You only need oodles of RAM and the latest vector instructions if you're running enterprise software like statics modeling, CAD, or video editing. If you're just playing games or web browsing, is overkill.
Today:
Most games and enterprise software can run on a potato of a computer, but for a web browser, you'll need 16 GB of RAM and the latest vector instructions on your processor. Also, something as basic as a chat window might be running in a web browser instance, so you better upgrade.
Worth's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law) has saved the computing industry. Sure you could run most games on 4 GB of RAM, or probably even 2 GB, but Steam, Discord, and Slack each have their own Chrome instance, plus you probably have another one running, so good luck getting by on even 8 GB of RAM.
That's annoying. Pre-AVX computers are still perfectly suitable for many use cases. I'm writing this on one right now!
Replying on one as well. I wonder if this will push users to Firefox in the same way deprecating Manifest V2 is doing.
20 years ago:
Today: Worth's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law) has saved the computing industry. Sure you could run most games on 4 GB of RAM, or probably even 2 GB, but Steam, Discord, and Slack each have their own Chrome instance, plus you probably have another one running, so good luck getting by on even 8 GB of RAM.