On the plus side, all the game companies are going to finally start optimizing games and quit pushing out more and more demanding shit. A big win for smaller devs and creative\fun game developers too. My steam deck and old PC gonna keep on winning.
What do you expect? Few will be able to afford to play their whizbang-5000 games. We already saw it play out with VR.
You might be right. But charging them $15 a month to stream their whizbang-5000 games is still an option. Especially for Microsoft and Sony. (And Amazon wants in on that too.)
Dingaling! They will rent it to you and it will have latency issues, but who cares money.
I will say technologically my trials of both Google Stadia and Xbox Live Play Anywhere were both impressive and ran well for single player and co-op games. But the idea of actually paying an ongoing fee to play my games? Fuck that.
People said this about movies too, don’t be too optimistic
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sell 64gb of it today and pay for your entire PC build, plus a new (used) car.
Only if you actually use that much. You almost certainly don’t.
I do.
I wish I had 192GB, to be honest.
What is the need of 192GB?
I often execute calculations on a cluster where I’ll need some 500-1000 GB of ram. But I have 32 GB in my workstation and I never felt I needed more.
Everything I need to do I can do: I can be having many browser tabs open, several IDEs, compiling and have a game engine open at the same time.
Only times I fill the ram is when I stress test my software for ram usage, but that is to be expected.
Machine learning/data science stuff.
Local LLMs is half of it.
But that aside, I found myself working with huge files that swapped like crazy on my 32GB of RAM, or were completely infeasible to work with. Janky local experiments I wouldn’t want to run on a cloud instance billed by the minute.
128GB has been a godsend, but I could completely fill 192GB and still swap some if I had it.
But I found there are happy side effects to having so much disk cache, too. For instance, game modding/tinkering has sped up immensely over 32GB. So has hashing for transfers, or other scenarios where it’s useful to already have a file cached in RAM.
Fair, I guess I’d also want some ram if I did not have access to a compute cluster.
But to be fair, for what I do I don’t really think you can fit that much ram on a consumer motherboard.
In machine learning I don’t generally find memory to be the bottleneck, as long as the GPU can handle it.
But sure, opening huge files can be big trouble.
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Depends what you are going for. 7000/9000 series have way more per-thread performance than threadripper.
Another quirk with single CCD 7000 chips (which I have as well) is that the infinity fabric limits effective bandwidth to the CPU cores. Even with two channels, you hit diminishing returns with higher speeds, especially if you aren’t using the IGP.
You can get around it overclocking the IF, but it gets complicated and its much easier to do with 9000 series CPUs.
introducing: zram
toss 32 or 64gb at that and call it a day
YMMV.
Big ZRAM absolutely tanks performance for me because it “steals” space that could be used for normal memory.
But if its for squirrling away a bunch of idle processes when multitasking like crazy, yeah, it can be wonderful. Just depends.
If you’re able to have swap, Zswap is supposed to be better.
Zram is intended for devices with no swap
…This appears to be amazing advice.
https://linuxblog.io/zswap-better-than-zram/
That’s exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Yeah, I splurged on some hardware upgrades with great shame almost 2 years ago because I was preparing for the idiotic tariffs, expecting modest price increases.
I did not expect a 5x. So glad that I did it. It would no longer be an option.
I built a new PC around that time for the same reason. I am kicking myself for not getting more ram.
Same! I got 64 GB but wish I got 96 or 128 GB (it’s a server).
I kick myself every day for putting off replacing this 2017 build of mine… My 1080 weeps.
I did not ever think PC prices would go as crazy as they are now.
but I think my fucking asscheeks every day that I upgraded my CPU, GPU and RAM right before the shit hit the fan just by pure luck and coincidence.
I still wish I had a better GPU, I had to settle for the one I got cause finances… but I sure as fuck aint getting anything better for a reasonable price at this rate.
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I’m rockin a 6700xt for my gpu :\
I really shouldnt complain, its a great card, it just doesnt have the horse power to chug through the bullshit lack of optimization in Unreal5 based games. especially ones that force some form of raytracing to be on with no toggle.
tulips
And people who have an issue with this are called luddites
Absolute clown show
We’ve been told historical lies. People who have an issue with this are like Luddites, but that’s because the Luddites were justified too!
They weren’t against technology; they were against it being used to abuse and exploit them as workers.
Gotta warp the truth to misdirect from the real problems.
I’ve only heard that term being used to insult, that’s actually a real thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who protested the usage of certain types of automated machinery owing to their concerns relating to worker pay, labour savings, child labour, working conditions, and output quality. They often destroyed said machines in organised raids. Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of “Ned Ludd”, a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.
History is written by the victors, and the luddites lost. That’s why they’re maligned as backwards idiots who didn’t want tech to succeed.
They weren’t stupid. They knew precisely what was going to happen, and did their best to stop it. Generally they took care to target only machines as their goal wasn’t to harm people but to remain employed, and have money to survive with. Naturally there were exceptions, and sometimes people did get hurt.
But then, the bourgeoisie enacted law to prevent this where destroying mechanical looms became punishable by… oh let’s see…
The act, as passed, made the destruction of mechanised looms […] a capital felony (and hence a crime punishable by death).
Right! Death! Destruction of company property became punishable by death.
And people did die. Children died. Mind you, back then workers were anyone capable of working, and they had no rights. They didn’t vote for the people who passed this act; workers weren’t supposed to have a voice, and so the only recourse was rebellion.
This didn’t stop things immediately, there’s quite a lot of really cool worker history here, but eventually the government sent in the military and couple that with nothing really changing despite widespread rebellion, the luddite movement fizzled out.
This is why I am opposed to the death penalty and I want the police disarmed. It is also why I still believe in workers arming themselves.
I’ve never heard it used as an insult. How is it even supposed to be offensive? “Har har you’re a person who doesn’t like tech”?
Less of “you’re a person who doesn’t like tech” and more “you’re not with the times/are scared of the future”… which is pretty close to some messaging from clankers.
I see, thank you!
I am scared of the future, you know why? Because everything feels so unbearably bleak and I wish I had something to feel actually hopeful for.
But I guess we’ll own nothing and be forced to live with it.
They confuse us with legitimate technophobes.
My stepmother was a technophobe. She read articles about school shootings in the US, and thought if I got addicted to video games like Quake, I’ll be buying a machine gun from the black market, then end up as a murderer. Yes, she also had a moral panic about drug use, all while she was a borderline alcoholic. The farce in it was that while I wasn’t allowed to play any Quake games, there was no harm in Unreal games, which arguably are better. The tragedy in it was that she tried her best to steer me away from computers, giving me some disadvantage in college, also she lied to the doctors about my first seizure to make it seem like it was due to the computer, which lead to the doctors not doing tests besides EEG and strobe lights. Once social media rolled out, she somewhat changed her mind on the subject, though she was still ignorant enough to think “software developer” and “CNC programmer” are the same, and almost got me a job at a local factory (she feared that if I lived on Budapest for a bit longer, I’d get some lung disease, because big city equals bad air).
Quake isn’t as good as Unreal? Blasphemy!
Kid me had a lot of fun in those games.
Let me guess, she’s an avid social media user nowadays?
She’s dead, and I don’t know how to feel about it, especially as she abused my brother even harder than me.
They say you should only speak good about the dead.
She’s dead. Good.
Yeah apparently you’d think there be some closure or something but it seems that’s not how it works. Keep in there, and try to forget about the whole ordeal, that’s what I’m trying anyways, living with my demons. Works. Cheers.
No big. Guess I’ll have to wait another year before upgrading my laptop. Sorry for the loss of business.
Chip companies are cutting off consumers on purpose. They lost your $100 business and gained $1000 sales on the same products
They want you to get a cloud computer subscription. They want you to buy a Windows Portal, or whatever garbage small “terminal” device they will come up, and force regulators to make it be called a “fully fledged computer”.
I’ve called it. Laptops and PCs will be outlawed and hunted down like hiding a radio unit in WW2. Think Farenheit 451 levels of dogma
Bought my first prebuilt 2 years ago and it’s now worth over twice what I spent on it. First time in my life I remember anything like that happening.
So I got this RAM in August 2025, for ~$400 according to the receipt:
…That is absolutely bonkers.
I ebay’ed my DDR5 RDIMM 5600 RAM sticks. 32gb was $606 some months ago, the remaining six sticks was about $3,600 bucks. I was originally planning on waiting for bubbles to burst and DDR6 to be released before switching to a DDR5 platform, but the whole war with Iran threw everything into doubt.
The US’s strategic oil reserve will likely run out within half a year, which means everything costing more. I wanted to be smart with my money and wait for a good time to buy, but this situation has ruined my planning. I bit the bullet and used a flex-pay to let me buy now.
Is it that my discipline sucks, or is the world certain to go into a hellish handbasket? I cannot tell anymore…
I honestly don’t know. Even setting Iran aside, it’s impossible to tell when the bubble will deflate, and even then, when memory supply will somewhat normalize.
But if you can afford it, it seems like a reasonable decision to me. Iran and the US could become allies tommorow, but DDR5 still isn’t coming down soon, and you get to use your server now instead of having to wait forever.
I got 64GB of ram for my laptop back in April, was close to 700, of is 829 today. I guess only desktop sizes are over 1k?
Like April this year?
Could be that it was DDR4 or something.
Ddr5, but the laptop size on amazon. I just checked and its still under 900
Well, 900 for 64GB is still outrageous, unfortunately.
yea its getting pretty bad. i bought 32gb 3200mhz ddr4 ram like 3 years ago for like 50 dollars brand new on amazon, and i recently had to purchase that same amount for a server pc im building and it costed like $130 USED
The only rational choice right now is to wait to buy new ram.
Either production capacity catches up and this amount of silicon is the new normal and prices come down or the ai bubble does crash and prices come down.
It can’t go on at this price point forever.
It can there are only 3 producers and they can decide to not let the price drop
Except in my lifetime I’ve seen the prices of computer components swing wildly based on supply and demand.
Tech improvements tend to drive prices down not up, it’s less about supplier collusion in this particular market.
Maybe this time is different but I’m not betting on this.
Every DRAM manufacturer has pled guilty to price fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
If we still have governments holding them accountable, then it will go down. If we don’t, it won’t
You’re acting like they are like they were less than 10 years ago. They aren’t. They think they won the game and are just consolidating.
This has been said before. Like I said maybe this time is different, but I’m not betting on it.
There has been consolidation among a few manufacturers for a long time. The silicon part isn’t the most expensive it’s the chip designs. If the prices say high we should see new startups emerge with new approaches and cheaper silicon. China is already making progress here, and nothing I’m seeing is telling me this time would be different from us chip designers. Also Europe is looking to get some us resilience and startups in chip design could happen there too.
It’s convenient to blame greed, and in some industries this is very relevant, but silicon is so much less defensible at least in the chip design industry that startups are likely to keep on coming as long as opportunity exists, which high prices are a pretty good indicator of high demand and limited supply.
I have worked in this industry for a long time, I’ve seen the cycles, and again I expect this time to cycle again.
I hope you are correct. I really do. But my fear is that they see how dependent we have become on this and what a tool of control it can be and simply make it illegal or otherwise very difficult for other start ups to get started.
Oh I don’t doubt that the current market leaders would love to price fix and play monopoly, that’s the desired end goal of all businesses.
The question is how hard is it for a startup or competitive country to get in and compete on price. I’m watching China’s chip fab especially for this reason, they have an economy that can take massive losses on something even at this scale to lock in new customers with cheap Chinese RAM. They’ve done this in many other industries I fully expect they will be competitive in this one too, and that’s just ONE credible threat to monopolies.
The us government going back to a rule of law government could also help enforce changes and break up monopoly, we will see if and how long that will take.
Ah you crazy kids, we used to have to lock our computers in steel cases in the early 2000s.
Do I want more memory or do I wait for two years…
I wait for two years. As long as the existing memory modules doesn’t break, Linux will continue to be happy with existing amount.
If you are on windows, good luck.
I built a PC for work (I’m going to take it with me when I leave) and I bought used adata ram (2x32gb) with a lifetime warranty on it. I immediately needed to send one of the sticks for warranty. I bought the initial set of ram in May, and yesterday I paid roughly the same for a used set of 2x16gb. The price of the 32gb sticks is prohibitively expensive now. I’m betting the price only goes up, just wish I would be at 128gb rather than 96gb.
We could have been so rich if we could have seen the future. Just buy tons of memory modules at low prices five years ago and sell them now. What a profit.
Its not like memory tech has changed so much either.
If you could see the future, buying nvda a few years ago would have done the trick.
I wonder if the fed gov cares that entire sectors of the tech economy are being threatened by one (AI).
They might get interested if people start talking about Epstein again.
It seems the more this shit happens the less I need tech in my life (pulls notebook out of back pocket and writes this down for posterity).
I got some 16gb of DDR4 i found in a closet. You guys can start bidding.
i’m using an optiplex sff with 32gb ddr4 as a monitor stand right now. i just don’t know what the hell to do with it… so it sits, probably until the dietpi running on a jaguar soc keels over.
What I’d do is a little media center / HTPC so my TVs stay dumb.
already have a media ‘server’ and several things to watch ‘tv’ on or from.
this is what we were doing with it… trying out winpodx, but it’s not quite ‘usable’ like this (updated after this, does same). so it (and it’s hp cousin with similar specs) sit waiting for their next call-to-arms.
AI bubble will burst.
and if it doesn’t, let em have it. I’ll cancel my internet, and start overloading all other infrastructure with confusion from not knowing how to deal with humans and paper…
idgaf. I can’t and won’t be forced to comply to a subscription.
Does not mean prices will drop though.
I mean, today I saw a chocolate company ad saying no AI was needed. For chocolate. Anti-AI in a chocolate ad.
If Sees Candy is getting in on AI hate to sell shit, obviously people are tired of this crap. The bubble will burst.
