Improve your Vista experience with more RAM

Jared Atchison 25 Feb, 2007 at 9:16pm ET Article published in Tech

No surprise here, 4GB of RAM makes Vista run better!

The days of being able to tweak an operating system to run smoothly on 256MB of RAM are over. At least with the Windows operating system.

Many people are now suggesting that if you are going to run Vista that you have 4GB of RAM for optimal performance. The minimum requirements for Vista state the PC should have at least 512MB of RAM. However, everyone knows that when Microsoft says “minimum” they really mean minimum. The minimum RAM requirement for Windows XP is 128MB and anyone who has ever used a XP machine with 128MB of RAM can tell you how well that works.

Even big companies such as Dell are now recommending 1-2GB for machines with Vista on them.

If you plan to run Vista anytime soon remember to stock up on RAM.

Comments

25 Feb 2007 ~ 11:39pm primesuspect I'm running it with 2gb and it seems fine, performance wise.

I think 2gb should be considered the minimum, based on my general RAM usage right now.
25 Feb 2007 ~ 11:57pm Jengo actually the minimum for xp is 64mb
26 Feb 2007 ~ 6:14am Thrax It's 128mb when "May limit features or performance" is attached to the phrase "64mb minimum supported."
27 Feb 2007 ~ 11:30pm Komete I ran it on one gig and didn't have any problems. But 4 gigs geez. I was thinking maybe of going to 2 gigs but 4.. forget about it. I'm still using pc3500 no point in buying that much of it.
28 Feb 2007 ~ 1:28am Leonardo RAM is quite often the magic bullet. When I transitioned from 2 X 512MB on my XP system (No. 1 in signature) to 2 X 1GB - WOW, what a difference. What we've been hearing from Microsoft is that the Vista operating system is designed to shift more data back and forth to the RAM, that it's a more efficient operation than reading and writing from hard drives. Sounds logical, or is it just gobbleygook from just another PR loser?

But why would Microsoft design an OS that would require users to spend more on hardware for optimal performance? The 'average Joe' doesn't even have 1GB of RAM in his computer. That would immediately shrink the potential market of early adopters. The more RAM the better. But it just seems illogical to launch a new OS that costs billions (yes, with a 'B') to develop and expect hardware upgrades from ordinary people that just want to pop in a CD and go to town.
28 Feb 2007 ~ 9:19am primesuspect

Leonardo wrote:

But why would Microsoft design an OS that would require users to spend more on hardware for optimal performance? The 'average Joe' doesn't even have 1GB of RAM in his computer. That would immediately shrink the potential market of early adopters. The more RAM the better. But it just seems illogical to launch a new OS that costs billions (yes, with a 'B') to develop and expect hardware upgrades from ordinary people that just want to pop in a CD and go to town.

Remember when XP came out? I remember hearing pretty much the same complaint, but now here we are five years later, all of us with gigs of ram, and XP runs brilliantly.

When XP came out, 256mb was "high" average, 512mb was "wow" and a gig was almost unheard of. I remember people saying almost the very same thing then - "Why would Microsoft make an OS that required such exorbitant amounts of RAM? 512mb is insane!"
28 Feb 2007 ~ 10:47am Leonardo Yes, I remember that too. It just seems different this time. The consensus with XP at it's launch time was that for most computers, a doubling of RAM would give very good performance. Given that most people now run 512MB, except for computers sold/built in the last two years that have 1GB, the best configuration of 4GB is a quadrupling or greater over status quo. That's quite unlike the 98-XP migration. Also, I don't remember there being so many driver problems with XP's first release as with Vista. I do remember application incompatibilities, but that was mainly with old games, many of which could be played without problem in XP's '98 'Compatability Mode.'
28 Feb 2007 ~ 11:03am Missileman I have 2 GB of RAM installed on business and it runs just fine. My G15 keyboard display hardly ever crosses the 50% RAM usage line except when in WOW then it goes up to 54%. That to me means the "average" user should run just fine and dandy on a 1Gb since the performance/RAM killer is usually disk swapping.

Now I have a 4GB ready boost too, but it doesn't seem to make any difference "boosted" or not.

Anyone seen if there is a difference between versions? Maybe the multimedia stuff uses a bit more memory.
28 Feb 2007 ~ 5:10pm TheLostSwede I compared Vista on a rig with 1GB, one with 2GB and finally one with 4GB with all bells and whistles turned on (read Aero and the lot), and 4GB really helps, especially when you load it up with a memory intense game and 10-20 tabs worth of Internet Explorer, Skype and Mediaplayer playing music in the background. 4GB IS a good investment if you decide to run Vista 64-bits, especially now when ram is getting cheaper by the day.
2 Mar 2007 ~ 6:12pm mmonnin The memory market needs Vista right now too, DRAM and Flash.
2 Mar 2007 ~ 6:59pm panzerkw Looking at the offerings of 2GB X 2 kits on newegg, there doesn't seem much available. The timings are sucktacular as well. I would definitely get such a kit when I get Vista 64bit, but I guess I need to wait longer for better 4GB kits.

It's all DDR2 as well, which leaves my 939 in the dust.
3 Mar 2007 ~ 12:03am mmonnin 2x of 2x1gb sets. We hardly make DDR anymore.
2 Feb 2009 ~ 1:15am wazzup to primesuspect 2gb it alright but not really built for the newer games so its bullcrap
2 Feb 2009 ~ 1:16am Thrax This thread is two years old, wazzup.
2 Feb 2009 ~ 2:09pm primesuspect wazzup