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I guess RAM is a bell curve now.
- 32GB: Enough.
- 16GB: Not enough.
- 8GB: Not enough.
- 4GB: Believe it or not, enough.
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I actually audibly laughed when Raspberry Pi came out with an 8GB version because for anyone who thinks 4GB isn't enough probably won't be happy with 8 either.
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I wonder what the hell they are doing with it? I mean I have the 3B with IIRC 1GB and I can use the desktop and run python scripts to fiddle with all the I/O ports and stuff, what do you do with a raspberry that needs eight times the RAM??
I'm seriously curious!
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At that point you're running some sort of server on it probably.
For which, it's not even the most cost effective hardware tbh. There are X86 based tiny PCs for good prices used
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How does power consumption of those x86 PCs compare?
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Last time I asked around about this question, the answer was surprisingly "probably not much"! When a low-power x86 chip (like those mobile chips) is idling (which is pretty much all the time if all you are doing is hosting a server on it) it consumes very little power, about the same level as an idling Pi. It is when the frequency ramps up that performance-per-watt gets noticeably worse on x86.
Edit: My personal test showed that my x86 laptop fared slightly worse than my Pi 3 in idling power (~2 watts higher it seems), but that laptop is oooooooold.
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I have experienced this myself.
My main machine at home - a M2 Pro MacBook with 32GB RAM - effortlessly runs whatever I throw at it. It completes heavy tasks in reasonable time such as Xcode builds and running local LLMs.
Work issued machine - an Intel MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM - struggles with Firefox and Slack. However, development takes place on a remote server via terminal, so I do not notice anything beyond the input latency.
A secondary machine at home - an HP 15 laptop from 2013 with an A8 APU and 8GB RAM (4GB OOTB) - feels sluggish at times with Linux Mint, but suffices for the occasional task of checking emails and web browsing by family.
A journaling and writing machine - a ThinkPad T43 from 2005 maxed out with 2GB RAM and Pentium M - runs Emacs snappily on FreeBSD.
There are a few older machines with acceptable usability that don't get taken out much, except for the infrequent bout of vintage gaming