SoftwareAIRunning 8GB of RAM? Now’s the time to upgrade, as Microsoft seems set to make 16GB the minimum for AI PCs and CopilotWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
SoftwareAIRunning 8GB of RAM? Now’s the time to upgrade, as Microsoft seems set to make 16GB the minimum for AI PCs and CopilotWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Corsair)
For those of you still trucking on with 8GB of RAM, I have some potentially bad news. According to aTrendForce report(via TechPowerUp) Microsoft has set a new baseline for RAM requirements in AI PCs at 16GB, which likely means that 8GB users may finally have to upgrade if they want to keep up with the latest Copilot features.
This looks like good news for DRAM manufacturers at the very least, but for those of you that have been content to run on 8GB up until now and might be thinking to yourselves that you don’t really care for Copilot or AI features anyway, may I suggest that now might be the time to upgrade regardless?
Beyond gaming, where 16GB remains something of a realistic minimum for anyone playing much beyond lightweight indie releases, the truth is that a modern system with a few basic background programs installed and a reasonable number of browser tabs open tends to fill up 8GB and beyond rather quickly.
Unless you happen to spend a fair amount of time playing whack-a-mole with your apps, or have a zen-like approach to running the absolute bare minimum of background programs, on a modern Windows machine you’re likely to be cresting the limit of your capacity on something of a regular basis.
While Windows is fairly good on the whole at managing your RAM usage to make sure it has enough space left to run properly, there’s only so much the OS can realistically do without dipping into the virtual memory and slowing things down to a crawl.
Moar RAM(Image credit: Future)Best DDR5 RAM: the latest and greatestBest DDR4 RAM: affordable and fast
Moar RAM
(Image credit: Future)Best DDR5 RAM: the latest and greatestBest DDR4 RAM: affordable and fast
(Image credit: Future)
Best DDR5 RAM: the latest and greatestBest DDR4 RAM: affordable and fast
Luckily however,DDR4and evenDDR5RAM is currently pretty cheap. While this mightnot be the case for too much longerthanks to manufacturers cutting back on production, as things stand an extra 8GB stick of RAM to take you up to a much more reasonable 16GB remains a relatively small expense, and the difference it’ll make to your daily PC usage will be massive.
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For what it’s worth, if you happen to be using a device with RAM soldered to the board without the possibility of an upgrade, I do sympathise, but the march of progress does come for us all at some point.
I don’t make the rules, but while RAM remains cheap, now may well be the time to get yourself ahead of the game.
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