Head to head

Compare any two computers

Pick two machines from 50 years of computing, or pit one against the phone in your pocket. Every number comes from the atlas catalogue.

Generic PC · 2015–2021

A PC with Windows 10

Typical specs shown. SSDs made start-up times drop from minutes to seconds.

CPUIntel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 5 @ 3.5 GHz
Memory8 GB
Storage256 GB SSD
In the atlasBe the first to add it
VS

Various · 2025

A 2025 flagship phone

The computer most people now carry.

CPU8-core ARM @ 3 GHz
Memory8 GB
Storage256 GB flash

The verdict

The A 2025 flagship phone has 1.0× the memory of the A PC with Windows 10.

They are 8 years apart. Doubling every two years (Moore's law) would predict about 16×; the memory actually grew slower than that. Across the whole catalogue memory doubled every 1.9 years.

Memory8 GB vs 8 GB
Clock speed3.5 GHz vs 3 GHz

Bars use a logarithmic scale so both machines stay visible.

Popular match-ups

Commodore 64 vs Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48KApple II vs Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020)Amiga 500 vs Atari 520STIBM PC (5150) vs A PC or laptop with Windows 11Apple iMac G3 vs Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020)BBC Micro Model B vs Raspberry Pi (Model B)Altair 8800 vs PhoneAsus Eee PC 701 vs A school Chromebook