pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:35:

Not quite, I have seen light users slow down even there is minimal bloat due to not enough ram and hard drive. This was due t […]
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dormcat wrote on 2023-04-11, 05:25:

Well that explains. :sweat_smile: […]
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pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-10, 22:49:

I have about 100 tabs and heavy web user, youtube and facebook.

Well that explains. 😅

For almost three decades I've witnessed and assisted many people around me claiming "my computer/smartphone is slowing down and/or running out of storage space." Most situations were mixtures of installing bloatware, not clearing cache/recycle bin periodically, lacking basic knowledge of file management (example: many retail brands have a smaller C:, either SSD or logical, for OS and major programs only, while a larger HDD or logical D: for personal files; I've seen many people who have C: almost used up but still have an empty D: due to Microsoft has "My Documents" under C:), or not closing unused apps and simply having them in the background. Google Chrome even introduced a "Memory Saver" function recently for those users by dumping inactive tabs from RAM, which I personally find it disgusting (auto-reloading can cause a page to lose info, particularly if the site updates frequently e.g. a news media).

The majority of non-tech savvy population simply don't have the need of huge RAM; a browser (for streaming and SNS), an office suite, and a few leisure games can satisfy >80% of computer users. Computer and smartphone manufacturers keep their mouth shut on methods of maintaining and repairing their products so customers would purchase more expensive models with shorter cycles. I do know a few doctors with loaded wallets do "require" 12-gen Intel Core-i7 for office works and web browsing; they simply want to show off their superpowers:

superpower.jpg

Not quite, I have seen light users slow down even there is minimal bloat due to not enough ram and hard drive. This was due to not enough ram and not fast enough storage let be either hard drive and SSD.
Majority of computers I seen were low end configurations. Mid end and high end that comes across my bench is very rare.

8GB is not enough to have acceptable performance. Even 16GB is not enough for windows 11.

This bears out from my working on computers for hobby and for work.

Cheers,

If all you do is play browser games, email, Youtube and light office work 8gb is fine with an SSD. The lightest Windows 10 system Iv setup so far was a $30 250gb SSD into a 2010 Gateway Pentium P6100 laptop with 3gb of ddr3. The original 320gb HDD worked perfectly but the sheer lag even with fresh Windows Install was headache inducing.

I still scream along teh information superhighways on some 2 banger 2GB machines, gotta learn how to shift gears to keep them in the power band though. One is helped by readyboost though and the other by a similar Intel TurboMemory thingywotsit. When they bog down though, it's generally all i/o thrash, usually because update or malware scans just don't respect what times I tell them I want them to run.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-04-12, 03:05:

I still scream along teh information superhighways on some 2 banger 2GB machines, gotta learn how to shift gears to keep them in the power band though. One is helped by readyboost though and the other by a similar Intel TurboMemory thingywotsit. When they bog down though, it's generally all i/o thrash, usually because update or malware scans just don't respect what times I tell them I want them to run.

Here I am watching modern Firefox eat 6gb of system memory on its own, Still better than Chrome when I used to run it eating nearly 10gb for the same number of tabs I have open in Firefox right now. But the opposite is that 3800 DDR4 is so cheap compared to ram from 15 years ago that 128gb of it was an easy buy.

Well I must be doing something wrong then, as I haven't found 16GB to be limiting in either win10 (for about 7 years) or win11 (for about 6 months). In fact both seem to be similar in idle mem footprint, with all the updates and offical bloatware pushed on to me. On the very few occasions that 16GB wasn't enough, my workstation (32GB) was plenty and that was loading some very large datasets and building models (and I'm talking huge, plus all simulation data... essenitally a federated model etc) maxing out at about 22GB. The only time I've known professionals using 64GB+ ram kits were when they were running multiple VM's on a single host machine? Ofc the more the merrier, but I think 16GB is pefectly fine for most people (even gamers) and is not near 'borderline' unless you are have some specialised uses. Noticable differences for me have come in the form CPU/GPU generations (i.e my 9th gen i3 runs circles around my 4th gen i7... both have 16GB) rather than increasing RAM.

Mem usage is 100% dependant on what software you use, what it's footprint is, and even how you use it (e.g 100+ tabs open, compared to say 5 tabs). 100+ tabs in a browser will have similar (if not the same) mem footprint on Win vista as it would on Win11 so I don't think there is any correlation with doubling the 'optimum' 16GB for win10 to 32GB for win11. OS is irrelevant for all intents and purposes in this scenario.

I wouldn't know where to begin navigating 30 tabs let alone 100... call me oldskool but I don't like keeping seesions open longer than they have to be... and I still use bookmarks. o.0

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:35:

Not quite, I have seen light users slow down even there is minimal bloat due to not enough ram and hard drive. This was due to not enough ram and not fast enough storage let be either hard drive and SSD.

tbh If you have 16GB and are running out of RAM for a simple daily driver that doesn't require any specialised mem heavy usage then I would think there is a software problem somewhere (rougue 3rd party service, leaky program or dare I say it...malware) which is only being masked by upgrading the hardware (and RAM at that).

Also I think for the majority, SSD's are probably fine no need to force NVME onto people. Unless you are shifting huge amounts of files/data around that is. Hard faults feel non-existant on non-mechanical drives to me these days (certinaly not like they used to)? I bet 99% of people couldn't tell the difference if they were using an NVME or SSD unless copying hige numbers of files (large numbers of files that is, not large amount of data).

spiroyster wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:48:

Well I must be doing something wrong then, as I haven't found 16GB to be limiting in either win10 (for about 7 years) or win11 ( […]
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Well I must be doing something wrong then, as I haven't found 16GB to be limiting in either win10 (for about 7 years) or win11 (for about 6 months). In fact both seem to be similar in idle mem footprint, with all the updates and offical bloatware pushed on to me. On the very few occasions that 16GB wasn't enough, my workstation (32GB) was plenty and that was loading some very large datasets and building models (and I'm talking huge, plus all simulation data... essenitally a federated model etc) maxing out at about 22GB. The only time I've known professionals using 64GB+ ram kits were when they were running multiple VM's on a single host machine? Ofc the more the merrier, but I think 16GB is pefectly fine for most people (even gamers) and is not near 'borderline' unless you are have some specialised uses. Noticable differences for me have come in the form CPU/GPU generations (i.e my 9th gen i3 runs circles around my 4th gen i7... both have 16GB) rather than increasing RAM.

Mem usage is 100% dependant on what software you use, what it's footprint is, and even how you use it (e.g 100+ tabs open, compared to say 5 tabs). 100+ tabs in a browser will have similar (if not the same) mem footprint on Win vista as it would on Win11 so I don't think there is any correlation with doubling the 'optimum' 16GB for win10 to 32GB for win11. OS is irrelevant for all intents and purposes in this scenario.

I wouldn't know where to begin navigating 30 tabs let alone 100... call me oldskool but I don't like keeping seesions open longer than they have to be... and I still use bookmarks. o.0

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:35:

Not quite, I have seen light users slow down even there is minimal bloat due to not enough ram and hard drive. This was due to not enough ram and not fast enough storage let be either hard drive and SSD.

tbh If you have 16GB and are running out of RAM for a simple daily driver that doesn't require any specialised mem heavy usage then I would think there is a software problem somewhere (rougue 3rd party service, leaky program or dare I say it...malware) which is only being masked by upgrading the hardware (and RAM at that).

Also I think for the majority, SSD's are probably fine no need to force NVME onto people. Unless you are shifting huge amounts of files/data around that is. Hard faults feel non-existant on non-mechanical drives to me these days (certinaly not like they used to)? I bet 99% of people couldn't tell the difference if they were using an NVME or SSD unless copying hige numbers of files (large numbers of files that is, not large amount of data).

I can tell the difference between SSD and NVME just from boot and software load times alone, but then I have been using NVME for quite a while now and for a basic daily driver there really isn't a need for it or even a need for a SSD as a fast mechanical drive will work just as well. Only reason to grab a SATA SSD is because of how cheap they are along with low heat and noise which makes them convenient for home use.

As for ram, that really is dependent on how and what you use for PC for, your average home user wont need more than 16gb for any task really and I dare say even 8gb would be enough for a simple email, social media, YouTube and web browsing rig. I run 128gb because Im the kind of user who does have multiple tabs open at once and will generally have multiple VM instances open at the same time depending on what Im tinkering with.

I had installed windows 11 and had restarted it or turned on few times with 16GB and time was noticeable. When I went to 32GB, It was a hot shot computer from point on and iGPU much better due to dual channel on.

Remember windows 11 will bloat some more in time same with apps getting heavier in 1 and half years later, at windows 10 EOL date 2025.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:21:

I had installed windows 11 and had restarted it or turned on few times with 16GB and time was noticeable. When I went to 32GB, It was a hot shot computer from point on and iGPU much better due to dual channel on.

Remember windows 11 will bloat some more in time same with apps getting heavier in 1 and half years later, at windows 10 EOL date 2025.

Cheers,

That has everything to do with single vs dual channel and nothing to do with the amount of RAM in this situation.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:21:

I had installed windows 11 and had restarted it or turned on few times with 16GB and time was noticeable. When I went to 32GB, It was a hot shot computer from point on and iGPU much better due to dual channel on.

Remember windows 11 will bloat some more in time same with apps getting heavier in 1 and half years later, at windows 10 EOL date 2025.

Cheers,

I suspect you have a Bill Gates poster as a dartboard. 🤣
Well, I moved to Linux because it's lightweight compared to what glass-in-a-frame offers.

To each his own.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:32:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:21:

I had installed windows 11 and had restarted it or turned on few times with 16GB and time was noticeable. When I went to 32GB, It was a hot shot computer from point on and iGPU much better due to dual channel on.

Remember windows 11 will bloat some more in time same with apps getting heavier in 1 and half years later, at windows 10 EOL date 2025.

Cheers,

That has everything to do with single vs dual channel and nothing to do with the amount of RAM in this situation.

Yes, outside of certain games or programs that use tons of RAM, there will be no difference in overall performance between 16GB and 32GB if everything else is the same.

I have a relative with a laptop running a Ryzen 3 4300, 4GB of DDR4 and a 128GB NVMe SSD (it was cheap), and they are able to use Zoom and Discord and browse the internet with no problems. It started with Windows 10 and now has Windows 11. I have used the machine and it isn't as responsive as it could be with a little more RAM, but it's fine and boots fast. It will never be "hard drive slow" because of the NVMe storage. At least until the SSD dies from all the virtual memory writes... but that's going to take many years.

I also have a laptop I use regularly with an i5-3210M, 8GB of DDR3 and a 256GB SATA SSD running Windows 10 and it boots fast and runs great.

I certainly wouldn't want less than 8GB for a system I had to use every day, but I don't know where people get the idea that systems need or even benefit from huge amounts of RAM. 16 in my main desktop has proven to be plenty, but I don't really run the latest AAA titles or sim games that need scads of RAM.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-04-12, 23:33:

Yes, outside of certain games or programs that use tons of RAM, there will be no difference in overall performance between 16GB […]
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cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:32:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:21:

I had installed windows 11 and had restarted it or turned on few times with 16GB and time was noticeable. When I went to 32GB, It was a hot shot computer from point on and iGPU much better due to dual channel on.

Remember windows 11 will bloat some more in time same with apps getting heavier in 1 and half years later, at windows 10 EOL date 2025.

Cheers,

That has everything to do with single vs dual channel and nothing to do with the amount of RAM in this situation.

Yes, outside of certain games or programs that use tons of RAM, there will be no difference in overall performance between 16GB and 32GB if everything else is the same.

I have a relative with a laptop running a Ryzen 3 4300, 4GB of DDR4 and a 128GB NVMe SSD (it was cheap), and they are able to use Zoom and Discord and browse the internet with no problems. It started with Windows 10 and now has Windows 11. I have used the machine and it isn't as responsive as it could be with a little more RAM, but it's fine and boots fast. It will never be "hard drive slow" because of the NVMe storage. At least until the SSD dies from all the virtual memory writes... but that's going to take many years.

I also have a laptop I use regularly with an i5-3210M, 8GB of DDR3 and a 256GB SATA SSD running Windows 10 and it boots fast and runs great.

I certainly wouldn't want less than 8GB for a system I had to use every day, but I don't know where people get the idea that systems need or even benefit from huge amounts of RAM. 16 in my main desktop has proven to be plenty, but I don't really run the latest AAA titles or sim games that need scads of RAM.

See if you can offer to donate another 4GB SODIMM to their notebook if supports two modules? 4GB is not that practical. This was for XP era.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-04-12, 23:55:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-04-12, 23:33:

Yes, outside of certain games or programs that use tons of RAM, there will be no difference in overall performance between 16GB […]
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cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-12, 22:32:

That has everything to do with single vs dual channel and nothing to do with the amount of RAM in this situation.

Yes, outside of certain games or programs that use tons of RAM, there will be no difference in overall performance between 16GB and 32GB if everything else is the same.

I have a relative with a laptop running a Ryzen 3 4300, 4GB of DDR4 and a 128GB NVMe SSD (it was cheap), and they are able to use Zoom and Discord and browse the internet with no problems. It started with Windows 10 and now has Windows 11. I have used the machine and it isn't as responsive as it could be with a little more RAM, but it's fine and boots fast. It will never be "hard drive slow" because of the NVMe storage. At least until the SSD dies from all the virtual memory writes... but that's going to take many years.

I also have a laptop I use regularly with an i5-3210M, 8GB of DDR3 and a 256GB SATA SSD running Windows 10 and it boots fast and runs great.

I certainly wouldn't want less than 8GB for a system I had to use every day, but I don't know where people get the idea that systems need or even benefit from huge amounts of RAM. 16 in my main desktop has proven to be plenty, but I don't really run the latest AAA titles or sim games that need scads of RAM.

See if you can offer to donate another 4GB SODIMM to their notebook if supports two modules? 4GB is not that practical. This was for XP era.

Cheers,

Sadly, the RAM and SSD are soldered and not upgradeable. But like I said, it works completely fine for them. They have had it for a few years with no problems. Our perception of what is practical doesn't really apply to everyone.

Aside from the low RAM and small SSD, it's a fantastic machine. Convertible, touch screen, 1080P IPS, Zen2... and it was under $300.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-04-12, 09:29:

Here I am watching modern Firefox eat 6gb of system memory on its own, Still better than Chrome when I used to run it eating nearly 10gb for the same number of tabs I have open in Firefox right now.

I still haven't seen Chrome use as much RAM as modern Firefox (after "Quantum"). Chrome is actually usable on 4GB of RAM with my browsing habits, but Firefox will almost immediately hammer virtual memory to the point of the computer becoming completely unresponsive. Windows will even fade the entire screen to white (like it does to a single window that it thinks is not responding).

My prob with Firefox is you'd get scripts timing out with relatively few tabs open, 10 years back, relatively few was 6-8, now it's more like 10-15, so I guess they're improving, not fast enough for me though.

I switched to Firefox from Chrome after their bullshit games with trying to kill adblocker extensions. if I cant block adds on Chrome properly then ill simply not use it.

Chrome can kiss my arse.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-04-13, 04:24:

My prob with Firefox is you'd get scripts timing out with relatively few tabs open, 10 years back, relatively few was 6-8, now it's more like 10-15, so I guess they're improving, not fast enough for me though.

Never have had this happen, I have three FF windows open with 30 odd tabs open in each and never have had a script fail on me.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-04-13, 04:54:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-04-13, 04:24:

My prob with Firefox is you'd get scripts timing out with relatively few tabs open, 10 years back, relatively few was 6-8, now it's more like 10-15, so I guess they're improving, not fast enough for me though.

Never have had this happen, I have three FF windows open with 30 odd tabs open in each and never have had a script fail on me.

i have with FF but rarely, i've used FF for many years, since about 2005, and always prefer it over others. These days i like Chrome and Edge too, they are good - but FF is the one i am used to and seems to demand a bit less in resources

I've been wanting to upgrade the GTX 1080 Ti that's been holding back my 5GHz Ryzen 9 5900X for years now. Perhaps with an RX 7900 XTX to make it an all AMD machine. So today, I finally, finally...

...ordered an RTX 4070 for my crusty old Haswell HTPC.

Which, admittedly, is akin to placing a GeForce 6800 GT in a Pentium III machine. So my 4790K-based HTPC, a computer that we typically only fire up on weekends -- and one that is certainly too old to support modern features like resizable BAR -- will suddenly have twice the pixel pushing potential of my main PC, and with ray tracing to boot! The 9 year old CPU is overclocked to 4.7 GHz and running alongside 2400 MHz DDR3, which will hopefully take some of the bottleneck out.

I do have several reasons for upgrading my HTPC first. Lately, we've been enjoying more giant-screen 4K gaming downstairs, a "work"load that the previous GPU, a GTX 1650 Super, clearly struggled with. And, with an older processor at the helm, having accelerated AV1 decode will certainly come in handy. I'm also more than curious to see how well the new GPU does at upscaling 480p video ripped from my DVD box sets years ago; all with less-than-ideal x264 settings because it was 2007 and computers blew back then. Yes, I do believe that it's time to watch Star Trek Voyager again.

I guess my main PC will receive its RX 7900 XTX some other day. Oh hey, GPUJune is just around the corner!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2023-04-14, 00:33:

I've been wanting to upgrade the GTX 1080 Ti that's been holding back my 5GHz Ryzen 9 5900X for years now. Perhaps with an RX 79 […]
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I've been wanting to upgrade the GTX 1080 Ti that's been holding back my 5GHz Ryzen 9 5900X for years now. Perhaps with an RX 7900 XTX to make it an all AMD machine. So today, I finally, finally...

...ordered an RTX 4070 for my crusty old Haswell HTPC.

Which, admittedly, is akin to placing a GeForce 6800 GT in a Pentium III machine. So my 4790K-based HTPC, a computer that we typically only fire up on weekends -- and one that is certainly too old to support modern features like resizable BAR -- will suddenly have twice the pixel pushing potential of my main PC, and with ray tracing to boot! The 9 year old CPU is overclocked to 4.7 GHz and running alongside 2400 MHz DDR3, which will hopefully take some of the bottleneck out.

I do have several reasons for upgrading my HTPC first. Lately, we've been enjoying more giant-screen 4K gaming downstairs, a "work"load that the previous GPU, a GTX 1650 Super, clearly struggled with. And, with an older processor at the helm, having accelerated AV1 decode will certainly come in handy. I'm also more than curious to see how well the new GPU does at upscaling 480p video ripped from my DVD box sets years ago; all with less-than-ideal x264 settings because it was 2007 and computers blew back then. Yes, I do believe that it's time to watch Star Trek Voyager again.

I guess my main PC will receive its RX 7900 XTX some other day. Oh hey, GPUJune is just around the corner!

I would throw the 1080ti in the Haswell PC, and use the 4070 in the Ryzen rig til l got the 7900XTX for it, there really is little point in having a 4070 PCIe4.0 GPU in the Haswell box. (Is there even enough content using AV1 yet to warrant using a 4070 in a Haswell machine ?) That 1080ti will handle pretty much everything you want to do on the HTPC aside from AV1, once you get your 7900XTX swap them over.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-04-14, 00:47:

That 1080ti will handle pretty much everything you want to do on the HTPC aside from AV1, once you get your 7900XTX swap them over.

The one big thing that everything pre RTX 3000 series is lacking is HDMI 2.1 support, so if you want to run at 4k @ 120Hz with Full RGB or 4:4:4 chroma, you'd need at least an RTX 3050. Anything older will be limited to formats that can create visual artifacts, especially on text and fine details.

This is the main reason my HTPC has a 3050... well, that and it was actually available under MSRP in early 2022, which was pretty much unheard of at the time.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-04-14, 01:21:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-04-14, 00:47:

That 1080ti will handle pretty much everything you want to do on the HTPC aside from AV1, once you get your 7900XTX swap them over.

The one big thing that everything pre RTX 3000 series is lacking is HDMI 2.1 support, so if you want to run at 4k @ 120Hz with Full RGB or 4:4:4 chroma, you'd need at least an RTX 3050. Anything older will be limited to formats that can create visual artifacts, especially on text and fine details.

This is the main reason my HTPC has a 3050... well, that and it was actually available under MSRP in early 2022, which was pretty much unheard of at the time.

120Hz 4k is still rather new TV wise, but this would be a good reason if you own such a TV.