With DDR5 RAM prices skyrocketing, some mid-range laptops could soon ship with budget-level specs. TrendForce expects companies like Dell and Lenovo to stock more notebooks with 8GB of memory. These reasonably priced options may no longer handle intense office and gaming tasks.
  • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    46·
    13 hours ago

    Maybe this will be a boon. The entire reason the ram requirements got so high as it is is because software optimization was put on the back burner. Maybe a ram shortage where people can’t obtain the ram needed will force the big name software devs to start being more frugal with ram. (talking to you chrome… whom currently is using 2 gigs alone just trying to show a twitch stream…)

    • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.comEnglish
      45·
      13 hours ago

      Or more realistically be used as an excuse for always online cloud based services a la office 365. “We would let you download the app, but most users don’t have the computing power so instead we’ll just make this a helpful subscription!”

        • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          32 minutes ago

          “Oh don’t worry, you won’t have to actually load spreadsheets anymore, just give our AI full access to your files and it will do whatever you ask :)”

          Ideally, you’re correct though and companies start investing in optimization. I don’t see it going that way, but a girl can dream.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        2·
        10 hours ago

        Honestly, it’ll be more efficient to have memory in a datacenter in that hardware in a datacenter will see higher average capacity utilization, but it’s gonna drive up datacenter prices too.

        • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          39 minutes ago

          As a dirty commie, I agree, but unfortunately under capitalism it is just an avenue for exploitation. Large companies are deciding what we can or cannot have access to and setting the price for it in a manner completely divorced from what they’re offering.

    • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
      17·
      12 hours ago

      At least one studio, Larian, has confirmed this is the case for them.

      When discussing the pressures the company faces when releasing a game in early access, such as audience expectations, Vincke told us, “Interestingly, another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs and f**k, man. It’s like, literally, we’ve never had it like this.”

      He continued, “It kind of ruins all of your projections that you had about it because normally, you know the curves, and you can protect the hardware. It’s gonna be an interesting one. It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time. So it’s challenging, but it’s video games.”

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        4 hours ago

        Good fuck studios just throwing optimization into the bin cause they can. They should fucking actually do some problem solving instead of brute forcing everything.

          • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.comEnglish
            1·
            13 minutes ago

            Not the person you’re responding to, but “most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point” indicates to me that optimization was not a top priority. It’s not unusual for people to optimize after a proof of concept or something, but I imagine in gaming (I don’t do game dev admittedly) you don’t want that too late in the process. If they’re not planning on having it in early access, then their early consistent user base will be more worried about other things. If min spec is 8 then people with 4 won’t get it or won’t complain about poor performance because technically it’s their machine that’s the issue. Lack of complaints about that and feedback about other things further shifts the priority away from optimization. Plus, anyone who’s worked in dev spaces or probably any kind of deliverable knows that there are things that just don’t happen despite your best intentions. Things like optimization are the first to go in the dev space, so by openly admitting to putting it off, it does feel like an admission of “we were probably just not going to get around to it”. In my experience, the further out you plan to optimize, the more man hours you end up wasting, so I don’t see a company investing heavily in that at any point, but doing so post early launch seems wasteful if they legitimately cared about it.