According to Wikipedia, the 64 bit version of Windows 8 will require 2 GB of RAM.
What should I make out of this number? Why is it so ridiculously high and what will the OS's memory footprint most likely be in practice?
asked Sep 22, 2011 at 6:53
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2that's the same as Win 7 windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/…– BrianASep 22, 2011 at 7:00
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Any idea on how do they compute these requirements?– Aleksei AverchenkoSep 22, 2011 at 7:07
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9Win7 (or 8) doesn't really need a whole 2GiB, it's just that if they put 512MiB (or whatever it actually uses) on the box people would blame Windows when it ran like crap on a 512MiB machine (even thou it'd really be the user's fault for overusing the RAM). By sticking 2GiB as a spec, they ensure users can run Windows and some programs without issue if they have a min-spec machine - and for those below that level, well, they can't blame Windows so easily because they've been told they haven't got a strong enough machine.– DMA57361Sep 22, 2011 at 7:26
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3 Answers
It's 64 Bit – you only start seeing the advantage of it with more than 3.5 GB RAM anyway.. Windows 7 64 has the same requirements, and that's probably what it's based off.
The requirements also don't target the RAM the OS will be using all the time, it includes caching for performance, and quite a bit of headroom – you don't want to be swapping too much, after all.
To some extent, system specs are arbitrary – 32 Bit Windows exists primarily for legacy systems at this point, and most modern systems will have sufficient RAM (my 2007 era Core 2 desktops did!) – the 32 Bit version 'runs' on 128 MB, and it 'requires' 1 GB of RAM.
"Minimum requirements" means "This is the worst we tested it on, and really, we don't want to support people who want to run it on their toaster" and "recommended requirements" is the systems that the developers feel should run everything with maximum shininess. Other than enthuisasts, and people trying to win bets, they probably don't try the system on slower and slower systems 'to see if it will work'.
answered Sep 22, 2011 at 7:19
During the preview, running on a netbook -- so 32-bit -- the minimum footprint was 281 MB, compared to 404 MB for Windows 7. 64-bit would be more, but nowhere near double; either way, less than 1 GB.
For comparison, on my no-longer-factory-fresh Vista-64 system, after everything is loaded, about 1 GB is used. Windows 7 is lower than Vista, so again, W8 should be definitely less than 1 GB.
Note that even if they started a "typical workload" and it turned out to be 1.25 or 1.5 GB total, you'd still put "2 GB" on the box. Very few people buy systems with oddball amounts of RAM. (For a while, vendors were selling 4 GB boxes with 32-bit Windows, leaving about a half-gig unused.) Many consumers don't think about whether that's "too much" and they'll end up happier with the performance.
2 GB of RAM is probably required for all the advanced touch screen interfaces they are creating with Metro. 2 GB is actually not that bad as most netbooks these days even come out with 2-4 GB of RAM.
The average RAM is about 4GB on a decent machine with many new machines coming out with 6-8 GB as well. I just bought a new laptop, not a particularly expensive one, and it has 6 GB of ram.
Windows 7 also had similar requirements, so it's not really a big leap. This is Windows after all. :)
If you don't like huge footprints, may I suggest Linux? (Perhaps Ubuntu)
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2I am sitting on Metacity + GNOME right now with the total footprint of about 175 MB, so 2 GB seems astronomical :D Sep 22, 2011 at 7:06
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If metro is the sort of interface Microsoft intend for phones, I'd expect it to intrinsically have lower requirements than traditional/aero desktop interfaces. Sep 22, 2011 at 9:04