How long will it take until we find that 4GB of RAM is just not enough

I say within 2-3 years we will start seeing software that recommends 4 or more GBs as the absolute minimum. It won't happen quickly though. A major overhaul of minimum RAM won't be for at least 5 years I don't think.

Haha i remember the days when 2GB was "Dude, Insane!", Then it became more standard and 4GB became the "Dude, Insane!" amount. The cycle's repeated itself again and now it's come up to 4GB as the standardised amount with 8GB Not even looking that insane anymore.

I'd expect the reason to be that game and software developers are catching onto the fact that so many people now have higher spec systems as standard and it's more commonplace to see someone have at least a fairly powerful machine in their home or their laptop to be quite high spec especially since they're taking the lead over desktops.

In turn, Developers open up the throttle and incorporate things such as DirectX11 and Bigger mipmaps/textures for their games as well as higher poly models, more visual effects such as Bloom/HDR/Specular ect. And there's also Physics. Oh Lawdy, Physics. Physics are becoming more and more of a standard thing in games now, You can always tell this by the fact it's marketed on the box less and less now lol.

To be perfectly honest, Within the next 4 to 5 years i can see 32GB becoming a standard amount especially with DDR3 Prices dropping rather fast.

When Windows 8 or 9 gets released. Since they might be in 64-bit only, 4GB is already obsolete for 64bit.

well you could say that already.

try compressing something, use 7-zip and increase the 'directory size' attribute, and you will notice that the amount of memory required to compress sky rockets! try it on LZMA2 archive format.

but a little warning, dont compress anything, because that amount of memory is required, and your computer will probably crash or lock as it tries to do everything whist using virtual memory.

I've already hit that point a few times. In most cases I use up about 3.5 gigs of memory, but when I'm working on projects it goes much higher. I've even had my machine run out of it's 8gigs + Virtual, and the kernel literally forced a reboot to save the system.

It is already too little. (stupid 50 character limit)

I've already found that 4GB "just isn't enough." I'm using 8GB now, and my next PC will have at least 16GB. Then again, I'm doing things like real time HD video editing and 3D rendering, so I need a bit of a powerhouse system.

If your using 32bit windows, then you're only going to get the use of about 3 1/2gb of ram anyway. If your using 64bit Windows, then you can go a lot higher. At this stage, most programs would barely scrape 8 gb ram. But like Leapo said he's doing realtime HD video editing, so more ram would be a big help there.

4 gigs has sort of become the minimum and I think that within 2-3 years 4 gigs will not be enough. Because I remember getting a computer with a gig of memory and it wasn't enough within a couple of years

now an imac can have up to 16GB of ram so i think soon