Memory usage windows XP <> Vista

In task manager you can see the memory usage.

What is the lowest level for XP and Vista when you start up the computer ?

 

This really doesn't matter nowadays... free RAM is wasted RAM. Vista preloads what it predicts you will need you increased speed, and frees up RAM it uses to do so when you need it. It's a much better resource manager than XP.

 

Is this a trick question?

How long does the "lowest" memory usage information have to stay up and be consistent over how many days to be considered as such?

cheers ...

 

XP: around 35MB
Vista: around 40MB
Both has everything removed through nlite and vlite. LOL

 

Vista seems to check how much RAM you have and use about half of it at idle. If you run apps that use a lot of RAM, it'll free up some RAM as needed.

 

On my XP compu it is around 350 MB and on the vista around 750 MB , both have 3 Gig Ram
Vista needs more RAM ...

 

Just what, exactly, is the point of maximizing the amount of RAM your system doesn't use? Lower numbers may indicate a better player in golf, but by themselves they are utterly useless when it comes to evaluating OSes.

 

I'd rather see my system resources go towards the applications, not the operating system itself.

 

Fair enough; but your criteria - memory usage as shown by the task manager immediately after boot - is utterly flawed. You might as well count the number of processes immediately after boot, or just flip a coin. Furthermore, given the way that all NT-based Win-OSes whack up memory between kernel space and user space, you'll never attain that goal with any degree of proximity, unless, perhaps, you're running on 512MB or less (in which case you're not really running anyways ).

 

I like to cut the start-up processes down to the bare minimum just so things I never use will be loaded on reboot.

Even installed applications feel that they must load on boot after installing - quicktime & adobe acrobat are prime examples.

I have my anti-virus set to do a full scan on boot so if I need to reboot, I do that before I walk away from the computer.

In terms of the "best" operating system, I would have to say it was Windows 2k Pro. It was stable and fast due to no bloat. The only reason I jumped to XP (2 years ago) was because a lot of newer programs wouldn't even install on 2k Pro.

 

Whatever

If you were really that serious about it, you would have moved to linux a long time ago.

 

Let me know how running CAD / CAM programs on virtual machines and emulators work out for you because for myself, the results have been very poor

 

Instead of complaining the OS are "slow", complain about your computer is slow.
If you want speed, get DOS. I'll guarentee that it'll use less ram and be at least 100x faster than Windows 2000 Pro.

 

What is DOS ?

 

and vista precaching your applications into ram for fast boot is not "system resources go towards the applications"?

 

and it was 100% unsecure in a nowadays world and would easily be compromised.. and it wasn't userfriendly and didn't made you work faster if you had to actually do something in the os and all..

i hate "oh good old times" statements. old times never where better, you just forgot all the bad things.

 

Eee PC series to get Windows 7 but not Vista, says CEO

One really has to wonder why Vista is being completely skipped over if it is as good as you guys say it is

 

Because everyone knows that Vista is not good on netbooks, netbooks just dont have the hardware for Vista. Windows 7 built upon Vista and what you have is MS learning its lessons with Vista and using them to improve the OS in Win 7.

I doubt anyone here has ever claimed that Vista is great on everything; most people say that is great on modern hardware with at least 2g of ram.

 

Vista is designed a little bit towards more powerful machines while Windows 7 can scale better from low end hardware to high end hardware. Nevertheless, both OS are fast. Both are faster than Windows XP on my acer aspire one netbookwith 1GB of ram and 160gb hdd, even with AERO turned on. Encoding time for DV to h.264 is shorted reduced so Windows 7 is clearly faster than XP in some areas.

Probably the primary reason why manufacturers skipped Vista is because a lot of netbooks use cheap low capacity, very slow flas storage solutions. Vista was designed and optimized to be used on computers with hdd. As a side effect, this hdd optimization such as constant NTFS journaling and constantly creating shadow copies of files on the hdd with free hdd resources. These tiny read and writes really bogs down and kills those weak SSD in those cheap netbooks. They'll get really bad shutters every minute or so. Even windows xp will shutter and you'll get a feeling how slow those ssd are. Also, Vista typically requires 20GB + storage in a year or so. When you clean install Vista, it'll take around 5-10GB and over time, those restore points and backup volume shadow copies build up and consume space. The storage capacities on those cheap ssd on netbooks are at a premium thus clearly not suitable for Windows Vista. That doesn't mean Vista sucks, it simply means it's not designed for such low end netbook with cheap low capacity slow SSD.

 

Aero actually speeds up your computer... it offloads window composing from the CPU to the GPU... so your Atom isn't being choked by extra chores.

So many people critiscise it for being 'flashy' and turn it off, while they shouldn't be doing so.
Mac OS has had GPU window composing for quite some time now. Why would you want to waste your CPU's time for interface composition? Your GPU (be it an Intel chip or a dual-SLI 285) can handle it well enough. This can actually save you power. On a laptop, you might want to disable transparency to save power.
The difference on my laptop when downclocked is night and day with Aero on and off.

 

Hmmm, because those are stripped down hardware kits that wouldn't even satisfy the old "Vista Capable" standards from 2006, perhaps?

 

That is kind of odd how a "stripped down hardware kit" is able to handle the old version of Windows XP (2001) and the newest version of Windows 7 (2009) but it is not up to the standards that are 3 years old - Vista.

Could you explain the reasoning in a non-techical form so the average buyer in a chain store (best buy for example) would be able to understand it?

 

I dunno, I'm beginning to lean to the "troll" explanation myself right about now.

 

RAM usage is no longer a good metric for responsiveness when dealing with operating systems newer than Windows XP.

Vista and Windows 7 will prefetch portions of commonly used programs into RAM, causing usage to increase. For the end user, this means an initial period of high disk usage when the computer first starts up, followed by reduced disk usage after the prefetch is completed. Prefetched programs start up rapidly. The earmarked memory can instantly be relinquished for other programs that ask for it, so there is no penalty for having a large portion of RAM used. That's what it is there for, after all, its just that XP never took advantage of it as much as it could have.

 

There is no point defending Vista if we are straying from the thread's topic.

I would just try this. Get yourself a stopwatch. Run XP for a few days with the applications you use. Run Vista for a few days with the applications you use. And then choose that way.

OS productivity is SO MUCH more than Memory resources, Harddrive resources, etc etc. For example, having the Favorite folder link in my File Open/Save dialog has saved me more time than any kind of speed gain I can get in XP. The few seconds it takes to navigate to my network folders on XP negates any kind of speed gains I get by moving to XP.

Another example. Vista SP1 and Server 2008 both support SMB 2.0, which essentially allows for faster file transfers. When I am moving 60GB worth of files from one machine to another, I get 60-80 MB/s rather than 20-40 with XP. These advantages have nothing to do with memory management, harddrive management or CPU cycles, yet amount to very real time savings.