Windows 7 RAM usage compared to XP Home?

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Hi all,

I’ve been hearing shock/horror stories about what a RAM hog Windows 7 is, and that the RAM that comfortably accommodated XP (2GB) no longer cuts it. Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

Thanks ~ John

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I don’t think I’d put much stock in these”horror stories”. I’m running Win 7 Pro on a machine with only 2GB with absolutely no problems or sluggishness.

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Depends on what is meant by “RAM hog.” 7 will occupy a large percentage of RAM even when not in use, but that’s because that RAM is the best place to occupy in anticipation of the user’s demand (fastest response) and if the demand does not involve what is already loaded, it takes the same prescribed time to retrieve and load RAM as it would if nothing were loaded in the first place.

So 7 may be a RAM hog by that standard but that’s just fine as far as I’m concerned. To me it would be like getting upset that my gas tank is full of gas–its what it’s designed to be and do.

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Rubbish stories spread by nutters. Win7 (Starter) will run well with just 1GB memory. But I would recommend 2GB as a comfortable minimum for other versions. Like most OSs, more memory is better and Win7 uses memory efficiently.

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[…] the RAM that comfortably accommodated XP (2GB) no longer cuts it.

I would have said that 2 GB of RAM for Windows XP was overkill. Most people would be pretty happy with 768 MB, and entirely happy with 1 GB. (Unless they were doing memory-intensive stuff like video-editing.)

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Don’t believe the horror stories. Especially since one of the recent ones was a hoax. I was running an RC copy at work for a while with 1 GB. It ran fine. Obviously the more RAM the better, especially if you have a lot of stuff open at once. And RAM is pretty cheap.

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I always get a kick out of these idiotic stories about Win 7 being a memory hog. Of course it is. Why would an OS not use available memory. What possible benefit could there be to leaving memory sit idle.

Memory is one of the resources than can become a bottleneck but only if it is fully utilized and running processes are demanding additional memory resources thus forcing the OS to page data in and out. Paging rates (sometimes called memory faults where the desired program or data segment is NOT found in memory) is a better indicator of the adequacy of the current memory size.

Effective management of memory is a measure of the OS’s efficiency but the actual percent of available memory in use at any given time is indicative of nothing. One would hope that the more memory that one installs in a system, the more the OS would make use of it. Personally, I would consider any OS that did not fully utilize the available memory to be a poor design.

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JoeP has posted a link to Ed Botts’ simplified description of how Windows 7 uses memory.

It can be summarised by saying that the Windows 7 ethos is that “unused RAM is wasted RAM”. Any ‘spare’ memory is loaded by Prefetch (guessing what apps the user may want to use based on previous usage). This is done using a very low I/O priority so as not to hit system performance whilst paging out the Prefetch data.

So Windows 7 will use the entire RAM available to it. All the shock/horror stories are just the uninformed Microsoft-bashers.

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So Windows 7 will use the entire RAM available to it. All the shock/horror stories are just the uninformed Microsoft-bashers.

I think its more like they just don’t understand how exactly a computer works sometimes and often assuming something is bad without thinking it through because I see misinformation pertaining to many computer functions besides the RAM residency confusion.

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I have found that with a little tweaking using some of these tips, contrary to the “Horror Stories”, Win 7 can actually be faster than even XP because of it’s efficient use of all available RAM. More RAM means you can have more apps open simultaneously and still have your apps zip along. I have 4 GB RAM in all 3 PCs, 2 laptops and one desktop, and they all zip along at a satisfactory rate. Thanks MS for finally getting it right!

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Computerworld has a couple of interesting articles about these horror stories that you might fiind interesting. One is by Preston Gralla and the other is by Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/15622/windows_7_memory_woes_its_simply_not_true?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2010-02-19

http://blogs.computerworld.com/15620/is_windows_7_really_a_memory_hog?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2010-02-19

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The more RAM usage the better and the less pagefile usage. W7 is obviously superior to XP in it’s usage and management of memory.
…But W7 is much bigger and demands more memory, just like Vista did/does. Getting by on 1 or 2 GB just won’t cut it anymore.

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Thanks all for your interesting and varied replies

I use XP for graphic, audio and video editing and currently my system is reasonably trouble free, so I may wait a while until driver coders catch up before switching to 7.

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Thanks all for your interesting and varied replies

I use XP for graphic, audio and video editing and currently my system is reasonably trouble free, so I may wait a while until driver coders catch up before switching to 7.

If you have a PC that is much more than 2 years old there is a very good chance that you’ll never see Windows 7 drivers for its components. There may be basic drivers available in Windows 7. You need to check the various OEM component vendor sites.

Joe

--Joe

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And I know someone running Win 7 on following, yes he had to use a hacked dll to change the memory requirement stuff as an experiment. How? he disabled about 110 of the 133+ services
Processor: Intel Celeron M 1200 MHz
RAM: ONLY 223

We have discovered that the more ram you have 7 will use it or allocate it for use, the less.. the less it uses. That’s been true even with Vista and we done all the tests to prove it.

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And I know someone running Win 7 on following, yes he had to use a hacked dll to change the memory requirement stuff as an experiment. How? he disabled about 110 of the 133+ services
Processor: Intel Celeron M 1200 MHz
RAM: ONLY 223

We have discovered that the more ram you have 7 will use it or allocate it for use, the less.. the less it uses. That’s been true even with Vista and we done all the tests to prove it.

I’d hardly call that a functioning computer for any real world applications. ..more of a pointless point prover?

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I’d hardly call that a functioning computer for any real world applications. ..more of a pointless point prover?

That’s his only PC so more power to him. He don’t have the money/resources you or I have, he mainly run’s linux because of his resources but tried these tests. He liked 7, first Win OS that he did like, performed not that bad he said.

And on another Note, if MS didn’t start 133+ services in the background to call home and do all the useless junk perhaps our machines might run better, you think?
And I tried his reg file on my running system and I had a machine that ran like a scalded ape but wasn’t real nice looking. I prefer the graphics of Win so thats why i run it.

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Vista and W7 are memory hogs when it comes to looking at the memory they use but what they use is much more efficient than XP ever thought of being. Does anyone remember a product called Windows 98? XP was much more of a memory hog percentage wise than Vista and W7 will ever be. It’s just how you look at it.

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There is a reason why these things run.

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First of all, upgrading any OS, do a clean install and start from scratch! If one does not do
or have done this, there’s no point in even wasting time listing your ‘worries’…..

Whatever you read here, Windows 7 in fact makes much better use of available memory.

Next, your hardware – it needs to be ready for the Win 7 change. If yours/any is junk, don’t
blame Microsoft. On any properly configured system, Win 7 will run just as well, if not better
with the same set up. If not, one should upgrade the hardware – yeah, that sucks……

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