Hot take: in 2024, 8GB of memory is enough for non-enthusiasts

[seanondemand]

I recently got gifted a used XPS 13 9365 2-in-1 laptop with a 7th gen i7 2c/4t chip and 8GB of memory, did a clean W10 install and got a cheap Amazon battery for it. I’m normally a Mac guy, I’ve got an iMac with a 10700K and Radeon 5700Pro, so I’ve got a performant computer for home, but I needed something to take to my MBA classes. 
 

I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now for school stuff, dozens of tabs in Brave, MS Office, and cloud gaming on Game Pass, so here’s my take:

 

8 GB of memory is enough for daily use, which for most normal people (that is, non LTT forum readers), can handle all the everyday things they need to do. 
 

Enthusiasts get so wrapped into our daily experiences of 16 or 32 GB of memory being needed for our uses so I’ve been genuinely surprised at how well this 7 year old laptop has held up performance-wise with a workload that is probably more demanding than what my parents would do on their machines (for example). To go along with that, credit to Microsoft and Dell for making some optimization improvements (on an admittedly high-end ultrabook for the time)

[Levent]

Hot take 4gb of ram is enough for those.

3 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now for school stuff, dozens of tabs in Brave, MS Office, and cloud gaming on Game Pass, so here’s my take:

 

[seanondemand]

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

Hot take 4gb of ram is enough for those.

 

Extra spicy. I mean, paired up with a decent SSD to page to, you’re probably right, but 4GB memory and a decent SSD is probably an uncommon combo. 

[LauriHimself]

9 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

8 GB of memory is enough for daily use

100% agree on this. 

Upgraded my mom's laptop from 4 to 8 gb ram (ddr3 that is) as well as from hdd to ssd some years ago. For everything she uses it for its still plenty, that being office, mails, Internet etc

Even my laptop, which I only rarely use, has only 8gb.

Got that one second hand for dirt cheap. I only ever use it when I build or troubleshoot computers somewhere else so I have a functioning system to download stuff or create a win install stick if needed. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

15 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

8 GB of memory is enough for daily use, which for most normal people (that is, non LTT forum readers), can handle all the everyday things they need to do. 

I mean.. some normal people play games on pc natively, so.. no?

[SImoHayha]

ya until you realize that "used laptop you had" Was roughly worth 600-700$ when it was released and didn't have 16GB of ram but only 8GB of ram? For that price I better get 16GB of ram. Considering you could also buy any of the numerous older variations or older laptops that come with a touch screen and probably if not as powerful as the current aged one.

Most laptops nowadays are asking outrageous prices for little to no bargain, the bargain being specs correct for the price. If i'm not getting 16GB at 700$ why in gods green earth am I willing to settle for 8GB? It's just a petty scheme to yoink peoples' hard earned cash w/o any of the benefits

[flibberdipper]

12 minutes ago, Levent said:

Hot take 4gb of ram is enough for those.

 

On Windows? Not really. I see tons of PCs come in of varying age ranges with (typically) 4, 8, and 12GB configurations. The 4GB ones are always DOG slow, even though some of them are only a year or two old and would otherwise be fine with more RAM. 8GB (or I guess technically 6GB, but that doesn't exist with modern desktops or laptops) is really the lowest one would want to go, especially with Windows 11.

 

Modern Windows 11 tries to idle at like 4-5GB depending on how much shitware there is. When I got this laptop, after everything was settled in and it had time to calm down the lowest I ever saw RAM go was 5.2GB, and after a clean install of 11 I managed to shed anywhere from half to a full gig on that, depending how it feels that particular day.

 

[da na]

I get by with 4GB of RAM in my laptops - I have a collection of 30 or so laptops from the Core 2 era that I use daily. I can have 6 or 7 web browser tabs open and a couple programs (on Windows 10 64-bit) but if I didn't have memory optimization software and a fast SSD for the page file, I'm sure even that would be pushing it. 

8GB is definitely enough for basic web browsing but won't get you anywhere with gaming nowaday.s

[da na]

21 minutes ago, Levent said:

Hot take 4gb of ram is enough for those.

 

If you're fine with having some of your tabs go to "sleep" aka moved from RAM to C:\Temp because your RAM is full...

[8tg]

It’s more like windows sucks at memory allocation and has high resource usage overhead.

I don’t like Linux, but install Linux on a machine with 4gb of ram and everything runs smooth.

Meanwhile I have 64gb of ram and windows takes that as “welp, better cache all this useless shit in 12gb of it at idle”

I max the ram on every machine I own because ram is cheap. I have laptops from 2011 which have 16gb of ram even if they’ll never use it. Just because windows sucks and eats up all the ram.

[PDifolco]

31 minutes ago, Levent said:

Hot take 4gb of ram is enough for those.

 

You can even run Linux on a potato with 2GB I think  

[Average Nerd]

3 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

You can even run Linux on a potato with 2GB I think  

"Run" is a bit of an overstatement imo.

It'll probably work, but not to a point where I would personally consider it useable.

[aisle9]

Do you know how many N5100 laptops exist out there at $200-250 packing 64GB of eMMc and 4GB of RAM in single channel? Not even just Amazon alphabet soup crap, actual stuff from Dell, HP, Acer and Gateway. Those sell out like crack pipes in Detroit, and if people were returning them all, manufacturers would stop making them.

 

You're right, it's all about use case. Someone doing any level of gaming beyond the Win95 versions of Solitaire or Minesweeper is going to need 8GB on Windows. Even SkiFree is pushing it at 4GB on a Celeron-based CPU. But if all they're doing is reading email, watching 720p YouTube and browsing the web, they likely wouldn't even notice the difference between 4GB and 8GB and 16GB.

[PowerPCFan]

Agree with that. 8gb is fine for general tasks. In my general-use laptop, I have 8GB, and I have 32GB in my gaming PC

 

Hot take: 

Spoiler

32GB should be the new standard for gaming. Too many people use 16. 

 

[PowerPCFan]

4 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

"Run" is a bit of an overstatement imo.

It'll probably work, but not to a point where I would personally consider it useable.

i mean if debian, linux mint, and adelie linux run on my ancient PowerPC G4 system with 512mb ram, I think 2 is fine. Maybe Lubuntu would run the best. 

[Average Nerd]

3 minutes ago, PowerPCFan said:

i mean if debian, linux mint, and adelie linux run on my ancient PowerPC G4 system with 512mb ram, I think 2 is fine. Maybe Lubuntu would run the best. 

Maybe I just haven't used the right distro. You definitely have a point here.

[aisle9]

9 minutes ago, PowerPCFan said:

32GB should be the new standard for gaming. Too many people use 16.

It already is, imo, if you're into AAA gaming. That being said, if you're not on the bleeding edge of gaming, you're probably not in need of 32GB. My main desktop has a Ryzen 5 5600 and 16GB of DDR4-3600, and I have no need (but admittedly a bit of desire) to upgrade. I suspect that if more gamers took a serious look at the requirements of the games they play, they'd be fine with similar hardware.

[TetraSky]

The PC I use at work has 8GB of RAM.

It's not enough. It's getting pinned out at 8GB doing some basic things like opening word, our in-house work software and a browser. Which slows everything up. Even more so when the slow HDD is failing to keep up. Run till fail mentality, man...

At home, it might be "ok" if all you're doing is basic web browsing and some word processing. But corporations have a ton of background processes that runs and use up precious resources. By default, windows 10 alone takes up 3 to 4GB of memory, this doesn't leave much on the table.

 

Heck, at home right now, I have over 8GB of used memory. Not sure how exactly 2678MB = 8.7GB of used memory... but it's using it.

[8tg]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

Heck, at home right now, I have over 8GB of used memory. Not sure how exactly 2678MB = 8.7GB of used memory... but it's using it.

Its counting ram its allocated for immediate cache for search indexing and often times, commonly used programs.

On older windows this was just called superfetch and you could disable it in services.msc which on something like windows 7 would save 500mb of ram usually.

But theres a whole bunch of stuff like that now which i doesnt show you.

Like edge right now says its using 474mb of ram for this tab.

Yet im at 6.5gb idle after a fresh startup, so its not even begun to fill my ram full of garbage yet.

 

just windows being windows

i wish they didnt make it so hard to turn all this nonsense off

[TacoSenpai]

Based take the Apollo 11 landed on the moon and brought astronauts back alive with 2KB of RAM.

[Bismut]

3 hours ago, seanondemand said:

8 GB of memory is enough for daily use, which for most normal people (that is, non LTT forum readers), can handle all the everyday things they need to do. 

Yeah... My note taking program guzzles up RAM like it is nothing (16GB are not enough), and my mum (who uses Word, sends emails and has at most ten tabs open) is still super happy about "how much her laptop improved" after I upgraded her HDD to an SSD and then again, when I added a 2nd 8GB stick of RAM. Her Windows install is hella old by now (much like how I feel) but she definitely noticed the SSD (not surprising) and extra RAM (kinda surprising).

[HenrySalayne]

3 hours ago, seanondemand said:

I recently got gifted a used XPS 13 9365 2-in-1 laptop with a 7th gen i7 2c/4t chip and 8GB of memory, did a clean W10 install and got a cheap Amazon battery for it. I’m normally a Mac guy, I’ve got an iMac with a 10700K and Radeon 5700Pro, so I’ve got a performant computer for home, but I needed something to take to my MBA classes. 
 

I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now for school stuff, dozens of tabs in Brave, MS Office, and cloud gaming on Game Pass, so here’s my take:

 

8 GB of memory is enough for daily use, which for most normal people (that is, non LTT forum readers), can handle all the everyday things they need to do. 

You have a slow CPU (nowadays) which is perfectly fine to be paired with 8 GB of RAM. It's not like 16 GB would make your computer any faster - just a little bit less slow when it runs out of memory.

The difference is that a modern machine is roughly 3 to 4 times faster than a 7 year old laptop. Handicapping the usefulness of such a machine with an inadequate amount  non-upgradeable memory is a cardinal sin. 12 GB should be considered the absolute minimum for any modern computer for more than $600. Even most phones have surpassed 8 GB of RAM.

[starsmine]

With linux sure, not with windows. And I would never ask a non enthusiast to use linux. 

Its not "enthusiasts" that use ram-heavy applications. 8gb with the modern sandboxing of applications (and in the future, ALL applications) page file is the most unpleasant experience, and SSDs do not fix it.

Asking a non enthusiast to baby sit their ram usage on 8gb is a non starter.

There is also a major thing that most cheap laptops use IGPs, aka thats 2-4gigs of ram just gone from use. So even 12GB laptops with IGPs constantly page file. Arguing 12GB as a good starting point doesnt hold water, thats only valid if the computer uses a dgpu. An IGPU laptop/desktop needs 16GB minimum to not regularly hit page file, something intel is now forcing going forward with all new meteor lake laptops.

[seanondemand]

6 hours ago, starsmine said:

Its not "enthusiasts" that use ram-heavy applications. 8gb with the modern sandboxing of applications (and in the future, ALL applications) page file is the most unpleasant experience, and SSDs do not fix it.

See, I’m not sure i agree anymore - my experience is that i can run some pretty heavy tabs, PDFs, Word, Excel, across two different monitors, and have a pretty good experience - with the caveat that this is a Windows 10 machine with a reasonably quick RAM and SSD. 
 

I might even propose I would be ok giving up 16gb of ram for a nicer screen, body, battery, and ssd. 

[starsmine]

21 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

See, I’m not sure i agree anymore - my experience is that i can run some pretty heavy tabs, PDFs, Word, Excel, across two different monitors, and have a pretty good experience - with the caveat that this is a Windows 10 machine with a reasonably quick RAM and SSD. 
 

I might even propose I would be ok giving up 16gb of ram for a nicer screen, body, battery, and ssd. 

I want to point out that DDR5 16GB is sub 40 USD for OEMS.
 

LPDDR5 pricing, I do not know. but its what is often used with zen 2 laptops. 

DDR4 is sub 30 USD (used for zen 3)

 

https://www.dramexchange.com/

A PC that doesn't page file regularly with 8GB with DGPU or 12GB with IGPU is worth more than 20USD. 
Not sure if any laptop comes with anything but SSDs these days due to the wattage they draw being significantly less than a HDD. I do agree a nicer screen is nice for the ability to use a laptop outside, or to have a convertible body with a touch screen.