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RAM requirements on Vista, 2GB is really the realistic minimum

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vixro

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2004
I know the question has been asked in the Vista reference thread, so I am creating a new thread where a discussion can take place.

Do you believe that 1GB is really the minimum requirement to Run vista (with Aero), or do you believe that 2GB is really the realistic minimum?

After messing around with Vista for a week I can personally say that 1GB is not going to be enough to do anything other than 1 or 2 programs at a time. Multitasking is going to be a serious nightmare and good luck playing some video games while listening to music in the background without 2GB of RAM and constant hard drive grinding (virtual memory anybody?).

Just sitting on the desktop with almost everything gutted out of Vista other than the sidebar 4 gadgets, mIRC, my antivirus and IE open I am still using 570MB of RAM. After I play guild wars and close it out, this increases up to the mid 600's because Catalyst Control Center is then loaded (right now it's off because CCC is a piece of crap and doesn't always stay loaded in Vista, woohoo for bugs!).

When I get into Guild Wars without any heapsize changes, my RAM usage while in guild wars is well over 1.1GB, if I have music playing in the background or any other programs up on my secondary monitor while I am playing this can increase to 1.2GB or even 1.3GB during level changes.

A friend of mine running Vista business has 1GB of RAM and is constantly having issues. He says he can't even listen to music while he's working in his photo editing program without getting massive memory errors and having his computer crash.

I strongly recommend that if you plan on buying Vista or upgrading to Vista that you have at LEAST 2GB of ram as the realistic minimum. 1GB will hardly get you by, 1.5 could be uncomfortable if you multitask and 2GB is just perfect (as of right now).

IF anyone has any input otherwise, dicuss ahead, this thread is your stomping gounds! :beer:
 
to run vista 1gb, thats just to use it as an OS for small office or business type apps.

If you wanna game on vista 2gb is a must but its also the sweet spot. I dont think more than 2gb is needed.
 
I would second that and I would also add to it. That you should probably think about dual core processors. I have noticed that with a 3200+ Venice @ 2.5 Ghz if, I use ANYDVD and CloneDVD I am hovering at ~75% CPU usage. When under XP it seemed to hardly scratch the surface. Hell, I could do that, surf the net and listen to music. Now, not so sure. Of course, I don't know if a dual core would help that or if Vista is just making better use of the processor.
 
I will third that one. I have rarely seen it go above 55% usage, but I dont game either. I would suggest 1gb for joe sixpack, but for even the slightly above average user, 2GB is a must.
 
Next time you troll or flame bait you're gone.

nikhsub1
Forums Moderator
 
Last edited by a moderator:
vixro said:
I know the question has been asked in the Vista reference thread, so I am creating a new thread where a discussion can take place.

Do you believe that 1GB is really the minimum requirement to Run vista (with Aero), or do you believe that 2GB is really the realistic minimum?

After messing around with Vista for a week I can personally say that 1GB is not going to be enough to do anything other than 1 or 2 programs at a time. Multitasking is going to be a serious nightmare and good luck playing some video games while listening to music in the background without 2GB of RAM and constant hard drive grinding (virtual memory anybody?).

Just sitting on the desktop with almost everything gutted out of Vista other than the sidebar 4 gadgets, mIRC, my antivirus and IE open I am still using 570MB of RAM. After I play guild wars and close it out, this increases up to the mid 600's because Catalyst Control Center is then loaded (right now it's off because CCC is a piece of crap and doesn't always stay loaded in Vista, woohoo for bugs!).

When I get into Guild Wars without any heapsize changes, my RAM usage while in guild wars is well over 1.1GB, if I have music playing in the background or any other programs up on my secondary monitor while I am playing this can increase to 1.2GB or even 1.3GB during level changes.

A friend of mine running Vista business has 1GB of RAM and is constantly having issues. He says he can't even listen to music while he's working in his photo editing program without getting massive memory errors and having his computer crash.

I strongly recommend that if you plan on buying Vista or upgrading to Vista that you have at LEAST 2GB of ram as the realistic minimum. 1GB will hardly get you by, 1.5 could be uncomfortable if you multitask and 2GB is just perfect (as of right now).

IF anyone has any input otherwise, dicuss ahead, this thread is your stomping gounds! :beer:

Vix,

I think you all answered my earlier question on this quite nicely with good facts. I don't have any doubts about it now. Thx.
 
Just a thought. Now that I have been running Vista Ultimate for a while I am putting 2 more gigs in to make 2 gigs of mem. 8-512 sticks to make it work without running into out of mem or low on mem error messages.

Dont like those poping up in the middle of something I am doing.:rolleyes:
 
Been wondering about this Ram issue thing. So what your saying is that Vista will run well on 2-gigs Ram .. Right ? Sweet.

I was thinking of getting Vista, but have only 1-gig Ram. A friend advised me to get another gig ram before I get Vista.. Thought I would wait and see what others had to say..
 
Vista is really meant for the multi core era. We are just in the beginning of that era now, but it won't be long until all computers have many cores running simultaneously. Vista eats too many resources to run well if you're sharing your single core between your main application and Vista. You really need to give it its own core, and run your apps on their own core. They're pretty much counting on Vista being able to gobble up a whole cpu core for itself and having other cores able to handle user apps, and that's not actually that unrealistic going forward.
 
Yes, I do have to agree that multicore is almost required for Vista. Watching my CPU usage while playing games makes you wonder sometimes. 2.7ghz and dual core Opteron was getting me 85% usage on both cores while playing games, when in XP I would get 50% or so on one core and 25% on the other. So either Vista uses the cores better and more efficiently (my games feel smooth when I play them and level changes are much quicker), or its using more resources. I don't have any personal experience running one core on Vista, so I couldn't relay any serious feedback on that.
 
disable superfetch if u have little RAM
programs will take a bit longer to load but ull use less RAM
but really u dont need to disable it.. windows will automatically give back the RAM when needed
 
Sniper.nkc said:
I installed Vista Ultimate with 512 MB ram on another computer at home. It took 2 hours to install...lol

wow it installed in under 20 mins for me, I remember back when I first installed xp pro it was like that ..... it sucked
 
Have a friend at work that just got an HP. Only has 1gig of ram but all features are enabled. It uses 550Megs of ram. Its has all features enabled and then some with all the other misc HP stuff thats running during booting. Overall I was suprised.

Vista must determin based on ram size to decide what to load or what ram space to take up.
 
Acer sells a desktop with only 512 MB of ram and it has vista home on it. My friend bought it and paid $400 for it. She should have asked me about it first, because for that price she could have gotten a much better computer. 512MB and Vista and integrated shared video. Did I mention she is into photography and some video editing? I'm not sure if she could have bought a worse machine for her needs.
 
Is anyone using a USB 2.0 memory stick to speed up the performance of Vista? I read the superfetch article linked on one of these Vista threads, can't seem to find it though... I forget what the access time/STR on a USB 2.0 flash memory drive is though.
 
Maviryk said:
Is anyone using a USB 2.0 memory stick to speed up the performance of Vista? I read the superfetch article linked on one of these Vista threads, can't seem to find it though... I forget what the access time/STR on a USB 2.0 flash memory drive is though.

From what I read, you only get extra performance if you are running near the min specs for Vista. If you have 2gb RAM, there is very minimal performance increases.
 
You know... I just came to that conclusion...

For some reason I was thinking..
"What if I take 4 Dual Channel Flash 1gb Drives and put them into Raid0 in XP, to utilize the .5 ms access time and use that as my Page File."

And then I realized after quite a bit of googling... "Noob, just buy more ram."
 
Maviryk said:
You know... I just came to that conclusion...

For some reason I was thinking..
"What if I take 4 Dual Channel Flash 1gb Drives and put them into Raid0 in XP, to utilize the .5 ms access time and use that as my Page File."

And then I realized after quite a bit of googling... "Noob, just buy more ram."

LOL But it would be fun to play with :)
 
Hehe, indeed!

I'd have 4 Pen drives sticking out the back of my I/O panel, would be interesting for lan parties..

Friend -Jim, why do you have four 1Gb sticks of pen drives sticking out the back of your mobo?
Me - Oh, that's just my 4gb .5ms access, 120Mb read, 60Mb write, RAID0 Page File drive.


Not sure if the slow write speed will offset the low access time though.
 
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