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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

I miss RAM. I feel like if you lived through that 90s RAM frenzy, you probably miss RAM too. It was crazy how quickly we move through SDRAM/DDR, prices dropped and you could make real increases in performance year over year for not much money. I'm sure some of it was the software being able to capture the hw improvements, but that certainly was my fav period in tech so far.

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I am confused by this comment. You said "RAM" (contrast to "DRAM" in the article title) but I think you are talking about DRAM sticks? But those have not gone away (other than with some laptops where it's soldered on and not upgradable).

Going from 8MB to 32MB in the 90s is still comparable to going from 8GB to 32GB today.

One difference is just that the price isn't dropping at the same rate anymore [1], so it doesn't make as much sense to buy small and re-buy next year when bigger chips are cheaper (they won't be much cheaper).

Another is that DRAM speed is at the top of an S-curve [2], so there's not that same increase in speed year-over-year, though arguably the early 2000's were when speeds most dramatically increased.

[1] https://aiimpacts.org/trends-in-dram-price-per-gigabyte/

[2] http://blog.logicalincrements.com/2016/03/ultimate-guide-com...

> Going from 8MB to 32MB in the 90s is still comparable to going from 8GB to 32GB today.

This statement makes it difficult to believe you were there.

How so?

8GB -> 32GB doesn't really give you a whole lot more than opening more browser tabs or whatnot. Cache some more filesystem into memory I suppose.

8MB -> 32MB enabled entirely new categories of (consumer-level) software. It would be a game changer for performance as you were no longer swapping to (exceedingly slow) disk.

They simply are not comparable, imo. 8MB to 32MB was night and day difference and you would drool over the idea of someday being able to afford such a luxury. 8GB to 32GB was at least until very recently a nice to have for power users.

Yeah, the equivalent nowadays would be like going from 256mb to 16gb.

Even most AAA games will still run on 8gb ram just fine.

Going from 4MB to 16MB made Autocad and Orcad Capture under Win 3.1 no longer slow.

I remember a few years before that you'd zoom in on a drawing and do as much as you could without zooming back out because it would take a full minute to redraw the screen. And then another minute to zoom back in somewhere else.

Disk speed is definitely a key factor. Solid state is dramatically lower latency than HDDs were, while DRAM latency in absolute terms has been pretty constant for a long time. So even if you're doing something very demanding that works with large amounts of data relative to standard quantities of RAM (a situation that gets harder to come by,) having it all in RAM at the same time is much less important than back in the 90s/00s.

Depends on your definition of "there". Going from 8MB to 32MB did very little for you pre Windows95. Every piece of x86 software up to that point was maxing below 8MB because ram was insanely expensive and you needed to populate 4 modules at a time. Motherboards came standard with 4 or 8 ram slots limiting your ram choices to 1,2,4,5,8,16,17,20,32 MB with last 4 costing more than motherboard and CPU combined.

In 1992 standard desktop was still 386 + 4MB, with highend 486 + 8MB. 1MB SIMM was $30-50. 4MB $150 January 1992, dropping to $100 in December 1992, and back to $130 in December 1994.

Afaik 72 pin simms were first introduced in 1989 IBM PS/2 (55SX? proprietary variant) and later around 1993 in clones. You could run 1,2,3 or 4 simms of any size independently. In December 1994 2MB 72pin Simm was $80, 4MB $150, 8MB $300, 16MB $560. 32MB $1200, 64MB $2800.

486DX2-66 itself was ~$300, + $100 VLB motherboard meanwhile $1100 got you Pentium 90MHz with PCI motherboard. In December 1994 for the price of 486 with 32MB ram ($1600) you could have bought P90 with 16MB ($1660).

Thank you for this. It all sounds correct to me and brought back so many things I’d forgotten – but now I’m really curious how you remember these dates and numbers. My memory for details like these is pretty strong, but this level of recall is remarkable. I’m genuinely impressed.

Its cut&paste of research I did for Vogons (retro computing forum) post some time ago in my "I need to know everything about SIMM ram" phase :-)

Personally I started with PCs around 1995 and this I remember vividly due to major mistake* I made :) I had a school friend working weekends at the local computer fleamarket scrounge for me the cheapest second hand components possible to build barebones 386 system (minimum to play Doom*/Privateer) piece by piece in $50 increments. Tiny motherboard with soldered Am386DX40 + case was first. Next months $50 paid for 4MB, ISA VGA, keyboard and FDD. This got me off the ground once I hobbled together VGA to SCART cable with special driver to use TV instead of expensive VGA monitor. Third installment another 4MB and 40MB HDD, and the final $50 concluded build with sound card, CDROM and a mouse :)

* I will never forget my friend trying to convince me to throw extra $10 for a 486SX25 on a VLB board and me casually saying 'bah bro thats a tasty pizza money thanks but no thanks' :| This fatal f-up meant 5-9fps in Doom instead of what one would call fluid at the time 10-15 fps on 486SX25+VLB, motivated me to get into PC building and started my career in IT. 3 years later I was working in a service center for regional PC components distributor.

Dunno. Early nineties I had to shut down the X11 server to compile Linux on my 386 with 8MiB RAM, else the machine would thrash. Mid-nineties on a 486 with 16MiB Linux compiled happily in the background while the host remained usable, including GUI (might also have been due to then still rapid improvements in Linux itself).

Now my 8GiB Apple mini feels overworked and swaps a lot (quite noticeable so due to the spinning rust drive), while my laptop with 32GiB never breaks a sweat.

The real jump was when finally leaving behind my 8bit home computer (upgraded to 64+256KiB RAM of which most were usable only as RAM disk) when I got the 386 with 4MiB (soon maxed out at 8MiB). Now, that was a game changer.

It's simple, and for context I made both upgrades scenarios: 8gb -> 32gb: yeah, it feels a bit snappier, I can finally load multiple VMs and a ton of containers. Which rarely happens.. 8mb -> 32mb: Wow! I can finally play Age of Empires 2 and blue screen crashes dropped by half!

The feeling isn't the same even remotely...

Going from an inflatable pool in your backyard to a community pool is world changing.

Going from the Pacific Ocean to the Seven Seas is still lots of water.

Lots of water that you don't really need, so hardly makes a difference...

Great analogy as both the ocean and RAM today end up being used as the garbage dump of inconsiderate assholes.

Resolutions for video might be good comparison. SD to HD(or 720p) is very nice jump. HD to 4k some benefit. 4k to 8k... Well I suppose there is things.

The starting to point really does matter.

Resolutions are actually good example of things at low end(today) scale. 1920x1080 * 24 bits = 6220800 bytes. So 6 megs. Just to store 16 million colour screen state.

4K to 8K (and for that matter 30fps to 60fps+) is REALLY noticeable in VR video.

Normal video, not so much.

Does anyone even consider VR below 90 FPS? Sounds like a miserable experience.

But yes, for resolution the angular pixel size is what matters and since VR covers more of your field of view you also need more pixels for the same results.

Of course, the really significant step back then was being able to go from 640 kB (+/-) to more than 1 MB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_memory).

Yup.

We maxed our Tandy (Radio Shack) 286 boxen, juiced to a blistering 8mhz, with 2.5mb RAM. I got blisters from stuffing RAM into daughter boards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory#Expansion_boar...

Twas early years of PC-based image scanning and processing. We only had 1 image capture board. The boot's POST duration for 2.5mb was ridiculous. So after a cpature, my coworker (hi Tim Hall!) would ever so quickly yank the board out of a running box (now doing image processing) to be used in another box.

Multitasking!

As I remember it, the jump to 386 (much delayed by Micron's protectionist racket) was the next biggest step up.

Nowadays electron apps will just baloon and take up the slack. Back in the days, it meant you could run 4x more stuff or handle bigger files/models with less thrashing of your very slow hdd.

Most RAM found in consumer PC's during the 90s was still DRAM, including SDRAM, EDO, and Rambus. I believe OP is just being nostalgic over the period of time when RAM upgrades were very a exciting thing, as hardware was changing very quickly in that era and each year felt considerably more capable than the prior.

In fact, I'd venture as far as to say that all memory in personal and/or "home" computers, starting with the earliest generation (Apple I & Co), has always been some variation of DRAM - with the possible exception of the external cache memory chips used by some CPUs (e.g. 486, Pentium IIRC).

My first "home" computer (a home-built COSMAC Elf) had 256 bytes of static RAM (in two DIPs). No DRAM at all. I don't think Radio Shack even sold DRAM.

There were SRAM-based home computers, they just weren't very competitive when DRAM-based ones could offer 4x the RAM for the same price. VIC-20 did well for its day, though.

I'm not sure it's easy to understand what a big change there has been in the perceived pace of computer technology development if you weren't there. I'm typing this on a laptop that I purchased 11 years ago, in 2013. It's still my one and only home computer, and it hasn't given me any trouble.

In 1994, though, an 11 year old computer would already be considered vintage. In 1983 the hot new computer was the Commodore 64. In 1994 everyone was upgrading their computers with CD-ROM drives so they could play Myst.

Hilariously enough, you could still purchase a brand new Commodore 64 in 1994... albeit right before Commodore went bankrupt in May of that year. I vaguely remember some local electronics store in Pittsburgh having Commodore 64s for sale on the store shelves for really low prices back in the day. Admittedly, this was an unusual sight to behold in the US, because we had well since moved on to IBM PC Compatibles by then. In Europe, C64s were a tad bit easier to source.

It was definitely more of a curiosity and a toy rather than a serious computer in 1994.

Getting a new stick of RAM was so damn exciting in the 90s.

And putting the old ones in a SIMM-stack to still use them on a new motherboard, because noone would be so crazy as to throw away good DRAM.

Sad indeed. All that was taken away once it became possible to download more ram[0].

0. https://downloadmoreram.com/

I started late but i rememeber when i upgraded my system with an additional 64mb stick, i was able to reduce the GTA 3 Loadtime between one island to another from 20 seconds to 1.

And at that time i also learned how critical it was to check your ram for errors. I reinstalled win98 and windows 2000 so often until i figured this out.

Nah the biggest jump in performance by far was SSDs. It was a huge step so software had no chance to "catch up" initially.

It's happening, Windows gets slower every year to adapt to SSDs.

tinfoil hat on.

I think Microsoft is making windows slow to prepare people for when they move everything on your computer to their cloud.

tinfoil hat off.

That's Wirth's law moved to a conspiracy theory level.

RAM speeds are still improving pretty fast. I'm running DDR5 6000 and DDR5 8300 is available. GDDR7 uses PAM3 to get 40Gbps

How does that contrast with the increase cas latency in real world terms? (Actually asking, not being combative, I don't know)

Last time I checked, DDR5 and DDR4 latency was basically the same. Very little progress there. May be with integrating DRAM and CPU on the same package, some latency wins will be available just because wires will be shorter, but nothing groundbreaking.

My DDR4 was C16, but my DDR5 at C30 makes up for that with sheer speed.

Currently sporting this - G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB Black 64GB (2x32GB) PC5-48000 (6000MHz) with a 7800x3d.

Previous kit was G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 32GB (2x16GB), PC4-28800 (3600MHz) DDR4, 16-16-16-36 [X2, eventually, for 64 total] with, you guessed it, the 5800x3d, from the 3900xt - my son loves it.

To reiterate the GPs point, in case anyone didn't get it: DDR4-3200 CL16 is equivalent to DDR5-6000 CL30 or DDR5-6400 CL32 in terms of latency. Divide the frequency by the CAS latency and you get the same number for all of those. It was the same situation going from DDR3 to 4. There's some wiggle room if you run above-spec voltages (and depending on the quality of the chips, etc.) but things have stayed roughly where they are latency-wise, gen-to-gen.

True! I realise that I left it unsaid in the numbers. Granted, herz for herz my DDR4 3600-CL16 had even better latencies than my DDR5 (4.44ns vs 5.00nz) - but for overall performance the speed then tends to make up for it (assuming a varied workload).

I've actively shopped for low latency RAM - within reasons, but have paid good premiums especially in DDR4 days. For DDR5, there can be surprisingly little price wise to differentiate e.g. CL30 or CL32, so whilst it may not offer the greatest of differences, if you're already paying e.g. $350 (AUD) for a kit at CL32 the improved latency might just be $20 more at the same speed.

(I see that things have moved on a bit from last September when I did my last upgrade; now we have CL32 at higher speeds, so maybe that's the go to now.)

Yes, latency has stayed fairly constant going back at least as far as DDR3. It was nudged downward a little from DDR2 to 3, with higher clocks bringing finer grained timings, but I would say any improvement in later generations is pretty negligible in nanosecond terms.

There's another factor, which is the number of independent channels; DDR5 doubles the number of channels per memory stick. This gets more important as CPUs get more and more cores.

can relate

though i guess the 90's are _the_ best tech era by far and for some time to come, because that's where capable and modular computing machines became a real commodity.

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