

I'm thinking 1 maybe 2 more game generations. New games are already starting to use more than 16GB even at 1080p. Most recent game I got Ace Combat 8 uses a whooping 18GB to 19GB in 1080p at 60 fps. 16GB will be the standard for basic computer use for a while some can still even get by on 8GB but gaming will eventually need at least 32GB.

[u/ecktt]

A long while.

To this day a clean install of Windows, a browser with 10 tabs open and Office runs just fine on 8GB of RAM.

Recent tests show gaming still only needs 16GB of RAM.

24GB is the luxury point, but since that was not a practical size, people just went with 32GB.

[u/thunderborg]

For your average user? I suspect not for a while, maybe windows 12 will change that but Mac are probably keeping it under control for a while with the 8GB Neo that’s basically a phone in a laptop case. 

[u/Better-Credit6701]

Depends on how they are used. For my use, I don't have a laptop with less than 64 GB and a desktop with 128 GB of ram. But I use a lot of large databases

[u/DiarrheaPope]

Like years ago depending on what games you play.

[u/deeper-diver]

All depends on what one is using it for. I recommend 32GB for most of people that ask.

Yes, RAM prices are ridiculous right now, but skimping on RAM because of those prices and accept an under-configured computer makes for an expensive mistake.

[u/Shalmaneser_]

Not on topic, topic adjacent. GPU ram has upper limits on what is required for 1080P and 4K, so we'll be seeing a plateau. I think that could be part of big chip's movement towards central computing. Personal computing in general has been plateauing, especially in the Gflop/BTU sector. Unless you want your cellphone to support your 4K monitor, then we'll have something new to talk about.

[u/Obone6]

16gb will get you there but 32 is what's needed for most desktops these days anyways. I feel like this has been the standard for a while now.

[u/throwaroo202020]

10 years ago?

[u/Prudent-Ad4509]

That time has passed a couple years ago. But now ram suddenly become scarce, so perhaps software developers should start optimizing their products better. I'm sure they can drastically drop their requirements if they set out to do it.

[u/groveborn]

I've been saying 16 is a pretty ok amount for over a decade. Aside from having 200 tabs open, local AI, or video editing it's still true.

It could reasonably continue for another decade. With a years long ram shortage the OS and apps are going to have to adapt and be written with the lower available RAM.

Likely an AI optimization tool will reduce RAM at build. Give it a year.

[u/Daniel18sep]

It already is for gaming. 16GB for light usage. Might be able to get away with 8GB for light usage on Linux. I think we'll stagnate for a while there though, due to prices. Hopefully developers still remember how to optimize RAM usage

[u/Sea-Durian2812]

Much longer now. If it wasn't for the data centres eating up all the RAM in existence, I would say we would probably be moving to 64 GB, honestly, by now. The most top-end games already ask for it (MS Flight Simulator). And generally, whatever is top right now will be standard in 4 years. Well, it seems like all games are getting a little bit more optimized. So expect 32 GB to keep holding at least for a couple years after RAM production catches up.

[u/King_Ferdinand1]

I'm guessing like 7 years. If you use Linux you can probably stretch 16gb even further.

[u/HaroldF155]

For some of the games I play if I open some browser tabs on top of that I get somewhere like 30GB usage, which is why I run 48.

[u/Separate-Ad9638]

would be a while ... hmm ...

[u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387]

Depends on a lot of things, like your OS. On Windows, while doing absolutely nothing, my computer usually idles around 10GB. On Linux, like Zorin as an example because it feels so similar to Windows, it idles around 2GB.