Commodore 64 vs. Amiga 500: five years bought eight times the memory
The Commodore 64 launched with 64 KB of RAM. Five years later, the Amiga 500 offered 512 KB, at nearly the same inflation-adjusted launch price.
The computer budget barely moved. The amount of memory inside it multiplied by eight. Wikipedia traces the C64’s name to its “64 kibibytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM.” Wikipedia’s historical figures put the C64’s launch price at $595 in 1982 and the Amiga 500’s at $699 in 1987.
| Launch configuration | Commodore 64 | Amiga 500 |
|---|---|---|
| US launch price | $595 (Wikipedia) | $699 (Wikipedia) |
| Price in 2025 dollars | $1,990 (Wikipedia) | $1,980 (Wikipedia) |
| Standard RAM | 64 KB (Wikipedia) | 512 KB (Wikipedia) |
| US launch year | 1982 (Wikipedia) | 1987 (Wikipedia) |
Those adjusted totals differ by $10, roughly half a percent. Treat that as a tie at this level of precision. Dividing each adjusted price by the memory gives $1,990/64 = about $31.09 per KB versus $1,980/512 = about $3.87 per KB.
That calculation prices the whole computer against its included memory. It does not claim that RAM chips themselves cost that much. And eight times the memory does not make every task eight times faster.
The next question belongs to the software: what did developers do with the extra 448 KB once the hardware finally gave it to them?