approximation for when 2048MB of ram will be needed

[RollWave]

I'm thinkin of upgrading my computer from 1024 to 2048 ram just to fill out all the slots and keep my computer upgraded to the maximum. When will 2048 be used in gaming? Doom 3? After Doom 3? Any general estimates?

 

[magomago]

Getting 2 Gigs of ram right now would be like deciding to "future proof" your pc in 1998 by getting 256megs of ram running at 66mhz....

By the time you'll need it the ram will be too slow to realize any benefit you'll hope to see from it.

A gig will be plenty for a LOOOOONG Time...

 

[tdgx]

You won't be needing 2GB of RAM soon, maybe in 2 years or so 2GB may be a feasable amount to have. For now it would be pretty much a waste of money unless your doing serious graphics design or something of that nature. By the time you need it it'll be twice as fast and cost half as much.

 

[Budman]

approximation for when 2048MB of ram will be needed

When Microsoft releases their new OS.

 

[RollWave]

Is longhorn supposed to be that system heavy?

 

[SexyK]

There's not a chance Doom 3 will even know what to do with 2GB of RAM. If you're talking about gaming, definitely save your money.

 

[sharkeeper]

Depends on what you do. I have two machines I use daily. One has 4GB and the other 8. I often use all the available ram up every day. 2 years from now I hope to see systems with 256+ GB!

-DAK-

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: rnp614
Is longhorn supposed to be that system heavy?

No, it was sarcasm, but somewhat true since every new OS seems to need double the RAM of the old one to run smoothly.

But XP runs very well with 512 MB (and fine with 256) so Longhorn should "only" need 1 GB for best performance

 

[apac]

Haha I remember when my parents bought a top of the line 400mhz pentium 2 in 1998 with with the 128mb sdram upgrade. Everyone I talked to was like.. 128 RAM? That's crazy!

Those were the days..

 

[RollWave]

hahaha my parents bought one of those too! lol It broke down and so we got a 1.0Ghz thing in return.

 

[Chaotic42]

I don't know, when does Simcity 5 come out?

I would say have 1024MB right now for gaming. It should hold you for a while. I'm at 1.25GB and I'm staying put. I have maxed out the memory with Photoshop, and of course with Linux.

I'd say 2048 will be around on high end systems about this time next year.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup 1gb is fine now. i can get commit charges past 512 in xp easy by the time you need it, it will be cheap. thats how it always is.

 

[sniperruff]

"approximation for when 2048MB of ram will be needed"

this is like asking approximation for when a 1024MB of ram on a radeon 248000ultra PRO type-R spec-C twin-turbo will be needed!

sorry for being sacrastic but.... we don't have a crystal ball!

but for now i think even 1 gig is an overkill. it might be necesary for someone who runs dual channel tho.

 

[dullard]

Memory use in computers has quadroupled every 5 years over the last few decades (a simple graph shows this trend to be nearly perfect). I don't see any reason why this will change anytime soon. I feel that 512 MB is standard now with 1 GB in enthusiasts computers and 256 MB in cheapo computers. Thus in 5 years we will see 2 GB standard with 4 GB in many enthusiasts and 1 GB in cheapo computers. That doesn't mean there will be some people on extremes past those ends but that will be what we will typically see.

Usually the el-cheapo computers can barely survive. Thus that is where the amount of memory is 'needed'. So following the trend, 256 MB is needed now, 1 GB is needed in 2008, 4 GB is needed in 2013, and 2 GB is needed to run the most simple programs around 2010. Note: this isn't talking about wants , but absolute needs to run the programs at all smoothly (people may want 1 GB now, but it isn't absolutely needed to run the vast majority of most programs today).

 

[RollWave]

hahaha WOW, that seems way too far off. BUt i suppose that trend is basically for the bare minimum..

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: rnp614
hahaha WOW, that seems way too far off. BUt i suppose that trend is basically for the bare minimum..

Yes I answered when it will be NEEDED, not wanted. I really expect many people on this forum to reach 2 GB within 5 years though.

 

[Playmaker]

Buying more then 1024MB right now would be foolish unless you have special non-gaming/average user needs. There is no way you will need more then 1gig for any game before DDRII comes out, making your current RAM obsolete...

 

[zephyrprime]

By the time you'll need it the ram will be too slow to realize any benefit you'll hope to see from it.

Bingo.

But it's pretty easy to guess when you'll need 2GB. Just use moore's law. You'll need 2GB in 18months.

Memory use in computers has doubled every 5 years

You rate is way too slow. By your figuring, we had:

1998: 256MB
1993: 128MB
1988: 64MB

Computers did not have anywhere near 64MB of ram back in 1988.

I got my first computer in 1990 and it had 1MB of ram. So my own RAM growth rate has been a doubling every 1.3 years.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
You rate is way too slow. By your figuring, we had:

1998: 256MB
1993: 128MB
1988: 64MB

Computers did not have anywhere near 64MB of ram back in 1988.

I got my first computer in 1990 and it had 1MB of ram. So my own RAM growth rate has been a doubling every 1.3 years.

Doh! I'm really sorry, I had a bad day yesterday and misposted. Do a search, I've done these calculations over and over on this forum and it is QUADROUPLED every 5 years. I really appologize, and I should have copied an old post instead of trying to go from memory during a bad day.

This is what you see in typical computers on the store shelf (* means not in the 5 year increment):
Beginning 2003: 256 MB - exactly what many P4s come with (Including my 2.4 GHZ P4)
Beginning 1998: 64 MB - exactly what many PIIs came with (Including my 300 MHz PII)
Beginning 1993: 4 to 16 MB - there was a memory boom around this time, and things were quite varied so this is a bit of an exception to my quadroupled every 4 years rule of thumb (My 25 MHz 486 had 6 MB).
1988: 512 kB to 1 MB - (My 7 MHz Tandy had 640 kB)
1983: 128 kB was available on many computers (though this was much more popular in the beginning of 1984)
*1982: commodore 64 was released with 64 kB
*1981: Bill Gate's often misquoted "640 kB ought to be enough for anybody".
1978: 48 kB in the Apple II+
*1977: 4 kB in the Apple II and Commodore PET, 8 kB in the Tandy TRS-80
*1971: Intel's first microprocessor the 4004 used up to 5 kB (Anyone know what was typical?).

In the 1978-1983 five year period memory went up by 2.66 times.
In the 1983-1988 five year period memory went up by 4 - 8 times.
In the 1988-1993 five year period memory went up by 8 - 16 times.
In the 1993-1998 five year period memory went up by 4 - 8 times.
In the 1998-2003 five year period memory went up by 4 times.

So on average a quadroupling every 5 years is quite typical.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: apac
Haha I remember when my parents bought a top of the line 400mhz pentium 2 in 1998 with with the 128mb sdram upgrade. Everyone I talked to was like.. 128 RAM? That's crazy!

Those were the days..

Hey man, my 300Mhz P2 with 64MB of RAM, with that newfangled AGP bus was quite awesome too, back in the day. After that, I went AMD, and all my desktop systems have been AMD since.

As for the RAM - 2GB would likely be excessive, unless you have a top-of-the-line processor right now, and work with lots of large image files, or video files. I use Ulead Photo Editor and Videostudio. Videostudio only seems to use around 72MB of RAM, but that could be because the files I work with are 2-12GB each, so they wouldn't fit in the system's 768MB of RAM. Working with photos though on my main system, with 1GB of RAM, they'll get stuck in RAM. Photo Editor will use whatever RAM is available to it - just yesterday I had it at over 600MB with 2 high-res scans.

 

[BoberFett]

I Alt+Tabbed out to my desktop while playing Star Wars Galaxies last night and out of curiosity checked my Task Manager. Out of 1GB of RAM I had 100MB of free physical RAM. Between that game and Windows inefficient use of memory for disk caching, etc. I was using over 900MB. If I cranked up the video detail on that game (which I can't because I have a slow video card) it might use even more for textures and distant models that it only loads when I get closer to objects.

 

[DT4K]

Really depends on what you use your system for.
Most of my computer time is spent playing Battlefield 1942.
It has some really big maps, and task manager usually shows it using around 300 MB. Another 80 - 100 for all the win XP system processes and a couple of things I have running like motherboard monitor and my Joystick profiler.

So 512 has been fine for me. But the maps and environments in games keep getting bigger. Like SW Galaxies, Planetside, etc.
So it wouldn't surprise me if 2GB would be useful in the next year or two.

But as other's stated, there's really no reason to "future-proof" your system. By the time you really need 2048MB, you will have faster bus speeds, cpu's and memory. So you'll still want to upgrade.