That's a huge amount of cutting-edge, DDR3 PC3-8500 RAM for a laughably tiny fee. This time last year an 8GB upgrade was little more than a pipe dream for anybody other than high-end users with extremely fat wallets.

, according to new research, which is great news for consumers, but bad news for manufacturers.

The problem is caused by , along with oversupply from manufacturers. It's a perfect storm that favors end users, both in terms of upgrades and in purchases of new computers, which feature larger amounts of RAM. I wouldn't settle for anything less than 4GB in a new machine right now, but if you're buying a new computer, beware of older stock that might still feature a miserly 2GB.

Indeed, the situation has gotten so bad that performance manufacturer OCZ has decided to exit the RAM market completely, and reported significantly lower revenue from RAM in the third quarter of 2010--from $22 million in 2009 to just $6 million in 2010.

So is it time for a RAM upgrade? It's worth bearing in mind that, unless your computer is lacking in RAM, performance boosts will be modest. You'll just be able to run more programs at the same time, although you might find that some applications you've recently closed open almost instantly, because they're able to be cached in RAM.