History of Ram requirement for Windows.

[WhitehawkEQ]

Here is a tidbit of history for Windows.

 

[Railgun]

Well, that was the most pointless video. All it covered was...here are the requirements, because that's what they were. Nada about the underlying reasons or drivers.

This is why I hate YT, and making videos for everything. Fluff, fluff, and more fluff, and maybe 30 seconds of relevancy.

 

[mackerel]

I'm kinda curious but it probably could be summarised in a simple table, and I'm not interested enough to look for it.

 

[EarthDog]

It's literally in the first second of the vid........ and then several different charts displaying the same data. Here ya go.

 

[mackerel]

But I'd have to click it to find out it was there!

I didn't notice Win11 has a 4GB requirement. It's not surprising, I'm usually over that idle at desktop. Win10 at 1GB I think might have been right for early versions, maybe 32-bit only? Think they increased it at some point.

Edit:

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit

Windows 10 system requirements - Microsoft Support

Windows 10 system requirements

support.microsoft.com

 

[Kenrou]

I would be more interested in knowing how well it's supposed to run with such a low amount, as in, required is well and good, but... Does it offer smooth performance at stock? What about productivity? Just how badly do the majority of programs and games run on 4gb? And the difference between that and the lite versions with most services disabled ofc

 

[EarthDog]

That RAM requirement is for Windows itself. Lke Windows won't install on anything less than X. Any other apps and programs are on top of that value. I couldn't imagine running W10 on 1GB or W11 on 4GB and doing much of anything, lol.

 

[Kenrou]

Well, yes, but like I said, how well does it run with 4gb? Fast or slow, buttery smooth or stuttery? Do all Windows apps run ok or does it need to use page file for everything and slow down? What impact do drivers like GPU/sound/etc cause after installation? W10 1gb vs W11 4gb?

On that note, wasn't W11 supposed to be more efficient? Why the 3gb difference?

You know, for science? Fairly sure someone will try it

 

[don256us]

I'm happy to see we are past the initial threadcrap. The author of the video could have separated out 32 bit vs 64 bit but they didn't.

I am surprised at how low the number is for the minimum. I get that this is OS only requirement but I'm still surprised.

@Kenrou I would not expect it to be buttery for sure. It's hard to say how well the OS is running with the minimum RAM because you'd have to run a program to do that. The program will have it's own requirements. Maybe that would make the question moot?

 

[EarthDog]

Well, yes, but like I said, how well does it run with 4gb? Fast or slow, buttery smooth or stuttery? Do all Windows apps run ok or does it need to use page file for everything and slow down? What impact do drivers like GPU/sound/etc cause after installation? W10 1gb vs W11 4gb?

I'd imagine required things like drivers and such are included in that minimum value and also part of the reason we see more use/that 1GB->3GB difference. While file size doesn't mean more RAM use, it's a testament to me that EVERYTHING is getting more complicated...consider NV drivers from 2015 (W10 release) were less than 300MB, and today's is well over 600MB.

My guess is it would run OK (I know you're looking for some kind of quantified number there, lol) with a majority of the native Windows apps. I see a problem using a modern broswer for sure. Clearly, running the minimum isn't ideal as, again, the value is there just for Windows to be installed.