Comment by ibejoeb

18 hours ago

If you haven't checked the market for RAM lately, you're in for a shock.

The current cost spike is very recent. The average computer's RAM size has roughly quadrupled every four years since around 1988:

1988: 1MB

1992: 4MB

1996: 16MB

2000: 64MB

2004: 256MB

2008: 1GB

2012: 4GB

And then, from around 2014 or so, for the last 12 years, we've been kind of stuck on 8GB for some reason. There wasn't a ram shortage in 2016, so why didn't the average computer come with 16GB? The trend continuing would mean we'd have 64GB average machines by 2020. So what happened?

  • I'm sure you're right. I don't know why the trend didn't continue. But, still, given the current conditions I don't think it's realistic to expect a budget laptop with 128 GB of RAM rolling off the line right now.