Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Revisiting How Much RAM Is Enough Today For Desktop Computing

Posted by Soulskill on from the 64GB-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

jjslash writes: An article at TechSpot tests how much RAM you need for regular desktop computing and how it affects performance in apps and games. As it turns out, there's not much benefit going beyond 8 GB for regular programs, and surprisingly, 4GB still seems to be enough for gaming in most cases. Although RAM is cheap these days, and they had to go to absurdly unrealistic settings to simulate high demand for memory outside of virtualization, it's a good read to confirm our judgment calls on what is enough for most in 2015.

2 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Re:For anyone? by jon3k · · Score: 4, Informative

    Bill Gates said KB, actually. And the other posters were obviously joking.

  2. Re:As much as possible by larryjoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    The raw error rate for DRAM tends to correlate with DRAM chips. Raw, non-ECC soft error rates are in the neighborhood of 10 FIT/chip or say 160 FIT/DIMM for a DIMM with 16 chips. Let's consider a system with 4 DIMMs, which has 640 FIT. That's equivalent to a soft error every 178 years. Hard errors are additional, but for the typical amounts of DRAM in a PC, soft errors (and usually also hard errors) are inconsequential.

    Also, field studies (see Sridharan, SC12) show that around half of all soft errors are not correctable with SECDED ECC.