How Much Memory Does Vista Need?
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 23.1.2007
Tip: Click here to update all your PC's outdated driversWith Windows Vista coming soon to a retail channel near you, one of the important questions to ask is, "How much memory does it really need?" There are the official minimum requirements of 512 MB, but we all know that minimum requirements don't translate to a great experience.
What are the real memory levels that get good performance? After having used it for several years during the development process, I figure I'm in a pretty good place to help answer that question. Vista definitely requires more memory than XP did to achieve similar levels of performance. That is to be expected with all of the new functionality invovled. To run Vista at its best, I recommend you have at least 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. In my experience, the following is a mapping from XP RAM to Vista RAM requirements for eqivlaent performance.
|
XP RAM
|
Vista RAM
|
|
128 MB
| 512 MB
|
|
256 MB
| 1 GB
|
|
512 MB
|
1.5 GB
|
|
1 GB
|
2 GB
|
In my experience, XP ran very well with 512 MB and only slightly better with 1 GB (unless you were putting it through a very serious work load). To get this kind of performance out of Vista, you really want 1.5 GB. 1 GB will work but it will be sluggish at times. Anything less than 1 GB will feel very slow.
If you have experience with Vista through the business release or a beta, what sort of memory performance levels do you see? Do you concur with my recommendations?
Note: This is not official guidance. This is based merely upon my personal observations. Your mileage may vary.
source: blogs.msdn
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Comments(16)
my computer freezes when i turn on my computer when im using windows vista. when it finally gets to the
desktop i liek have to w8 over 30 minutes in order for the computer to stop freezing.but my system has the
requirements to have windows vista
i'm using 1gb of ram on vista ultimate edition, and it works great! also got a 256mb ram graphic card. so,
my recommendation is at least 1gb ram and a graphic card with 256mb on it ;)
vista could not work
better then it does for me :)
same as drawz i can't really complain about how vistaultimate runs with 1gb *for a normal/standard* usage
so i'm thinking bout getting 1 (maybe 2) extra gb :p
vista loves memory! i have 4 gigs of ddr2. vista eats it up like chocolate cake! i can watch, rip, and burn
a dvd all at the same time with no lag. of course, i am using a 4 gig flash memory drive to balance it with
speedboost too. it works
am using vista ultimate 64bit
on boot am using 1gig of ram,
got 2gigs installed and vista runs
like a dream its brill no probs found yet..... maybe one fault running java on vista64 bit
ive got vista running on a laptop with 2gb of ram and it runs perfectly. (it seems a lot of people are saying
that vista uses a ton of ram...but they don't seem to look at how much of that is in cache...i usually have
less than 50mb free ram...which is how it should be for a modern operating system that uses a memory cache for
files like linux does)
i instaled vista on duron 1300 with 512 mb ram and it works fine ...
even after that i removed 256 mb
ram and still it worked very well...
looks like u cann't compare vista with xp that way u just did it..
to me looks like this time "minimum configuration" is little over minimum ...
i used to run vista ultimate x64 with 1 gb ram and it was perfect. now i upgraded to 2 gb and there is only
marginal increase in performance, so i guess 1 gb is enough for normal usage.
will geforce 7200 work with vista
i jst use my normal pc.. 512mb .. 3.4ghz.. radeon x850 gfx card and i had a lil lag on first inital startup..
then i used the speedboost and installd about 6 gigs of ram lol :p and yea we got no problems now .. i can
play hl2 and watch movies at the same time :p =)
im running vista now with 1gb, and just order another gb, so i will have 2gb at the end of the
week...expecting improvement ... now it works but multi tasking with 1gb isnt too great ;]
vista works ok with only 512mb of ram as long as you don't have dozens of apps running.
vista works ok with 512mb of ram on mine but cant get aero to work with my graphics card (nvidia geforce
mx4000 128mb ram) - thought this would work?
btw cpu is amd 1.24 ghz
running vista with p4ht 3.0ghz shows up as dual processor, processor is always doing something, even when
idle, got 1gig 400mhz running in dual channel always using 60+% percent of ram tried freeing up resources got
it down to 47% but always creeps its way back up. got the black taskbar but cant runn areo glass or anything
else special because ati 9200 dont support pixel shader 2.0 and ati left the driver support up to windows for
this card, ati will not support there own card for vista, so they are forcing upgrades, probably to boost
sales or some crap like that. other than that its ok multi tasks well if u dont push it.
i have 1 gb ddr2 533 mhz in dual channel, pentium d 2.66, and an onboard card (intel 945). i thought that i
will have problem running areo, but it works fine. it reserves 224 mb graphics memory for areo i guess. and
every thing works fine. the boot loader starts slow. vista also loads slower than xp. ones it starts, i get no
problems. winamp wont work properly. some plugins for winamp also dont work. i uninstalled winamp. cucusoft
dvd vcd creator dosent work. dfx for wmp dont work. lots of softwares that dont work on vista. and vista keeps
sending information about me to ms and others. i also hate the drm thing on vista. but i love areo, its great
!
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need help
By need help on 24.01.2007 - 00:01