Solved Does an OS need more RAM over the years?

Good video! However, if the tendency is going downwardly, how come that in terms of minimum system requirements, W11 requires double the RAM of W10 (4GB vs 2GB)

I don't know why, maybe to stop OEM releasing potatoes that only just match minimum specs but still advertise selves as running 11... some of the PC sold to run 10 are a joke. I help out on another forum and you see Dual core AMD systems released 4 years ago that are supposed to run win 10 now on 5400rpm hdd. I hate to think how slow that runs.

PC are getting more powerful, might as well expect more out of them.

Haydon said:

Good video! However, if the tendency is going downwardly, how come that in terms of minimum system requirements, W11 requires double the RAM of W10 (4GB vs 2GB)

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Hi there
Don't get taken in by loads of technical journalists who have things to sell. I've run Windows 11 in a VM with 2GB RAM -- I wouldn't recommend it as small amounts of RAM will cause "thrashing" if there's too much workload. Thrashing is when the paging disk is acessed very rapidly giving extremely high utilisation of HDD and incredibly poor user response time since data has to be written, read and re-written very rapidly to disk because of lack of main memory.

RAM is cheap by historical standards -- any Laptop should have as a matte of course these days 16 GB RAM while any desktop / tower computer / self build computer should go forv 32 or 64 GB RAM.

An efficient OS is only part of the story.

Cheers
jimbo

Haydon said:

Good video! However, if the tendency is going downwardly, how come that in terms of minimum system requirements, W11 requires double the RAM of W10 (4GB vs 2GB)

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Pure guess: The increased security hardening features built in to Windows 11, plus an increasing dependency on most OSs to continuously scan content and index everything on your computer to speed up processes such as file searching. Plus IMO 2GB is simply not realistic if you actually want to carry out anything but basic day-to-day tasks, unless the OS is running in a virtual machine where 2GB is normally ample and can easily run multiple applications, as there are minimal background hardware/peripheral functions and services to manage/support and they can be almost entirely focussed on software management. Of course, Windows 11 will also be a 64-bit only installation, so the developers have no need to consider working hard to keep well within the 32-bit OS memory limit for a working system.

Customer: I don't understand why my computer doesn't seem to run as well as it did when i bought it. Can you tell me what the problem might be?

Salesperson: Well, that's easy to explain: You've been using it, haven't you?

4gb is not even reasonable unless its tied to an nvme or something. Less ram you have the more page file is used, and until we all have optane, or similar, ram is always faster than storage.
I have 32gb of ram, my page file never been used. its still only 5gb in size.

Short answer: Yes. As MS is adding features, they logically take more RAM, like Cortana, Widgets, YourPhone, etc.
Windows 11 actually bumped RAM usage by 300%. 10 was taking roughly 1,5GB and 11 is taking 4,5GB (cached).
Note that even suspended processes are taking RAM, though it is cached, it still counts, task managed just fakes it.

P.S. More RAM alone will not make OS run better. I have a laptop with 6GB and the browser starts for about a minute.

Can you even buy that small an amount of RAM nowadays?

What is your RAM usage after starting W11 and during normal operation, for example on 16GB RAM? Vindows 10 + - 4GB occupied, W11 6GB ...

DavidM555 said:

What is your RAM usage after starting W11 and during normal operation, for example on 16GB RAM? Vindows 10 + - 4GB occupied, W11 6GB ...

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My system is pretty RAM hungry. I use around 35-45% of 32GB. That's probably because I have about 30 Edge tabs, Outlook, Groove Music, Word, and a couple of other things running.

A typical W10 computer at your workplace may have 8GB RAM to run a couple of Office 365 apps and Edge (not for watching naughty stuff)

Since the minimum system requirements double, will a typical W11 workplace computer have 16GB RAM? That seems to be a bit much to me. I would guess that actual RAM usage of W11 in a typical/office workplace setting is essentially the same, and cost-conscious small and medium biz may still pay for 8GB RAM only (?)

I think that 8gb would be adequate for most small business systems. But it wouldn't hurt to have 16gb,. The key factors in determining the amount of RAM needed is the applications used and what the device is used for,

To me the min of 4gb is a bit low and having at least 8gb makes more sense., In the OP the question was/is do OS's need more RAM over time and versions and I doubt they will. Yes,, the specs call for 4gb but running 11 just to boot it up wont take up much more than doing the same with say, 10.

RAM requirement depends on what the user uses his computer for. It does not depend on the OS. There is a minimum requirement of course, but how much RAM you need depends on what you need it for.

badrobot said:

RAM requirement depends on what the user uses his computer for. It does not depend on the OS. There is a minimum requirement of course, but how much RAM you need depends on what you need it for.

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Well, I am the OP. The topic of this thread is not about RAM usage of apps, it is about RAM usage of the OS itself, and whether that RAM usage increases over the years (see title of this thread) For example, do Windows Updates over the years increase RAM usage of the OS?

Also, installs and (not exactly 100%) uninstalls leaves tiny bits of 'crud' to use the term that someone coined in posts further above. And to use the same example as in the previous paragraph, do Windows Updates leave 'crud' that can accumulate over the years? Is a clean install of Windows version x cleaner than updated Windows versions a > b > ... > x

You need to find that weird individual who installs windows and nothing else and uses only windows apps for a while so they can achieve believable enough usage before a version update so you can compare ram usage after a Version update vs same PC after a clean install.

I don't know how windows interacts with windows.old after the version update, if at all. this would possibly be only real ram difference between a clean install and a version update, on same PC, with the same user account, using only windows apps.

Windows 10 only gave you 6 months between version updates, 11 being on Annual updates we might find out if there is a ram difference between versions that can be measurable.

Colif said:

You need to find that weird individual who installs windows and nothing else and uses only windows apps for a while so they can achieve believable enough usage before a version update so you can compare ram usage after a Version update vs same PC after a clean install.

I don't know how windows interacts with windows.old after the version update, if at all. this would possibly be only real ram difference between a clean install and a version update, on same PC, with the same user account, using only windows apps.

Windows 10 only gave you 6 months between version updates, 11 being on Annual updates we might find out if there is a ram difference between versions that can be measurable.

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It is not just the version updates every 6 or 12 months, but also the Tuesday and the in-between Tuesday malware updates that accumulate bulk and 'crud', even if a weird user does not install/uninstall apps and create/delete files/folders. And if a non-weird user does install/uninstall apps and create/delete files/folders, then more bulk and 'crud' will accumulate.

The OS bulk and 'crud' thus provides a baseline, it does not mean zero user bulk and 'crud'.

Task Manager measures RAM usage of OS only (no apps) right after reboot, see post #9 in this thread. The RAM usage of OS only (no apps) does increase over the years, but the increase is only a small fraction of a GB, and may not contribute a lot to the slow down of older computers. The accumulated 'crud' may contribute more to the slow down of older computers, and eliminating the accumulated 'crud' with a clean install of the OS (and files/folders) would eliminate this contribution to the slow down of older computers.

(Of course, there are other factors too that contribute to the slow down of older computers, and some of these factors are definitely irreversible)

IMHO the question is one that no-one is likely to be able to provide a proven answer to, as the only 'fair' test would seem to require a lab setup in which a 'clean' Windows installation was maintained on the same hardware but never actually used for any other purpose than monitoring the OS use of resources. The install would have to be monitored throughout the whole supported life of the OS, receiving nothing more that automated updates and running nothing other than the built-in system maintenance tasks. The use of the built-in Browser and/or other built in software apps would likely significantly corrupt the validity of any 'test results'. So at the end of the day it's near impossible for users to come to any provable conclusion, as people use computers and their interaction with their computer significantly affects how the OS behaves and what level of resource it needs to manage user demands; i.e. the greatest impact on resource needs (RAM, CPU, GPU etc.) is 'you' and the software you want to use, not the OS.

Personal use (real-life) observations:

The nearest I have to an 'unadulterated' base system is a Windows 10 virtual machine that has existed in its present 'clean' form since the first official release (clean install over a former Insider Build) and has received nothing more than regular and feature updates when "switched on", but has never had any additional software installed; and being a virtual machine it has no 'real' hardware attached. 'Stress' is only really noticeable when Windows Update is active, but is no more apparent than on most hardware setups I've used and is mostly reflected in CPU demands rather than RAM. From personal observations only, this 'stress' is no greater than it was on day-one; in fact day one was probably worse because of the various automated setup tasks Windows self-performs post installation. All I can really add after the years it has been maintained it is that it now behaves exactly as it did when originally set up, with a minimal allocation of 2CPUs (=dual core processor) and 2GB RAM from the host machine. However, I also have working Windows 10 VMs with exactly the same resource set-up, but with a variety of software installations which still run comfortably with multiple applications active at the same time and they don't behave noticeably differently in normal use to the 'clean' setup, i.e. CPU & RAM usage only noticeably peaks during 'intense' Windows Update activity. Minimal 'crud' on these VMs as all user data is saved to drive space shared by the host machine, and Windows is 'cleaned' of accumulated Windows 'crud' at least once per month using Windows own Disk Cleaner.

Yes, as previously mentioned, RAM usage of the base OS can increase with time, IF the OS gets a major upgrade that contains new features.

One good example that I can remember clearly is Windows XP. It ran flawlessly at release on the laptop I had at the time. Once they added a few Service Packs to the mix, XP became completely unusable on that particular laptop.

SlicEnDicE said:

Yes, as previously mentioned, RAM usage of the base OS can increase with time, IF the OS gets a major upgrade that contains new features.

One good example that I can remember clearly is Windows XP. It ran flawlessly at release on the laptop I had at the time. Once they added a few Service Packs to the mix, XP became completely unusable on that particular laptop.

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Ouch, the baseline ran off the machine. But more subtle movements of the baseline is measurable with Task Manager right after reboot before user apps run. This baseline can therefore be measured even with user apps installed.

Haydon said:

Ouch, the baseline ran off the machine. But more subtle movements of the baseline is measurable with Task Manager right after reboot before user apps run. This baseline can therefore be measured even with user apps installed.

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You can't measure anything with the Task Manager. You can only see how much is used/given to services and it is usually more than they really need. If you have little RAM the OS use little RAm and if you have a lot of extra RAM the OS will give away extra/bigger chunks of it for smoother operation of these services.

Example: I ran Windows 10 Pro on a Raspberry Pi 3 with only 1GB of RAM. It consumed as liitle as 350MB. While on my Laptop with 32GB of RAM the usage was closer to 6-8GB with exactly the same setup. And nowhere in the Task Manager you can see how much any of the services/processes really were using, only how much were reserved/given to them.

Haydon said:

The topic of this thread is not about RAM usage of apps, it is about RAM usage of the OS itself, and whether that RAM usage increases over the years (see title of this thread) For example, do Windows Updates over the years increase RAM usage of the OS?

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I'm in a position to look at that, having a test machine with system images of every version of W10, identical software installed in each.

Yes, when the system has been left to settle down, and with no software open, my 21H1 uses more RAM than 1507 (10240), but only by about 400MB.