What is your lowest Memory consumption in Windows 10 start-up?

I have a strong curiosity to ask this question since I have noticed that ever since upgrading Windows 8.1 to a fresh Windows 10 installation (from reformatted hard drive) my lowest RAM consumption at Windows 10 startup with selective startup is 1.1 GB (14%). That is higher than Windows 8.1 711MB RAM (9%) usage with 8GB RAM.

That is a good chunk 400MB RAM more usage than Windows 8.1. This is more or a less the exact same figure with the Home version and now Pro version that I have tested this past month.

Obviously I have 8GB RAM so perhaps having less/more RAM might show a different Memory consumption. But I'd like to know from you guys what you see in your Task Manager as your lowest RAM consumption at Windows 10 startup shortly after SysMain loads up.

I'd like to know how much the Memory consumption differs from one system over another or whether they are similar through-out all systems.

Hi there
Let the computer use the resources it has --it's likely to do far better than typical tinkering or guessing.

It's a bit like having a Gas cooker hob and then only allowing the gas to cook meals at the lowest setting !!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Comparing memory usage of different operating systems at bootup is not very useful. Generally you will be misled by the differences rather than enlightened.

In any remotely modern operating system memory usage is highly dynamic. Memory usage of individual processes and the entire system will depend on how much memory you have, what processes are running, what they are doing now, what they were doing earlier in the session, and more. This is all under the control of the system memory manager and the goal is always to maximize overall system performance. Minimizing memory usage is not a priority and is done only when necessary. Generally the more memory a process is given, the better it will perform. When memory is plentiful, as is the case in post #1, the memory manager will allow processes to use pretty much what they want with few if any restrictions. And why not? Memory was meant to be used, not sit idle.

But what happens when you load a large application and most of the memory is in use? That is when things get interesting. First of all the memory manager tries very hard to head of this situation before it becomes a problem. It does this by trimming back the memory used by processes and other users of memory as needed. Processes that have an excess, as determined by need, are trimmed more. Processes know nothing of this. The memory usage of a process can vary by a factor of 10 or more doing the exact same thing. Of course with plenty of available memory the trimming is minimal if at all. But if memory demand is high this trimming can be drastic. The memory manager tries to avoid this if possible because it hurts performance.

The above is highly simplified. There are all kinds of optimizations not mentioned.

Best policy is usually to let the memory work as designed without interference. Most attempts to improve things with tweaks etc. are misguided and will actually hurt performance.

@LMiller7: I've heard all that before and quite frankly I knew someone will respond to my thread with that kind of post.

Well last night I have noticed the RAM usage drop to 1.0GB still remained at 14%. I left my computer on for over half an hour or so while I had dinner.

I returned back and noticed RAM still remained at 1.0GB 14% this is the lowest RAM usage I have seen under Win 10.

However, I'm aware that Windows will try to allocate RAM resources when needed. But sometimes there can be occasions where by the time a game starts demanding more memory Windows may struggle to release all the required RAM within a time-frame, during that moment the game might crash.

I used to have problems with "out of memory" crash with Deus Ex Human Revolution in my old PC several years ago when I had only 3GB RAM. After upgrading to 4GB RAM which I basically bought a second hand memory exact model from ebay used 1GB to add to my system. Upgraded to 4GB RAM and then reinstalled Windows 7 64-bit from the 32-bit that I had originally and the crash stopped occurring.

Even 1GB RAM is precious. Windows 10 consumes half a GIG more RAM than Windows 8.1. I don't remember how it was with Win 7.
But my Windows 10 boot time is also slower compared to 8.1. It takes 19.5 seconds to boot into Windows with the BIOS screen logo included vs 9 seconds with 8.1. This is also quite a bit slower. I know I don't have Solid State Drive and perhaps buying an SSD will help in this case. But fact remains that even without SSD Win 8.1 boots on my system in 9 seconds every time in the 4 years that I've used it.

I believe the memory consumption has to do with the slower boot time. The benchmarks speak for themselves. Despite all of that Windows 10 does manage to pull off higher frame rates compared to 8.1 and 7 in several benchmarks and has DX12 that might be due to better memory management. Now I do see there is a performance boost in FIFA 18 PC Demo. FIFA 18 DX11 in Win 8.1 would freeze/pause for a few seconds after 1 hour of play. In Win 10 DX12 FIFA 18 Demo ran maxed out 4K for 7 hours I played no freezes! I was amazed at that. So there are benefits and disadvantages to Win 10. In other words Windows 10 is a sacrifice for slower boot times but having benefits of DX12 and higher fps in certain games.

Perhaps 8GB RAM is the bare minimum that is needed for Win 10. I don't think less than 8GB RAM is suitable for Windows 10 given how memory resourcing it is.

I can remember back in the early 80s having a PC with 32 KB of RAM, from what I recall 8 KB of that was taken by the OS. That booted fast, quicker than it took for my finger to come off the ON switch.

Things have gone downhill since then through DOS, and numerous versions of Windows, and graphics APIs like DirectX, OpenGL, Vulkan.

Do I care whether Windows 10 takes 400 MB more than Windows 8.1 at idle, nah.