[HingVista]

At PDC a netbook (Asus Eee PC) with 1GB of RAM was showcased running Windows 7 just fine. 1GB of RAM isn't much these days, but still I kept wondering how much RAM does Windows 7 really need?

Tore Lervik from Mindre.net created a virtual machine and gave it 700MB of RAM. It booted just fine and windows idle with no apps were using 360-400MB of ram. (That is just 50% of the total!) Then he decided to open 10 explorer windows just to see what usage it would go up to. With the 10 windows the ram usage went from 400MB to 425MB.

He didn't want to stop there, he wanted to find out when the prefetch-applications stopped and try to find the "static" amount of RAM that Windows 7 needs. He shut the system down and set the RAM to 500MB and booted back up. Now the system used 290MB with 210MB to spare. Then he rebooted it with 300MB available RAM. The boot wasn't happy about just getting 300MB to work with and the boot slowed down for quite some time. But when it finally got into the system it went to 250MB of RAM at idle.

So it seems around 250MB is Windows 7's "static" memory usage. This is pretty good, but you would still want to have atleast 1GB of RAM so Superfetch and the indexer can do it's thing.
But a Windows 7 netbook with 512MB RAM and superfetch disabled should work for normal stuff and surfing.
What I ended up wondering was, can Vista do this?

[Syzygy]

Wow, Imagine it running on normal desktop computers. No more laggy, non responsive games or programs

[sevenalive]

I run vista completely fine with 1gb of ram. It's not slow at all. I run Adobe CS4 great, PS starts and ready in 2-3 seconds, so does dreamweaver

Plus this whole analysis is wrong, look at the page file usage.

Also Vista and 7 have superfetch which preload most used apps in memory.

If i got the ram, why not use it for something, that is the whole idea of superfetch.

This post has been edited by sevenalive: 02 November 2008 - 11:35 AM

[Frylock86]

Se7en is going to pwn.

[CommonSense]

sevenalive, on Nov 2 2008, 07:34 AM, said:

I run vista completely fine with 1gb of ram. It's not slow at all. I run Adobe CS4 great, PS starts and ready in 2-3 seconds, so does dreamweaver

Plus this whole analysis is wrong, look at the page file usage.

Also Vista and 7 have superfetch which preload most used apps in memory.

If i got the ram, why not use it for something, that is the whole idea of superfetch.

How do you not notice any slowness with only 1gb of ram? I have the same and PS definitely does not start in 3 seconds. Hell, Firefox takes some long time too.

[RickSOLET]

Is it because of MinWin?

[phoenix_abhi]

sevenalive, on Nov 2 2008, 05:04 PM, said:

I run vista completely fine with 1gb of ram. It's not slow at all. I run Adobe CS4 great, PS starts and ready in 2-3 seconds, so does dreamweaver

Plus this whole analysis is wrong, look at the page file usage.

Also Vista and 7 have superfetch which preload most used apps in memory.

If i got the ram, why not use it for something, that is the whole idea of superfetch.

r u joking or 2-3 seconds is a long duration nowdays ?

[InlineSkate]

phoenix_abhi, on Nov 2 2008, 04:17 PM, said:

sevenalive, on Nov 2 2008, 05:04 PM, said:

I run vista completely fine with 1gb of ram. It's not slow at all. I run Adobe CS4 great, PS starts and ready in 2-3 seconds, so does dreamweaver

Plus this whole analysis is wrong, look at the page file usage.

Also Vista and 7 have superfetch which preload most used apps in memory.

If i got the ram, why not use it for something, that is the whole idea of superfetch.

r u joking or 2-3 seconds is a long duration nowdays ?

I don't think you've ever used a photo editing app have you?

All photo editing applications take forever to fully load.

[CommonSense]

InlineSkate, on Nov 2 2008, 04:23 PM, said:

phoenix_abhi, on Nov 2 2008, 04:17 PM, said:

sevenalive, on Nov 2 2008, 05:04 PM, said:

I run vista completely fine with 1gb of ram. It's not slow at all. I run Adobe CS4 great, PS starts and ready in 2-3 seconds, so does dreamweaver

Plus this whole analysis is wrong, look at the page file usage.

Also Vista and 7 have superfetch which preload most used apps in memory.

If i got the ram, why not use it for something, that is the whole idea of superfetch.

r u joking or 2-3 seconds is a long duration nowdays ?

I don't think you've ever used a photo editing app have you?

All photo editing applications take forever to fully load.

I seriously think he may be drunk when using Photoshop, and I mean every single time he uses it. I have no idea how it could only take 2-3 seconds to load. Unless your body's response time slowed down dramatically.

[Johnnyboy]

Quote

But a Windows 7 netbook with 512MB RAM and superfetch disabled should work for normal stuff and surfing.

Not bad at all!

[Airflow]

As Johnny has done, please get on topic.

Great.. Windows 7 is going to take it away

[Syzygy]

2-3 Seconds on Vista with 1GB RAM.

WHAT THE HELL???

With my specs, it still takes 6 seconds to load on cold startup, and 4 seconds on warm.

[fediaFedia]

That looks promising, hope they won't make it worse in the next betas

Quote

2-3 for photoshop to load

Nowai with only 1 GB of RAM, unless you have a extremely slim photoshop release.

[endrit10]

RickSOLET, on Nov 2 2008, 07:10 PM, said:

Is it because of MinWin?

MinWin was supposed to be the new kernel for Windows 7.
But it does not appear anymore.

It is now rumoured to be in Windows Server 7

[FalseAgent]

wow, that's a improvement all right!! vista's 'static' RAM usage is 600MB!