Question How much RAM do we need as of June 2019?

[inbam]

As of now, how much RAM do we need for our laptop? 8GB or 12GB?

 

[sizzling]

That would depend on what you use it for and the rest of the spec.

 

[algorithmbreaker]

A minimum of 8GB and an average of 16GB is good for most things to do on a laptop

 

[Karadjgne]

Depends on the age and capability of the laptop, what OS it's running, and usage. Brand new will be 8-16Gb on average, couple years old will more than likely be limited to 6-8Gb total.

 

[Dugimodo]

Yeah not a great question, how much petrol do I need in my car? same sort of thing, you see the issue.
Minimum to be usable is still 4GB - but for most people that's a poor experience and we should really say 8GB.
Then if you multitask much or run the latest AA game titles you want 16GB.

And honestly the only people who need more than 16GB of RAM at the moment should be well aware of that fact and why.

So 8GB on a Budget or 16GB if not is the best generic answer I can offer.

 

[USAFRet]

As of now, how much RAM do we need for our laptop? 8GB or 12GB?

I need (and use) 32GB.
How much do you need?

 

[trandaa]

I wanted 16 GB, I use max 12 GB, I could live with 8 GB... ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[gskill support]

How much memory can you utilize simultaneously? Check this by maxing your environment then see how much RAM is used in Task Manager. Some people always have a certain amount of Windows open, don't shut down often, video editing, trading windows, etc. so it can range. 8GB-16GB is best for most as naturally streaming and HD files can take a lot of memory, so 8GB is becoming lower end. Don't want to be left with less than 1GB available as it may hinder performance.

 

[Karadjgne]

May hinder? That's putting it politely. Lack of ram = one thing. A visit by pagefile.sys. For those who have never experienced that visit, lucky you.
In a nutshell, pagefile grabs a portion of your hdd as it own, making your hdd as a secondary ram source. When you consider how slow a hdd is compared to ram, and that data is trying to be read from a hdd that's already actively reading other data, things get abysmally slow. Say bye bye to fps, if dealing with large files you might as well go get a cup of coffee or even take a nap.

It's far, FAR better to have more ram than you'll possibly use than to skirt the edges of minimum necessity

 

[Latios]

8GB i'd say is minimum since 4GB and Windows 10 do not go together even for basic tasks

 

[Karadjgne]

Exactly. And when most more modern pc's are averaging 6-12Gb system ram usage, ppl will often suffer badly in heavy usage games. Anything 1440p and up pretty much needs 16Gb.

 

[LinuxDevice]

Don't forget that some laptop GPUs don't have their own ram and will share with system ram.

 

[inbam]

Thank you guys for answering, I wish I can reply to each one of you separately but I don't have time.
You guys gave me good answers and I actually went through everyone's reply, what I understood is 8GB should be fine and good