|
Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
The other day someone said that their new “normal” for Windows 10 machines was 16 gigs of RAM. It got me to wondering…what is your normal amount of
[See the full post at: How much RAM does your computer have?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I would say 8GB is the new minimum with Win10.
I ran the OS fine with that for several years. But I would suggest 16GB for any new PCs.
I had a laptop with only 4GB and that was painful, because Win10 and my base startup apps required close to that at boot.That was a system built for Win 8.1, and I upgraded it to 10.
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
This site is not exclusively about Windows, but other OS and the machines that run them are also covered, and in this case is the hardware what is under consideration.
So actual and potential Mac users among us might be interested to know that, at least based on my not extremely demanding use, 8GB in Macs is also a good size and the minimum they come with, unless one is doing something that needs more than that and does not want to have a lot of virtual memory paging back and forth between RAM and disk. New Laptops can have up to 16 GB of RAM, while Mac Pro desktop computers can have up to 1.5 TB of RAM:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21559200/apple-m1-macbook-pro-mac-mini-16gb-ram-memory-limit
Mac Pro (2019) has 12 DIMM (memory) slots that support up to 1.5TB of 2933MHz memory when all 12 slots are full using DDR4 ECC DIMMs:
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
minimum 8 gigs assuming the commonly used 64bit versions of Windows 10 are being used AND are using modern PCs made in the past few years
most of my PCs are about a decade old (from 2007 to 2011) and they still have between 4Gb to 8Gb RAM and running Win10 x64 Home/Pro
Upgraded my 3-year-old custom-built, dual-boot system to 32GB about 6 months ago.
Currnet setup: i7-8700K w/mild OC to 4.6Ghz (4.8Ghz turbo); four NVMe SSD’s : Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB, Samsung 950 Pro 512GB, Samsung 950 Pro 256GB, Intel SSD 512GB ; Geforce GTX 1070 8GB ; and for ‘at-hand’ backups and archives: two internal HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4TB HDDs. Not counting my multiple external drives for backing it all up. Pretty much maxed out except for a current generation video card. Not complaining, though. 😉
Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.
That said, I have 2 beautiful, fully functional Lenovo Carbon X1 & X2 (yes both are relatively ancient), yet, I had to buy them with 4 GB of RAM at the time to meet budget requirements and I kick myself everytime I look at them sitting on the shelf unused. The Ram is soldered on the Carbons and it feels like that most laptops you get now are also soldered / non-expandable RAM.
4GB is certainly less than ideal, and my preference is also for 16GB, but I did also find that 4GB (non-upgradeable) on my Acer Swift 1 worked better than it reasonably should have when paired with a SSD for virtual memory. I never tried it in Windows, but in Linux, the virtual memory settings allow a good deal of fine-tuning of the VM schema, so I set it up to prefer to swap (or page) out the contents of physical RAM as much and as early as possible, so that the precious 3.7 GB remaining after the integrated GPU takes its chunk is reserved for active programs. It would slightly reduce the responsiveness when RAM is not near full, but would allow for memory-intensive programs to request RAM without the system having to thrash to find enough RAM to allocate.
It’s the opposite advice you usually “hear” on web forums, where people seem to equate virtual memory as a whole with thrashing, so they suggest turning it off or making it so the PC will only try to use it when it is nearly in a crisis state, which is too late. That would only be a reasonable solution if memory demands were typically well below that point, and the VM was only rarely used as a pressure valve of sorts (a schema that makes more sense if you have plenty of RAM than when you do not have much).
If a PC has 4 GB of RAM and 8GB of swap, it only thrashes when nearly 12GB is allocated… so if there was no swap, it would have bluescreened or hit the OOM killer long before, as soon as the 4GB was full.
It has worked really well, and I was often able to use Firefox sessions with way too many tabs for a 4GB laptop, and I could even run virtual machines on it. Not quickly, but the Swift isn’t quick doing anything.
I would have preferred more RAM if it was offered in the Swift, but I do think that ultimately, it was its slow CPU that pushed me to seek its replacement more than the limited RAM.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
Many of us have more than 1 machine, Susan. Which machine are you referring to in my case, for example?
The machines I actively use all have at least 32 GB RAM or more. Bold is the main OS I use. I have other machines which are less used and are not listed.
Main Computer : 80 GB (Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 1809 LTSC, Windows 10 for testing)
Second Machine : 48 GB (Windows 7 / Windows 8.1)
Third Machine : 64 GB (Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 1607 LTSB, Windows 10 for testing)
I run VMware Workstation on my main machine often with several virtual machines running at the same time and that’s why I want that much RAM. I am thinking of using my third machine to run VMware as well.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
Well it depends on the purpose of the machine. And also on the operating system. There are definatelly some RAM eaters well known for their great apetite. Like web browsers generally, especially when user has 20+ tabs opened.
The minimum for me is
4GB pure office purpose = reading, writing
8GB for “home entertainment center” = eg. high resolution video + downloading at the same time
16GB for gaming
32GB+ for work = VMs, 3D processing, video processing, …
Bottom line: The SSD is must have for the C: volume. Because there is some swapping between RAM and storage. It must be as fast as possible. No more HDDs for me. Only for backups or simple data storage as volume D:, E:, ..
Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
PRUSA i3 MK3S+
For typical business use, I normally specify 8 GB, unless there’s something that you know requires more, such as graphical or video processing or running VMs.
I’ve found that for use that I would consider to be “normal” (i.e., a browser, a mail client and a word processor, and maybe a spreadsheet), memory usage often tends to be in the range of 5 GB to 6 GB, and I’ve found this to be consistent with Windows, Linux and Mac.
My own primary machine is configured with 16 GB, and even though I do a lot of multi-tasking, I rarely need more than about 7 GB, unless I have multiple virtual machines open.
Something that’s easy to forget is that the old saw about “you can never have too much RAM” isn’t strictly true. If a machine is memory-constrained, then adding memory will make a significant performance difference. However, if you have enough memory (but slow performance) then adding more memory doesn’t do anything other than provide excess capacity, because the bottlenecks are elsewhere in the system.
If I’m troubleshooting a slow computer that does not have memory issues, then I’m generally looking at storage as the next likely bottleneck. A full device (more than 75% full) is a common problem, and I’ve seen machines that are excruciatingly slow because of a hard drive that’s showing SMART errors. And moving storage to SSD will help a lot on performance issues.
For my own setups, the primary machine runs 16 GB, and the previous primary was one that I upgraded from 8 GB to 16 GB. I currently use that machine as a file and print server, and a little bit of personal use, and for that, 16 GB is overkill. For family machines, all of those are at 8 GB, except one desktop machine that’s used for some measure of gaming and video editing, and it’s worth having 16 GB there.
I also have a Mac Mini that is hard-built to do only 4 GB of RAM, and it’s uncomfortably slow, although I use that one mostly for testing/managing configurations and familiarity of the UI for user support. I knew that it was going to be tight on RAM when I got a reconditioned unit cheaply, and I can live with that, but at the same time, I may eventually replace it with a machine that can handle at least 8 GB. My understanding is that newer Mini models don’t have the problem of no ability to upgrade RAM the way that most MacBook Pro models do.
32GB. I multitask heavily on a daily basis. I’ve also had a few instances when all that extra headroom came in mighty handy when trying to diagnose a massive memory leak that would have quickly bogged down a machine with less RAM to the point of unusability.
i7-10700k - ASROCK Z590 Pro4 - 1TB 970 EVO Plus M.2 - DDR4 3200 x 32GB - GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FTW - Windows 10 Pro
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments.
