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RAM to see 'meaningful price increases' before 2026 is out, as the memory crisis is predicted to last 'at least' another 3 years (www.techradar.com)
submitted 18 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 18 hours ago (8 children)

I wondering if there is any benefit for me in having all the RAM my motherboard allows for when this bubble burst, and Ram prices fall like a rock to rock bottom.

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  • [–] 7 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

    Honestly, probably not.

    I think we've reached the top of the S-Curve for personal computing hardware. People are staying with their old hardware longer and software is no longer targeting high end and future devices.

    So unless there's a reason you think you might need that RAM, I'd put the money somewhere else.

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  • [–] 5 points 16 hours ago* (4 children)

    People are staying with their old hardware longer

    Absolutely 100% my experience too, my computer is a mix of 2-5 year old hardware, and I'm still on the AM4 socket which is 9 years old now! It is a newer motherboard but I started on that socket way back in 2017! The upgrade path for AM4 has been insane. 😋
    In the 90's I wouldn't have a single component that was 2 years old.
    IDK if that's because I'm older, but definitely it seems the advantage of upgrading every year is diminishing, and the price is increasing. Sometimes I would even buy a new GPU 2 times in the same year. 😜

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  • [–] 3 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

    My desktop is 10-year-old gaming PC. If you look at the Steam Survey, it's about middle-of-the-road today.

    It's not just PC. It's an open question whether anyone is going to be the next gen of game console, and that's partially because gaming itselfhas been enshittified, but also for the same reason people aren't running out to buy 8K TV's--the minimal improvement in subjective experience is not worth the price.

    People are more likely to replace phones because they break than because they are upgrading--partially why Apple and Samsung are doing their DARNEDEST to lock down repairs, so they can drive up the cost of repairs to force people to buy a new phone.

    We're approaching a world where we think of what was formerly "high technology" the same way we think of refrigerators--as basic devices that can generically and permanently do a necessary set of tasks.

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  • [–] -3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

    I always hated consoles, as a waste of a good computer you couldn't do anything with but game.
    But I think consoles will be fine, consoles are mostly for children, and they will get exclusives to drive up sales.
    But this is a bad time to make a new console, still AFAIK both Sony and Microsoft are planning new ones next year?

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  • [–] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    The economics of consoles are in shambles.

    It used to be you'd get highish-end hardware at cheaper price because of mass production and manufacturer incentives (made up for on games).

    Now with people carrying massive game libraries, they're less likely to buy new games, at the same time as console gaming becomes enshittified cash grabs, at the same time as tech has hit diminishing returns in an industry where generational hardware sales drive software purchases.

    Playstation has a few exclusives, but XBox has literally none--it's all cross compatible with Windows, and almost every single one of those titles is playable via Steam on Linux. You can build an equivalent PC for the same price or less than the equivalent console, and have improved upgrade and repair paths, plus mods, plus Steam sales... consoles make less and less financial sense every day.

    The only console that is doing well is Nintendo, and that's because they built around content not hardware.

    And that said, most kids are growing up gaming on tablets and phones, and they haven't gone through the evolutionary learning process that a 35-year-old life-long gamer. Chances are you hand an 8-year-old a complex two-stick game and they'll do about as well as my father would.

    I think likely we'll have a profusion of quirky handheld consoles, but the big box consoles will be replaced with computers.

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  • [–] -1 points 14 hours ago

    the big box consoles will be replaced with computers.

    I think you are wrong, the PC is dying, and the consoles will have even bigger advantage from mass production in the future.
    Most people don't care to maintain a PC just to play games, and most people don't really have any other use for a PC anymore.
    Even without subsidies from Microsoft and Sony, the current gen consoles were cheaper than an equivalent performing PC when they arrived. But in the future that may not be true, it's all down to profit maximization, because there is no doubt a console can be sold cheaper than an equivalent performing PC.

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  • [–] 4 points 16 hours ago (1 child)

    Depends on what you wanna use it for. If you wanna host a bunch of services, do scientific computing, or play modded video games with really bad memory leaks and memory optimization, perhaps?

    The problem is memory is expensive because fabs have switched to making HBM3 and EEC LPDDRX5 (soldered memory, like what's in a phone and some laptops). So even when the crash happens, we won't get a mass sell-off of useful consumer hardware. Likewise, the "GPUs" don't even have video outputs.

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  • [–] 2 points 15 hours ago

    I'm just a casual user today, I used to stress my computers to the limit, but not anymore.
    So I most definitely would make very poor use of maxing my RAM.

    Back in the day I loaded DVD 's into virtual drives in RAM, to make games load faster.
    For some reason the Linux kernel works best with a swap disk, so I had that in RAM too, and of course temporary files.

    These things are of course banal although they were extremely efficient back in the day, and this was a thing I learned already back in the 80's where the Amiga made similar things possible.
    Today with fast SSD drives I don't feel the need, and to be honest I already have more RAM than I need. And since I don't program anymore either, which I always found interesting to explore the capabilities of new hardware, I have become an "average" user. 😳

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