The Highlander Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 How Much Memory Does Vista Need? With 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. link found here http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/archive/20...vista-need.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REDWAGON Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 I guess I'll have to wait for some time to check all that out Neil, as I don't plan on running Vista for probably a year or so. I would assume that the hard work load you are referring to is still working with video, as I can't think of anything else that takes up a great deal of resources. Frank... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beerman Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 The test system MS loaned me has 1mb of memory and runs very well, though I'm only testing Media Center and haven't put it through any encoding or system intensive work. I suggest 2mb on every system now as it does help and ram is still relatively cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gi7omy Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 The test system MS loaned me has 1mb of memory and runs very well, though I'm only testing Media Center and haven't put it through any encoding or system intensive work.I suggest 2mb on every system now as it does help and ram is still relatively cheap. Want me to post over a new keyboard with a working 'G' key Paul? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beerman Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 Want me to post over a new keyboard with a working 'G' key Paul? Can't even blame it on my poor typing it's simply just carelessness. Thanks for catching it. I'd hope others knew what I meant anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ml Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 I was reading a February 2007 copy of Smart Computing the other day. According to them....... 512 MB or DDR or DDR2 system memory 1 GB DDR or DDR2 system memory for Premium Additional requirements for graphics cards, a connection to the internet, a DVD-ROM drive and a 40 GB hard drive with AT LEAST 15 GB free space. Additionally, the caution that security comes at a price. WinXP compatable programs will run only about 90% as quickly. They caution that this might be a problem for people who encode movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beerman Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 I was reading a February 2007 copy of Smart Computing the other day. According to them....... 512 MB or DDR or DDR2 system memory 1 GB DDR or DDR2 system memory for Premium Additional requirements for graphics cards, a connection to the internet, a DVD-ROM drive and a 40 GB hard drive with AT LEAST 15 GB free space. Additionally, the caution that security comes at a price. WinXP compatable programs will run only about 90% as quickly. They caution that this might be a problem for people who encode movies. I would like to think that sometime after Vista is out, software companies will address the need for updated software to run better on Vista. Unless no one buys it, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.