WATCH OUT FOR RAM PRICES!

Scannerman · 2026-10-05T21:31:08-0400

So glad none of this is a concern for me. All those poor silicon companies doing their best to keep up to the demand. Man, it must be tough for them, hey? I mean whatever are they going to do with all those record profits? Meanwhile, Micron has told we, the plebs, to pretty much go pound sand. Sorta brings a whole new meaning to the concept, I suppose. Good thing the sky isn't falling. Come to think of it, neither are RAM prices.

Marie SWE · 2026-10-05T23:11:18-0400

PerpetualCycle said:
If they can do that, why didn't they do that in the first place?

My guess is that it costs money for microsoft to optimize the code..
The same goes for Games, Web browsers, etc... As Ram was cheap and it costs money to spend time optimizing code.. they save money.
But now they risk losing customers with this ram prices.. so they will lose more money on losing customers then they have to spend on the code.

Scannerman · 2026-10-05T23:35:11-0400

if people really wanted to see mega savings and lower RAM prices everyone would be avoiding AI like the plague. This is such a 'throw the dog a bone' measure it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. Let them all choke to death on their greed.

PerpetualCycle · 2026-10-06T00:12:52-0400

Marie SWE said:
My guess is that it costs money for microsoft to optimize the code..
The same goes for Games, Web browsers, etc... As Ram was cheap and it costs money to spend time optimizing code.. they save money.
But now they risk losing customers with this ram prices.. so they will lose more money on losing customers then they have to spend on the code.

Yet apple can turn over a coherent change in their UI fairly quickly ( Microsoft is taking forever - since Windows 95), and they can make some performance improvements at the same time.

Marie SWE · 2026-10-06T08:46:04-0400

PerpetualCycle said:
Yet apple can turn over a coherent change in their UI fairly quickly ( Microsoft is taking forever - since Windows 95), and they can make some performance improvements at the same time.

I hope a lot of software developers start thinking a bit more about optimizing their code for a lower footprint. Just look on modern web browsers.. they uses GB of Ram on only having a few webpages open... Often with memory leaks or just things get "stuck" in Ram.
After a long day browsing with hundreds of tabs open... then even i close down tabs and finally have one single empty tab open, it still GB stuck in ram.
That is bad coding when Ram dont get flushed after you close down the tabs.. and the only way is to kill the browser and open it again to free the last Ram.

Fabler2 · 2026-10-06T09:00:16-0400

Maybe China to the rescue?

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/chinese-memory-vendors-snub-industry-giants-in-favor-of-homegrown-ram-chips-samsung-micron-and-sk-hynix-face-a-chinese-supply-chain-revolt

Marie SWE · 2026-10-06T09:09:59-0400

Fabler2 said:
Maybe China to the rescue?

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/chinese-memory-vendors-snub-industry-giants-in-favor-of-homegrown-ram-chips-samsung-micron-and-sk-hynix-face-a-chinese-supply-chain-revolt

I'm actually hoping for it. Gamer Nexus on youtube made a long video about it where they deep dived into it.
As he puts it, with the US RAM cartels it might be the rescue to force the others to lower the prices.... But if China is smart they ride the wave and take high prices too and makes a lot of money in the process..
Bit if they take the opportunity to pay back on tariffs, they keep the prices low and forces the others to lower their prices to not lose market shares as they do make a lot of money out of regular customers.

PerpetualCycle · 2026-10-06T12:51:41-0400

Marie SWE said:
I hope a lot of software developers start thinking a bit more about optimizing their code for a lower footprint. Just look on modern web browsers.. they uses GB of Ram on only having a few webpages open... Often with memory leaks or just things get "stuck" in Ram.
After a long day browsing with hundreds of tabs open... then even i close down tabs and finally have one single empty tab open, it still GB stuck in ram.
That is bad coding when Ram dont get flushed after you close down the tabs.. and the only way is to kill the browser and open it again to free the last Ram.

I agree, code optimization has fallen by the wayside and could be much improved. Maybe they should try sicking AI on it.

gunrunnerjohn · 2026-10-06T14:33:38-0400

PerpetualCycle said:
I agree, code optimization has fallen by the wayside and could be much improved. Maybe they should try sicking AI on it.

I think that's what happened to break code optimization!

Everyone is looking for the quick way, not the best way.

AK6DN · 2026-10-06T15:18:11-0400

Scannerman said:
if people really wanted to see mega savings and lower RAM prices everyone would be avoiding AI like the plague. This is such a 'throw the dog a bone' measure it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. Let them all choke to death on their greed.

Seems too many people want to call up their handy AI ChatBot and spend all night complaining about the high price of DRAM and silicon with it...

PhilB · 2026-10-06T18:46:00-0400

gunrunnerjohn said:
I think that's what happened to break code optimization! Everyone is looking for the quick way, not the best way.

Rewrite everything in assembler.

cheaterslick · 2026-10-06T19:24:59-0400

Fabler2 said:
Maybe China to the rescue?

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/chinese-memory-vendors-snub-industry-giants-in-favor-of-homegrown-ram-chips-samsung-micron-and-sk-hynix-face-a-chinese-supply-chain-revolt

Much as I don't like it, I don't think we have much choice.

And that includes reverting to older, more inferior technology as a workaround.

Scannerman · 2026-10-06T19:56:56-0400

Ha! Vibe code this. . . I just discovered that I inherited 128GB of DDR5 RAM and a 4TB stick of NVMe in a working system. *tsk* *tsk* Too bad it's an AMD CPU. :::shrugs::: Can't have everything.

gunrunnerjohn · 2026-10-06T20:50:49-0400

PhilB said:
Rewrite everything in assembler.

When I worked for IBM in the 1960's and then I moved to a startup in the 1970's, I wrote almost everything in IBM-360 Assembler. That assembler had a great macro language, so I did a lot of custom macros to create my own pseudo high language for a lot of the reporting tasks. Those were interesting times, I punched mountains of 80 column cards, that was the input media of the time.

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