Does your computer usage actually need all that RAM/MHz? :P

[Prometheus]

This thread was inspired by a relatively recent realisation that a lot of what I do with computers doesn't need the insane amount of horsepower and RAM that just about ends up being the only choice you really get when buying a computer, which often ends up wasting power just through being how it is. This has prompted me to begin switching over to ARM-based computers instead (Pandora first, Raspberry Pi within the next month or two, and I plan to pick up one of Genesi's Efika MX Smartbooks at some point before the year's out, too), and I've been finding that the so-called "restrictive" hardware and RAM doesn't affect my usage in the slightest.


Further to this, I thought back a bit, and realised that my usage of computers has never really changed enormously! I write, I browse the web (using tabs, of course, but not scary numbers of them ), I play the occasional game (though I mostly leave this to dedicated games systems), I work with images, I listen to music, and sometimes I watch videos.


Back when my usage was simpler, I only wrote stuff, and also played games - the machine I used at the time (my Commodore 64) only had 64KB of RAM, and did this perfectly. Obviously, this was without multi-tasking, but I really didn't need that at the time. The rest of what I do (except for the lacking existence of tabbed web-browsers back then, to the best of my knowledge) got added when I got my first laptop, which had 32MB of RAM.


Beyond that, 256MB was really always plenty for me, as long as the software wasn't ultra-bloated.


I can only conclude that I just don't need all that RAM and power 99% of the time, with the 1% (or less) being the very rare occasions where I need to deal with enormous image files - usually scans of sewing patterns or old artwork. Even then, I'm pretty sure that even those don't use up all of it.


I'm interested in seeing how the switch that this has brought about will affect my energy-consumption.


Is anyone else noticing this sort of thing with what they do, or is it just me?

 

[slaeshjag]

I will try to use a R-pi as my main code-haxxing workstation, and I have already prepared my fork of Surf to support launching mplayer for watching youtube and SVT play content without the use of a flash player.


I'm pretty sure my usage would do fine with only 256 MB of RAM, and ever since I dropped Firefox for Surf due to my tab abuse, it has left my RAM upgrade pretty much unused. I might even try using my future R-pi without a swap file!


There is one thing though, that I probably will miss on the R-pi. My quad core CPU that I got in my current workstation. I like it when it just says swoooosh after I've runned make.

 

[Darkknight512]

I'm a PC gamer so I need around a 3 Ghz Dual Core, and about 2 GB of ram. I'm currently running a 3 Ghz, Quad, with 4 Gb of ram and a HD 3850.

 

[Exophase]

Probably. My old Core 2 Duo machine with 2GB of RAM constantly choked with every version of Ubuntu I put on it, even complete reinstalls, even after the main harddrive died. I don't think CPU was holding it back, it was probably RAM. Web browsing with dozens of tabs open uses a lot of RAM.


I've used my i.MX53QSB (1GHz Cortex-A8, 1GB of RAM) for web browsing and testing and it gets really slow too. Part of that is due to the SD card it runs off of (current machine mainly uses an SSD). I wouldn't dream of using something like a Raspberry Pi, which has much less RAM and much less CPU power. The upgrade from iPhone 3G to 3GS was a big deal, and that's running on a fairly light and streamlined OS.. going to RPi is like going back to iPhone 3G levels of power, but probably running a much less streamlined OS.


It's not really about what you should need, but what modern software bloat manages to make you need. And with your computer running so many things it's really hard to pin down any big things that are clogging it up. Going to something lower power would save a few dozen watts or so when not used, but so would using a smaller monitor. And all of that is peanuts compared to running my electric heater less (> 500W on medium) and accepting being colder.


As for power consumption, mainstream computers are getting better and better at using only what they need. Having more RAM doesn't use that much since most of it isn't powered constantly. Having higher clocked/perf CPUs don't use too much when at low MHz for in between major tasks when they're clocked low. What I need that power for is when sudden bursts are necessary. I remember on the last computer it got to the point where it'd often take dozens of seconds just to switch between active programs. I'm sure I could adapt my usage patterns to be more conservative (right now I have 43 tabs open in Firefox, 3 PDFs, two spreadsheets, audio player, terminal, a couple folders, pidgin, some gvim instances - in the past I've had several if not dozens open, etc..) but I'm pretty comfortable using my computer like this.

 

[slaeshjag]

Heh, I remember the times when I had 500+ tabs open. I gained quite a lot of responsiveness by making that one

 

[Binky]

I'm currently using a 2.7GHz P4 with 2GB RAM and onboard graphics.


Cpu frequently at 100% (doing real tasks - light rendering - image manipulation), rarely fill ram though.

 

[Mr Rob]

In my apartment, I actually rock a 3 1/2 year old netbook connected to an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. 2 GB of memory, and pretty much everything I can mount as a tmpfs, I do.


Things like 3D modeling, video editing, and gaming are the things that usually take a better computer.


Of course this is all for personal computing. Still nice to have a server or two that can simply rock.

 

[-Tj-]

I moved from a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB to a 3.4GHz i7 with 8GB. I didn't notice the speed difference at first, but after moving back to my laptop for some file gathering I noticed a HUGE difference in performance. I almost never use the full 8GB, but I always used to hit the upper limits with 4GB. 8GB is probably a good amount for me now, and my day-to-day tasks usually include Photoshop, Firefox, Winamp, and Trillian.


Back in the days I had a 166MHz Pentium with 32MB of RAM. Memory's foggy, but either ripping a 4 minute song to WAV or encoding it to MP3 took well over 20 minutes. Considering it takes a mere fraction of that time to do an entire CD now, both for ripping AND encoding, I think the extra MHz and RAM are very useful. I wouldn't even be able to work on any of my high-res images in Photoshop, either.... heck, Photoshop probably would take a half hour to load anyway. I recall going to a guy's house and loading Photoshop 4 oh his very old computer. We sat there and had a good chat while it loaded, and it wasn't even usable. Today, you can load CS5 on a decent machine in 5 seconds or less, and it uses 3x the RAM my first computer had!

 

[Caine]

Most of the time it doesn't. I spend most of the time at home running just emacs and opera. These are easily my two most used applications and they are always running. I have a Core i7 920 (a quad core system), which is overkill for these applications.


I use emacs for tasks such as editing documents & taking notes, file management and shell commands, music playback, coding and version control, planning + task management & calendar functionality and some other minor stuff. Opera is my main tool for browsing the web, reading rss feeds, watching videos and downloading stuff. Although I tend to have a LOT of tabs open in Opera (50 ~ 150), it manages its memory well enough to be usuable on lower-end systems (though the difference is noticeable).


For watching movies, tv series and anime I have a separate media center system setup with xbmc, sickbeard and sabnzbd. This is a low-end atom 330. When I am playing emulated games, I mostly use my Pandora (except for higher-end systems suchs as Dreamcast, PS2 and Gamecube/Wii).


The remainder of the time is spent playing more demanding games (using Wine) or running one or more virtual machines. During these activities it is nice to have some extra power available.


My interest in low-power computers concentrates on those systems that are running 24/7 which are much more likely to drive up the power bill.

 

[WizardStan]

My RAM usage typically sits at around 2.5GB during regular use, on account of the 40 or so Chromium tabs I have open at any given time. This number used to hover close to 4GB and occasionally escalate near to 8GB, then I installed Flashblock and haven't had much of a problem since. That comes down to barely 500MB when I kill my browsers. Not sure what's using it in that case.


The only time I actually need lots of RAM is when I'm doing actual work: video rendering or compiling and the like. I've used my BeagleBoard to compile some fairly complex things when I couldn't be bothered to get the libraries working for a cross compiler, but had to create a fairly hefty swap file and the speed of the compile suffered greatly as a result.

 

[erico]

I render :wacko: need the fastest machine possible and it usually have to be quite clean system.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I generally build a new PC when i can't run an app decently, usually a game.


Maybe every 4 years.


I always max the RAM.


I now use AMD because the virtualization is amazingly far better than Intel.

 

[T.T.]

the only time I ever use all my RAM is when I render 3d animations, other than that, it stays at about 500MB

 

[Red Ring Rico]

I only have 16GiB RAM in my machine, which just about lets me run a few virtual machines, a few instances of Visual Studio (when I'm on Windows), Thunderbird, Songbird, usually four instances of Firefox with 90+ tabs in each instance, Code Composer Studio, Blender, GIMP, and Pidgin. Leaving just less than a gigabyte free.

 

[Prometheus]

^ "Only"?! :blink: Wow... That number boggles my mind! I have 1GB on my main box, and it's vastly excessive. :blink:

 

[Nintendo]

Next week, I'm going to be getting another notebook (second-hand) and some people will say that I'm going backwards. Specs below.

Spoiler

• System TypeNotebook
  
• OS ProvidedMicrosoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition
  
• Service & Support1 year warranty
  
• Screen typeWidescreen
  
• Wireless capabilitiesBluetooth,
  
  IEEE 802.11 n (draft),
  IEEE 802.11g,
  IEEE 802.11b
  

Processor / Chipset

• ProcessorIntel Core 2 Duo P8400 / 2.26 GHz
  
• Multi-Core TechnologyDual-Core
  
• CacheL2 cache - 3.0 MB
  
• 64-bit ComputingYes
  
• Front Side Bus1066.0 MHz
  
• ChipsetMobile Intel PM45 Express
  
• Platform TechnologyIntel Centrino 2
  

Memory

• RAM4.0 GB ( 2 x 2 GB )
  
• Max RAM Supported4.0 GB
  
• TechnologyDDR2 SDRAM
  
• Speed800.0 MHz / PC2-6400
  
• Form FactorSO DIMM 200-pin
  
• Slots Qty2
  
• Empty Slots0.0
  

Storage

• Floppy DriveNone
  
• Hard Drive320.0 GB HDD / 5400.0 rpm
  
• InterfaceSerial ATA-150
  
• Optical DriveDVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / BD-ROM
  
• Read Speed24x (CD) / 8x (DVD) / 5x (BD)
  
• Write Speed24x (CD) / 8x (DVD±R) / 6x (DVD±R DL)
  
• Rewrite Speed24x (CD) / 6x (DVD±RW) / 5x (DVD-RAM)
  
• Hard drive typePortable
  

Environmental Parameters

• Environmental standardsRoHS
  

Display

• Type18.4 in
  
• Max Resolution1680 x 945 ( WXGA++ )
  
• WidescreenYes
  
• Image Aspect Ratio16:9
  
• FeaturesX BRITE-ECO
  

Audio & Video

• Graphics ProcessorNVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS - 256.0 MB VRAM
  
• Total Available Graphics Memory2030.0 MB
  
• CameraYes
  
• Resolution1.3 Megapixel
  
• SoundMicrophone
  
• Compliant StandardsHigh Definition Audio,
  
  Dolby Digital Live
  

Input

• TypeKeyboard,
  
  Touchpad
  
• Keyboard LayoutQWERTY
  

Communications

• WirelessBluetooth 2.1 EDR,
  
  802.11 a/b/g/n (draft)
  
• Wireless ControllerIntel WiFi Link 5100
  
• Network InterfaceGigabit Ethernet
  

Modem

• Protocols & SpecificationsITU V.92,
  
  ITU V.90
  

Battery

• TechnologyLithium ion
  
• Run Time2.5 hour(s)
  

AC Adapter

• Voltage RequiredAC 120/230 V
  

Connections & Expansion

• Slots1.0 x Memory ( 1.0 free ),
  
  2.0 x ExpressCard/34 ( 0.0 free )
  
• Interfaces3.0 x Hi-Speed USB - Input - RJ-45,
  
  1.0 x Audio - Phone line - Mini-phone 3.5 mm,
  1.0 x Display / video - SPDIF output - 19 pin HDMI Type A,
  1.0 x Audio / video - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-11,
  1.0 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15),
  1.0 x Headphones - Output - 4 pin FireWire,
  1.0 x Modem - HDMI - Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm,
  1.0 x Microphone - 4 pin USB Type A,
  1.0 x Network
  
• Memory Card ReaderCard reader ( Memory Stick Duo ),
  
  ( Memory Stick ),
  ( Memory Stick PRO ),
  ( SD Memory Card )
  

Software

• Software IncludedVAIO Music Box,
  
  VAIO Movie Story,
  Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition (60 days trial),
  VAIO Media Plus,
  Adobe Photoshop Lightroom,
  Microsoft Windows Live OneCare (Trial),
  Microsoft Works 9 SE,
  AOL Online (90 days trial),
  Sony Click to Disc Editor 1.0
  

Miscellaneous

• Compliant StandardsRoHS
  

Dimensions & Weight

• Width17.2 in
  
• Depth11.4 in
  
• Height1.6 in
  
• Weight8.4 lbs
  

 

[gruso]

I like to think I need it. It justifies the money I spent. It is a gaming laptop though, and I even game on it sometimes. Specs:

Spoiler

Clevo P150, i7 2720QM, 8GB RAM, AMD 6970M 2GB.

After my web browser though, I think my most used app is a text editor.


Oh, I do stream a lot of video too. But I'm hoping the RPi will take up some of those duties.

 

[notaz]

For things like compiling kernel and firmware, CPU and RAM is never enough, it all goes into reducing time you have to wait, which can take days on slower machines.

 

[PokeParadox]

As Notaz said... more MHz/RAM means less time waiting...


But generally for my typical use, I have too many MHz that only get used when playing a game... although I would like to be able to play GC and Wii games at 720p at fullspeed... for that I don't have enough MHz... or possibly my GPU is holding me back...


Recently I am using my netbook again for coding and it's not unpleasant so... yes I do see the point, do we really need all those MHz...?

 

[EvilDragon]

My working machine is 4 years old and working fine for me, my other one (I use to run the shop) is an Intel Atom and is fine as well.


My video editing and rendering suite is a dual-quad-core Xeon with 26GB RAM, and still not good enough