Why does everything have to always be "double it or don't improve it?"

[AlexT09]

Dating back to my Sega Genesis with 16 bit graphics, I've always noticed the next generation would double that number. I.e. PlayStation had 32, then the N64, Xbox had 128. Not sure if that's the case with consoles anymore, but that's not really what my question is about. Looking at the Surface Pro 3 vs Pro 4 and Surface Book, what would be wrong with say the i5 model coming with 10 or 12 gigs of ram? Why does it have to 4, 8 or 16? You could seemingly still make meaningful improvements without doubling the ram, right? Why doesn't that make sense? It sucks, or is at least confusing to me why you would need to spend a ton more money to get past 8 gigs of ram. This seams to be the story with everything including hard drive capacity. Why couldn't they have made the lower end SP3 with 80 gigs of hard drive to account for the large space, on a relative basis, the operating system accounted for? Anyway, I'm not necessarily asking for answers to my specific examples / questions, but more or less this overarching theme of why with technology is it "double or don't do it." I feel as if I'm missing something, and I also know their are some exceptions you could point out, but I feel they're rare. Thanks!

 

[Krystianpants]

Because ram is more efficient if the dimms both have the same amount. A 4 gig system would have 2 2gig sticks etc.. That's how its always been. If you build your own PC you will see how it works.