this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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PC Master Race

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[–] Kronusdark@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly, the only reason we really needed that much ram to begin with was because no one optimized anything.

I certainly won’t excuse Microsoft here, but if the RAM shortages cause developers to reevaluate their nonfunctional requirements, that will be a small victory.

[–] MrGeneric@lemmy.today 3 points 15 hours ago

Instead of that we got computer leasing agreements

[–] TemplaerDude@sh.itjust.works 11 points 21 hours ago

What a fucking garbage can company.

[–] TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.club 13 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

You know what doesnt need 32gb? Linux.

[–] Tiral@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago

Mint cinnamon runs fast as hell on my xps 13 with an 1135g7 and 8gb. Like faster than my Flow z13 395+ with 64gb. It's a serious software issue.

[–] VanRado@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

And even with 4GB Linux itself is not the problem. It's the apps. So many Electron apps that use so much memory because they're running in Chromium instances.

[–] sanitation@lemmy.today 4 points 23 hours ago (8 children)

i havent used computer with less than 32Gb in a decade

[–] Magnum@infosec.pub 3 points 17 hours ago

Pretty privileged

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[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Fuck yeah. All these years we've complained that Windows was getting so insanely bloated and the system requirements were going crazy, and finally they decided to put in the time and effort to really optimize it so it runs on lighter setups.

Who knew it would be so easy as just removing the recommended specs entirely!

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago

Had me in the first half. As if that clusterfuck fascist OS would run efficient on 8GB

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It's recommended to have 32gb of ram just for windows? Is that actually true?

[–] toddestan@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago

According to the fine article, Microsoft's recommendation for gaming PCs was that "32GB is ideal for serious players who run the most demanding titles or use heavy mods”.

So, no.

[–] DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 7 points 23 hours ago

Which is still insane, given that 10 wanted 1 or 2. We haven’t seen a jump like this since XP to Vista.

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

This thread is full of misconceptions about RAM use. It is normal and efficient for an OS to reserve memory for processes even if it not really used. This memory will be juggled around in case that is needed. It would be very bad for a modern OS if you somehow lowered your used RAM to near 0%. That would make the computer slower.

See for example this: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

The same thing goes for Windows. It reserves RAM to be used. Like it should be.

Sure, Windows is bloated.

But posting screenshots of your task manager tells us nothing. If it uses 30% of your RAM at start time, that's fine. Or not. Can't really tell.

[–] UsoSaito@feddit.uk 11 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Modern OS that isn't Windows though can use significantly less RAM. It's all the telemetry shit and always-online shit thats been jammed into the OS that makes it run poorly. Theres no reason to run CoPilot in File Explorer.

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

I agree fully. But in this post's comments people don't seem to understand how RAM use works.

It should be used... It is good... Not using it is bad!

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 20 hours ago

If your processes require RAM, it’s fine to use it. Windows obviously has many processes like that and reserves lots of RAM.

A Linux system can also have RAM-heavy processes if you choose to install and run them. In that case, a high RAM usage indicates that these processes are functioning correctly. Conversely, very low RAM usage suggests that the system is running as intended, assuming you haven’t installed unnecessary applications.

While RAM usage numbers can tell you something about installed and running processes, they don’t necessarily tell much about system performance. High or low values alone don’t definitively tell you whether the system is running well or poorly.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 23 hours ago

or notepad...

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 4 points 1 day ago

The amount of available RAM (which includes RAM actively used for caches but which will be immediately reassigned by the OS if requested by applications) matters more if you do a lot of task switching.

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[–] villainy@lemmy.world 74 points 1 day ago

8GB wouldn't get me through a cold boot and the stack of corporate mandated ~~spyware~~ security agents.

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 44 points 1 day ago

Fuck Nvidia. Fuck SamA with a rusty chainsaw.

[–] Vince@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Am I crazy or is this one of the very tiny kinda shitty silver lining to all of this? Software developers are being forced to optimize their shit?

[–] dafta@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 1 day ago

They're not actually gonna optimize anything

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You would think this would encourage better optimized software, but I doubt devs will actually do that. Most modern code practices are about ensuring that code is more easily maintained, often at the cost of performance. Breaking "clean code" rules can easily make programs run 10-25x faster, but will be much harder to maintain.

We also seeing a lot of vibe coding now, which mixes clean code practices (which are well documents online) with messier, less well planned code.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 5 points 1 day ago

That's grossly over simplifying the problem. "Clean code" is also not a formally defined concept, which could include anything and everything.

I've had more performance problems due to hacky workarounds, themselves necessary because of lack of foresight during development, rather than a slow abstraction (in fact, I don't think I've ever seen the latter)

[–] FerrisEuler@programming.dev 2 points 23 hours ago

Indie developers, like the 1-5 staff game studios on Steam, never stopped doing so. You can run most indie games on an old PC today. The big AAA game companies like Activision are taking a big gamble on the next generation, which they insist you'll need a newer console or PC to run. Bethesda tried that with Starfield and it didn't work out so well. The game's not as terrible as people say, but its kind of in the middle of the pack of AAA gaming RPGs and it demanded a fairly large amount of VRAM to run well. I predict things will not go well for games like Modern Warfare 4 that won't run on the last gen consoles or PCs. If developers aren't aiming at older devices then they're making a niche product not a mass market product

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

They wont though. They will press on as usual, and hope Nvidias (and others) dreams of cloudbased subscription computers somehow becomes reality.

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What is this, 2012?

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

32? It takes a lot to not only use 16, but to actively use it and be affected by slower pagefile access.

[–] toofpic@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (5 children)

What? FF with a bunch of Jira tabs, Outlook, Teams, Excel, Miro, Spotify, and I am at 100% of 16 gigs. Not even saying anything about running a 8gig VM from time to time

[–] orochi02@feddit.org 2 points 23 hours ago

Discord, spotify, Firefox and minecraft (with Mods) is enough to bring down my 16 gbs

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Teams, Firefox, and Outlook and that’s most of my Windows work PC RAM gone. Have to close out of my dev work whenever a meeting is afoot because the calls fucking hammer this thing.

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's because Teams is a piece of shit, not because 16GB isn't enough normally.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 4 points 1 day ago

16gb will go far on MacOS and any Linux distro you throw at it. Windows 11 will struggle.

[–] zikzak025@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Teams is the most performance inefficient shit I've ever been forced to use.

We use both Zoom and Teams for meeting with partners. On my piece of shit work laptop, I have no problem with Zoom. Teams on the other hand will randomly cut my audio, lag my cursor, or cause peripherals to stop working when I'm in a meeting. I simply can't fathom how it's as bad as it is.

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[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (16 children)

Ehh, my main machine eats up 12-16GB with just background tasks, and that's on W10. Nobody gives a fuck about optimization since the late 00s.

E: just woke up my system

[–] zarathustrad@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well, I'm installing Linux (CachyOS) on my former W10 PC this weekend. So, my 16gb of ram will be well utilized.

At least someone still cares about optimization.

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[–] blah3166@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My Linux system (which used to run Window so it has 32 GB of RAM), won't even hit 8 GB if I'm not gaming. I've opened up multiple apps just to show how efficient it is. I think it was sitting around 4 GB before I started running things to see if I can make it balloon easily.

HB4EGPTi4hgvwHb.png

And I'm running most my apps as flatpaks which I've heard may add some slight overhead in terms of RAM usage - someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.

My work computer (granted it likely has tons of background security tools running) uses 10/16 GB's just to get to the desktop and do nothing. The best part is, because ~1.2 GB's of RAM gets allocated for the integrated graphics, I'm really only left with ~4.8 GB's of RAM to do actual work. But wait, it gets even better! This week I found out some bullshit Copilot feature was enabled and taking up another ~1.2 GB's of RAM, leaving me with a total of 3.6 GB's of RAM. So I disabled the WSAIFabricSvc service and reclaimed a sliver of dignity and work space.

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