News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority. Parent comment

Re:The world could run on older hardware if software optimiz... by BobaFloutist on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @01:28PM (#43975444)
When I bought my current laptop, it was the cheapest one Costco had with 8 gigs of memory, which was at the time plenty for all but specialized uses. I've since upgraded it to 16, which feels like the current standard for that.

But...why? Why on earth do I need 16 gigs of memory for web browsing and basic application use? I'm not even playing games on this thing. But there was an immediate, massive spike in performance when I upgraded the memory. It's bizarre.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The world could run on older hardware if software optimiz... by aspenmayer on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @03:14PM (#43976527)
Most cheap laptops these days ship with only one stick of RAM, and thus are only operating in single-channel mode. By adding another memory module, you can operate in dual-channel mode which can increase performance a lot. You can see the difference in performance by running a full memory test in single-channel mode vs multi-channel mode with a program like memtest86 or memtest86+ or others.
[ Parent | on HN ]