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Why Is RAM Suddenly So Cheap? It Might Be Windows
jfruh writes: The average price of a 4GB DDR3 memory DIMM at the moment $18.50 — a price that's far lower than at this time last year. Why is it so cheap? The memory business tends to go in boom and bust cycles, but the free availability of Windows 10 means that fewer people are upgrading their PCs, reducing RAM demand. Analyst Avril Wu said, "Notebook shipments in the third quarter fall short of what is expected for a traditional peak season mainly because Windows 10 with its free upgrade plan negatively impacted replaced sales of notebooks to some extent rather than driving the demand for these products." And prices might stay low for another two years.
Well I've already got 16GB in my home PC and I don't seem to use more than 3 or 4GB of it, but I guess I could squeeze in another 16GB...
It's DDR3 being shuffled off the stage because DDR4 is now well-established.
Prices for DDR3 will bottom out and then shoot back up and plateau, and you won't care until you need to upgrade an old system.
is fine with 4. I put another 2 gigs in after the upgrade and didn't notice any difference. When Vista hit it was barely functional with 6. Win 7 fixed that so it worked with 4 again. Hell, I've got an old AthlonX2 5600 I play Streetfighter IV on that's only got 3. Basically, there's not a lot of demand.
I think it is disgusting that we think it is just awesome for an OS to ONLY need 4 GB.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think for a "free" upgrade it's actually quite bad. Windows 7 outpaced it and that was an upgrade priced at a few hundred dollars. Also, many of those "upgrades" to 10 we're before release. They were offering RTM and beta as a free download long before release. This is probably when most power users, and people in the industry got on board. These people are still evaluating and still chasing the newest shiniest thing. Time will tell what the overall verdict is.
People aren't as excited about this new "free" version of Windows as they should be. The reason: most don't like what Microsoft is shoveling. We don't want "the cloud", we don't care about mobile interfaces, SAAS, IAAS, or any of your other marketing bullshit. We aren't interested in a free "upgrade" that further removes user freedom and attempts to monetize their data. We're not morons. You haven't fooled us.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It's probably CPU. Especially if any of those tabs are running flash or HTML5 video. At least that's been my experience. Flash absolutely murders CPU in linux, and HTML5 video doesn't seem to be much better.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This is broken logic. Giving away Windows 10 doesn't impact PC sales at all. What IS impacting PC sales is the fact that the need for a more powerful machine is slowing way down. Instead of computers becoming obsolete in a year or two, computers can often go for much longer before they need to be replaced. It's not uncommon to find people who have had the same PC for 5 years now because there's simply no benefit to them to move to more powerful hardware.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Still, RAM prices should be lower after 3 years, not the same. RAM is definitely not cheap. We need more RAM than 3 years ago, but the price is the same, or more. RAM is not produced in the USA, so I don't think its value has much to do with the USD. The CAD decreased by about 15% against the Taiwan New Dollar, however.