...ah the memory's all flooding back now from 1995. Due to a world wide global RAM shortage, forced to wait a full month for another 4MB of RAM (@200bux) just so i could play Doom 2 on my $2300.00 486DX4-100

😒

Try my old prime number sieve program. It can use that much RAM and more. It can also use more CPU cores than any computer has.. except for maybe some of the super computers. Even then, the current theoretical limit of threads is (2^32)-1.. and that is only because I used a 32-bit unsigned integer for the thread count variable.

I have tested it with around 40,000 threads and it starts acting kinda strange with that many threads on a 4-core, 8-threaded CPU.

And for the icing on the cake, the ONLY thread lock it uses is on the master thread.. and it just waits until all the other threads are complete before it outputs the results.
Multitudes of threads all working on the same data array without any locks because, the way I programmed it, it is impossible for any thread to interfere with any other thread.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fastestprimes/

Configuration, Configuration, Configuration

“640k should be enough for anyone”
https://youtu.be/-5zeJyQ31rM

https://youtu.be/HyZAbr7Xwrs

When 256mb. of ram ran the world.
From what I remember, 1993 and 1994 was when computer networks where well established and ran most of the world.
( 386, 486 and 1st gen Pentium, Motorola , RISC, and Sun Sparc CPU's )

A 386 with 4mb or ram could get you on the internet.
A 486 computer with 8mb or ram running Novell 3.12 server could get you a world wide corporate network.
In 1993/94 ram was $100 per megabyte. 4mb or ram could get your web browser going but it was slow
A 486dx-33mhz with 8mb of ram was the norm with a sound card and multimedia CDROM. A basic internet computer and performance was acceptable. ( Costs about $3000 )
BBS servers, Wildcat, Compuserve, AT&T Internet Explorer and Netscape.
With Windows-NT 3.51 world wide corporate networks were created using a 486 and 16mb of ram.
With NT 4.0 the National corporate networks where well established.
Microsoft NT 4.0 Wolf-pack server clusters on 64mb or ram.
HPUX server clusters on 64mb servers.
Sun Cluster servers on 128mb servers.
SGI workstations and servers on 64mb of ram.
Oracle databases on 64mb of ram.
HP Netservers on 64mb of ram
Webservers on 32mb of ram.
Jumpstart Network installation servers on Win-NT and UNIX to perform remote network installations of thousands of computers in classrooms, campuses, and nation wide networks running on as little as 32mb or ram.
Nation wide networks like WebTV with backbone servers running as little as 128mb or ram.
Much of Corporate America was running on computer with 8mb of ram for desktops and no more than 128mb of ram for servers.
Macintosh computers with 8mb of ram, Win3x/DOS computers with 8mb of ram could play most games.
Only extremely expensive high performance mission critical servers ran on 256mb or ram. These servers supported nation wide and world wide network databases and servers.
The simplicity of Novell servers, Mac OS System 7x , IBM , Win 3x , UNIX, Win-NT and Network hardware allowed for affordable nation wide corporate networks.
Routers, Switches, Proxies, Gateways, etc. all ran on less than 64mb of ram.

When you have your computers and networks well configured you can accomplish many things.
configuration files
kernel configs
correct paramaters
hosts files
filters
system files
etc.

It's all about the correct configuration for optimal performance.

Today the content is the same only the image has become more refined and performance and delivery is quicker.

Get your tools in order.
Simplify and refine your code and scripts , batch files , and config files.

It's easy once you get everything in order.

For desktops the most I have utilized is 32gb of ram with a 12-core Mac Pro and HP z800 12-core.
They did have more ram installed but I could only get 32gb of ram to be utilized.

Today, I am satisfied with a quad core Intel i5 CPU and 16gb or ram running MacOS or Windows.
Just don't use Chrome browser or I.E.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Is 24 gigabytes.

24 freaking gigabytes of RAM. Let's take a moment to sit back and think about this. I don't need 24 GB of RAM. Not even by a long stretch.

have you ever browsed the internet on a modern browser?

you should probably get more ram 🤣

oh nvm, you wrote just that ^^

I have 32GB of RAM in my Mac mini because things get tight very quickly when running Docker containers, virtual machines etc. (I do this stuff because I'm taking a part-time course in Computer Science.)

It is pretty crazy to think about. It seems like just not that long ago I was upgrading my Pentium with 32MB of EDO RAM.. Now my main (modern) gaming PC has 32GB, and my main (modern) home servers have 128GB and 64GB respectively. 🤣

And all this is do to piss poor coding

A modern browser outputs a page of text and graphics

Maybe a moving image and some sound

None of this should require much to accomplish

but muh thicc JS scripts

rmay635703 wrote:

And all this is do to piss poor coding […]
Show full quote

And all this is do to piss poor coding

A modern browser outputs a page of text and graphics

Maybe a moving image and some sound

None of this should require much to accomplish

it's not so much the programmers' fault as it is things like managed code and JIT compiling

A decently-sized video rendering project will take care of those 24 GB real quick. Especially if you need other programs to be running for various reasons, say Photoshop and Chrome. Hell, PS+Chrome* often bring my 16 GB to their knees all by themselves.

* unfortunately Chrome is a necessary evil from time to time, due to the proliferation of sites that refuse to work properly with anything else.

I also have 24 GB in this rig. It's ECC, although that's slower and more expensive, because a few years ago I had to deal with data corruption problem resulting from a damaged non-ECC module. It was a PITA to identify the problem and I'm still not sure if I caught and replaced all the damaged files. The more memory you have, the more likely something like this is going to happen.

> 24 freaking gigabytes of RAM. Let's take a moment to sit back and think about this. I don't need 24 GB of RAM. Not even by a long stretch

That's exactly how much I have on my win10 box and I "need" it to tame Google Chrome.

I'm just fine with 12 GB. I don't use shitty browsers like Chrome though.

There are some Linux distros (i.e. Puppy) which create a RAM disk on boot and then load themselves entirely into it. I wish the "big" OSes would start doing that. They could keep a 'mirror' of themselves on disk and rsync all changes to the disk mirror every 10 mins or on shutdown. We're finally at the point where it'd be feasible for full-featured OSes like Linux Mint or Windows...

My main workstation / gaming rig still has 8GB, but I could upgrade to 24 for like $30. I haven't needed more than 8GB yet, but that's silly cheap for that kind of capacity IMHO.

rmay635703 wrote:

And all this is do to piss poor coding A modern browser outputs a page of text and graphics Maybe a moving image and some sound […]
Show full quote

And all this is do to piss poor coding
A modern browser outputs a page of text and graphics
Maybe a moving image and some sound
None of this should require much to accomplish

It doesn't. But the three dozen third-party tracking scripts loading in the background do. I swear sites loaded faster in the pre-broadband days.

Finally, a thread where Intel486dx33 doesn't contribute anything about iPads (no offense, your information is still worth reading) 😀

Back on topic, it's not surprising that 24GB RAM is the most memory anyone would ever see on a computer. Some people use 64GB RAM, even though they might not need it, but they still have it in their computers anyway.

On my main desktop, I have 16GB RAM, and I consider that a pretty decent amount of memory I would need for an every-day computer used to do things like play games and write code on. Prior to having this computer, I was originally thinking of having 32GB RAM for its memory, but then I decided that that would be a little too much overkill, and therefore I went with 16 gigabytes.

I've also heard of a couple organizations using 128 - 256 gigabytes of RAM, but of course, that would be way too much overkill, unless it's used by the government or NASA 😜

32GB on my main computer - Chrome is such a memory PIG, and I don't help by leaving 100's of tabs open. (21GB memory in use right now)
24GB on my server computer - VMs love memory. I'd put more in if I could easily find more.

And that is nothing compared to the server we installed at work (smallish non-IT related business) - 192GB ram. A little overkill.

For modern computer use, I wouldn't configure a computer with less than 16gb RAM if I could help it.

"640 GB should be enough for anybody."

I've never heard of that much memory for any computer. If that were to exist, it probably won't happen until about the beginning of the 22nd century 🤣

Going away from what I just said, here would be a nice table of decent memory amounts for computers in general:
8GB: The fair amount for everyone, but not all the way.
16GB: Another good amount of RAM for most people, including myself, because like I said before, I usually use my main PC for things like gaming and writing code.
32GB: A little too much, unless you're a heavy gamer or something like that.
64GB: Don't bother, unless you really want to do a bunch of stuff in computing.