zlacker

>>LorenD+(OP)
Not to disrespect this, but it used to be entirely normal to have a GUI environment on a machine with 2MB of RAM and a 40MB disk.

Or 128K of ram and 400 kb disk for that matter.

>>trollb+h6
A single 1920x1080 framebuffer (which is a low resolution monitor in 2025 IMO) is 2MB. Add any compositing into the mix for multi window displays and it literally doesn’t fit in memory.

>>maccar+P7
Do you really need the framebuffer in RAM? Wouldn't that be entirely in the GPU RAM?

>>echoan+S9
Computers didn't used to have GPUs back then when 150kB was a significant amount of graphics memory.

>>Errone+tn
The IBM PGC (1984) was a discrete GPU with 320kB of RAM and slightly over 64kB of ROM.

The EGA (1984) and VGA (1987) could conceivably be considered a GPU although not turning complete. EGA had 64, 128, 192, or 256K and VGA 256K.

The 8514/A (1987) was Turing complete although it had 512kB. The Image Adapter/A (1989) was far more powerful, pretty much the first modern GPU as we know them and came with 1MB expandable to 3MB.