RAM Crisis Leads Microsoft To Officially Push Weaker Laptops
With The RAM Crisis Going Nowhere, Microsoft Is Pointing You Towards Weaker Laptops
The RAM crisis is a plague upon the entire gaming industry - and was also partially created by the gaming industry. The spread of generative AI means that RAM prices are spiralling out of control, which results in regular console price increases - and that’s not even touching on the cost of building your own gaming PC.
It’s not a surprise then that the gaming laptop market is also a mess right now. If you want any hope of playing recent games on a laptop, you will need a lot of RAM, and getting a laptop with that inbuilt just isn’t feasible right now. So much so that even Microsoft seems to be pushing us away from these beefier gaming laptops.
Microsoft Contributed To The RAM Shortage, And Now, It's Feeling The Reprecussions
As spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft has taken down an article titled “How to optimize your gaming PC setup”. This article recommended users have 16GB of RAM for their gaming needs, or 32GB if the games were more demanding or used mods. That might not be any less true now, but it’s a tall order with the shortages and price hikes.
In May of this year, Microsoft said that 32GB is the “no-worries” zone for gaming on Windows 11. Speaking from experience, that is true, but you can’t really ask consumers to upgrade to that right now. Many will be hoping Windows 10 sticks around a little longer while this crisis continues.
Windows Latest also notes that this comes at the same time as Microsoft pushing 8GB, saying that will be more than enough for Surface Laptop users to get by. Of course, they would need less RAM than gamers, but not that much if they want to use their laptop comfortably, especially with Windows 11.
Ultimately, Microsoft has backed itself into a corner. It started pushing Windows users towards upgrading their RAM, and released an OS that eats up more of it, only for RAM to become so inaccessible that you are arguably leaving money on the table if you don’t accommodate those who cannot afford it. With that in mind, we can expect more lower-RAM hardware to be pushed out the door, and with any luck, Windows 11 will become better optimised - with less AI rubbish clogging up the space. Especially since that’s what got us here in the first place, something Microsoft itself is guilty of.