How Much RAM Does Windows Actually Need?

Many are inclined to think that newer operating systems require more memory than older ones...but is that really the case?

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This Does Not Compute
PO Box 131141
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[PixelOutlaw]

It's the web browser that is the killer for old computers. The damned web browsers will sit there and demand 600 MB of RAM just idling. Wanna watch Youtube? Forget it. From a software engineering standpoint, the web browser is the most kludgy wreck of rolling design demands and scope creep ever. The web browser has even made the "Just install Linux on old computers" mantra not ring so true unless you are willing to use something like Links2, w3m, or Midori.

[vwestlife]

Windows XP SP1 can actually boot and run in as little as 48 MB of RAM, at least with the Classic theme and all visual frills disabled. However, SP2 was a major overhaul with a new kernel and lots of new features, so it takes up more RAM.

[alexpaww]

Btw, the reason windows 10 uses so much ram in the 2gb case is that it always caches the harddisk. This is a good thing. So it's really easy for windows to just not do that in the case of lower ram size.

[ShokaLion]

Don't base what you guess Windows RAM needs are on what OEMs sell machines installed with. That was the whole problem Vista had back when it was new - OEMs would sell machines with 1GB of RAM preinstalled, Windows Vista would be using 90% of that just existing, so as soon as you started much of anything up you were into virtual RAM and the whole system started grinding. That I'm convinced is a lot of what got Vista the reputation it had. If you looked at Vista later in its life, like well into when Windows 7 was the standard, it was fine. I know a few people who used Vista right till the bitter end, and usually it was because their machines were way more powerful than those early Vista machines, and they had enough resources to run it well. In that situation, it really wasn't all that different to use than 7 was.

[Browningate]

Some of your blue screens may have been caused by the system trying to resume from hybrid shutdown mode. When you click "shut down" in 8 and newer, it goes into that pseudo-hibernated state. It might be worth a try with that feature turned off.

[sracer]

Interesting series of tests! Thanks for doing that. I have drawn a different conclusion than you did from your testing. While it is true that the absolute minimum amount of RAM required to boot is lower in Windows 10, if more RAM is available, Windows 10 is more aggressive in allocating it for its purposes.

It's not a matter of Windows 10 being more efficient but about judiciously differentiating what is required to boot and what can be deferred (if the RAM is available).

The focus of these tests were about RAM, but CPU usage also comes into play. I'd be very interested to see a follow-up video that compares Windows 7, 8, and 10 with regard to RAM, CPU usage, and storage footprint of the OS. Thanks again! definitely thumbs-up worthy. :)

[leberkassemmel]

I don't think your Mac was even writing that pagefile to disk. The VM made so many changes in that area that macOS probably cached it in RAM.

[tungmeister]

Those results were pretty much exactly what I expected. It's well known that Microsoft have been doing their best to optimise RAM usage since vista came out which is exactly what we're seeing here.

[ksaspectre]

Google Chrome: "I'm about to end this man's whole career."

[pessoaanonima]

Only because it boots with less memory it doesn't mean that the system is more usable on old computers.
I have an old notebook with 1GB of ram and single core, I tried Windows 10 on and it was very slow, without drivers. I couldn't even connect to internet, because it said that there weren't available resources.
On windows 8.1, it worked well, but I didn't find video drivers.
On windows 7, the system worked well and the drivers worked, but most programs like browser were slow.
Windows Vista, that was its original OS, was very slow and everything made it crash (I didn't test reinstalling, it was with a lot of programs).
Windows XP was the fastest OS that I tested, and it worked very well.
Linux debian with LXQT also worked well.

[poopidoopi]

512 mb on win10 runs better than the computers at my school

[GhostRecon]

i've actually had windows xp boot on 32mb of ram before, and 64mb used to be the minimum spec on the box. the main thing is service pack 3 is a lot more resource intensive than service pack 2 and before were...

[Pasi]

In my experience Windows 10 is a lot slower on a HDD than Windows 7.

[Edmundostudios]

1gb is the requirement basically been the same since windows 7. 2gb minimum for actually doing anything like chrome.

[darthslackus]

Windows 10 can do 140Mb RAM, surpassing the other OSs, because it has memory compression. So in actually Windows 8 (at 168MB) might be the winner.

[kevinmahernz]

Thanks for this comparison - I've found 10 to run quite well on hardware that used to run 7, and your results accurately display that plus confirm how bad Vista is against those that came before and after it!

[theorphanobliterator]

I love how everyone says Windows 10 is so bloated, but of the most recent OS's, it uses the least RAM, and can run on the least RAM.

[gregorynpappas]

Remember, physical devices like video cards or anything else take up memory space. If this were not a VM, much of that would be used by system HW, thus requiring more RAM to even boot up. This is good, because you ARe keeping it fair, but this is the best example of "real world results will vary" :)

[jeremyandrews]

I did the opposite and recently upgraded my computer to the maximum of 32GB for Windows 10. I was worried I wouldn't be able to use it all, but now that I've stopped trying to aggressively conserve memory all the time like I did back when I only had 8GB, I'm seeing just how easy it is to use 16-22GB without even really trying, just by opening several browser tabs, a bunch of Microsoft Office apps, maybe a few GIMP sessions, Groove music player, and perhaps Skype. The vast majority of the time, the RAM usage sits right at 50%, somehow using 16GB, but often spiking to 22GB. I've definitely seen it hit 30GB, but not often. I don't really regret my purchase. Paging was markedly slower. People still say no one needs more than 16GB, but I think they mean for gaming, and underestimate how bloated modern web pages are these days. Try having a Facebook tab, a YouTube tab, a LinkedIn tab, a Twitter tab, and maybe a couple of news articles on a junky site full of advertisements open all at once, and you'll be shocked how fast that RAM gets gobbled up.

[redpheonix]

I wonder how the same test would fare for Windows 98 and 95. 98's recommended minimum is 16 MB, and 95's is 4 MB. I wonder if you could even take 95 down to the kilobytes! Maybe 3.1 could do it