I really do wonder about just how much computing power you people think you need.. you are literally talking about a THIRD OF A GIG of ram to keep a browser up with dozens of tabs opened in the background.. yet you are using this usage to justify over 50x that amount of RAM?? ..
I'm going to ask it again in this thread even though someone else already asked it: Do you know what literally means?
I'm not literally talking about a THIRD OF A GIG to justify any amount of RAM. This is a simple case of selective reading. Try again.
What I said, is that it's nice to be able to play a game, have tabs in a browser open, have vent/skype open, have a video encoder open and active, have F@H up and running (-bigadv), not use a pagefile, and still have plenty of room to open a second client of the same game, an entirely different game, or other programs entirely.
Another consideration, is RAM channels. If I wanted to take advantage of quad channel RAM *and* run sanely minimalist for my hardware, it would be 4 sticks of 2GBs each leaving me at 8GBs. The way I use hardware, it'd be cutting short in several usage scenarios, though typically never by more than 2 or 3GBs. That means the easiest option available to me, is really 4 sticks of 4GB RAM.
I'm sorry if all of you 16GB no sayers are offended, but don't you think you need to open your eyes a bit? A very low percentage of people with quad channel capability are going to run 4 x 1GB. A much larger handful will run 4 x 2GB, and then there's another handful yet that just barely push passed 10GB requirement and will run 16GB because it's the easiest solution.