2gb Ram - Enough for win7 ?

[Eug]

2GB of RAM is absolutely no problem for Windows 7. There's certainly no need to disable Aero etc. One of my spare machines has 2GB of RAM and Windows 7 x64 installed, and it's very responsive (with Crucial M4) and a perfectly competent system for general office use. Idle RAM usage sits at ~700MB with Avast installed. Remember that Windows uses spare RAM for Superfetch. You might look at your idle RAM usage on a 4GB machine and see 1.5GB used, but that's not indicative of the RAM overhead of Windows 7 itself. It will scale it's prefetching depending on available memory.

On 2 GB, Windows 7 runs fine if you want to run a very limited number of applications at a time. But even if you run a couple of browser windows and several tabs plus a few more applications it really starts to bog down with 2 GB of RAM. That's why I said earlier that 4 GB is the low end PC sweet spot. This is even more true, if you have integrated graphics, which uses up a portion of that RAM.

After trying to run my low-end machines with two gig ram, I eventually upgraded them to 3 or 4 GB for increased performance.

 

[KingFatty]

I've been using Windows 7 on a computer with 2 GB of RAM for several years now. Most of the time it's fine. My usage is on a 60" TV for running Steam games (Pinball FX), web browsing, and media (videos, streaming, Youtube, etc.).

We have multiple accounts. You really notice when you leave your account logged in and try to switch between active accounts. The computer has to sit there and swap everything between memory and hard drive, so it takes a while. But we try to avoid that by logging out when finished, so the next person can log in fresh and not have to wait for the previous person's data to be swapped to disk.

But even within a single account, if you open a bunch of tabs with videos, and then run Steam, and then a game, and then start switching between those programs, you'll hit a point where you need to wait for things to swap to hard drive too.

So it's fine if you don't go overboard, but you'll definitely hit the limit if you open lots of stuff at the same time, or swap between active accounts without logging out.

I'd upgrade the RAM, but so far it's just tolerable enough, combined with the slight annoyance of having to disassemble the laptop to access the other memory slot that is buried inside the case. So I'm fine with putting up with the occasional slowdown while the hard drive is used to swap data in and out of the 2 GB of ram in Windows 7.

 

[Eug]

^^^ Yep, that describes my experience well. 2 GB is definitely usable, but it can be a big PITA at times even with just moderate usage. Even 3 GB is a massive improvement over 2 GB if you multitask... which isn't a surprise since it's a 50% increase in the amount of RAM.

In contrast, I haven't noticed much difference going from 4 GB --> 8 GB in my main Windows 7 desktop, but I also only use that one moderately.

 

[Blue_Max]

Go with the Win7 2GB, but keep your eyes open for people dumping 1-2GB sticks dirt cheap and upgrade it to 4 or 6GB when you can.

Is this a gaming machine? (Hence the Radeon 5850) If not, trade it for RAM and/or other cool bits like SSD. Your power bill will thank you too!

 

[pyjujiop]

torrents are also free of charge
Also lol at you guys saying not to use XP just because their support will expire in less then 30days! have been using xp which hasnt been updated for last 4years and it's fine! In fact I disable those stupid updates on all my PC's whatever OS it's running.

Sheeps gonna sheep

There's a hacker somewhere in Timbuktu or Kathmandu who's laughing at you right now while he reads every keystroke that you type in.

No one should continue to run XP beyond the EOL date unless it is totally off the network. Period. Really, no one should be running it now, supported or not. It's got several security flaws already that Microsoft couldn't fix, because the NT 5.x kernel is 15-year-old code being asked to handle stuff that it was never designed to do.

Let XP die already. It had a great run, but it's time to move on. If you need something that's not as demanding on hardware as Vista/7/8, there's plenty of Linux distros that can do the job. They're free of charge, too, and they're not filled with trojans and malware like a lot of illegal Windows torrents are.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Dont install 7 on a HDD. Use XP. XP runs much better than 7 on a HDD. 7 will have you tearing your hair out. You dont really gain anything anyway. DX10 is irrelevant to a budget machine. And official support for XP doesnt amount to a hill of beans.

NM.

 

[Hugh Jass]

torrents are also free of charge
Also lol at you guys saying not to use XP just because their support will expire in less then 30days! have been using xp which hasnt been updated for last 4years and it's fine! In fact I disable those stupid updates on all my PC's whatever OS it's running.

Sheeps gonna sheep

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, Windows 7 32 bit runs fine with 2 GB of memory as long as you're not trying to do high-end gaming or Photoshop with it.

I'm not sure if I'd say that it would run faster then XP on the same hardware (my old Atom netbook didn't seem any faster, anyway), but it sure would run better than Vista would have.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Yeah, Windows 7 32 bit runs fine with 2 GB of memory as long as you're not trying to do high-end gaming or Photoshop with it.

I'm not sure if I'd say that it would run faster then XP on the same hardware (my old Atom netbook didn't seem any faster, anyway), but it sure would run better than Vista would have.

You should try putting 8(.1) on it. I (for fun and games... :sneaky tried installing 8 on an original MSI Windbook (first one they made, Atom N270+1GB RAM and really slow HDD). The result was pretty spectacular. It ran better then the original XP ever did...

 

[KingFatty]

Also, my understanding that if you are running a 32-bit operating system, your computer will not use more than 3 GB, so getting 8 GB is a waste, and even going to 4 GB wastes that one GB.

 

[ronbo613]

I would agree that running XP past the expiration date will be a large risk. I'm converting my XP machines to dual boot XP Pro/Unbuntu so I can use Linux when I'm online and keep the XP to run hardware that won't work on Linux. I have one XP computer set up to scan slides, negatives and photos, there's no Linux software that will do that, or support my scanners, so XP is worth keeping.
You can probably squeak by with 2G RAM with Windows 7 if you run the 32 bit version, probably be visiting the pagefile quite frequently. With 64 bit, I don't know. As I'm typing this, I have Firefox with three tabs, one small Notepad file, Filezilla, three folders open and Eset NOD32 AV running and I'm over 2G.

 

[Eug]

Also, my understanding that if you are running a 32-bit operating system, your computer will not use more than 3 GB, so getting 8 GB is a waste, and even going to 4 GB wastes that one GB.

The firmware / design is also an issue. I have 64-bit Windows 7 on all of my machines (including Atom), but two don't support more than about 3.5 GB. But at least it's more than 3 GB, so the extra 1 GB isn't completely wasted.

Of that I allocate maybe 256 MB to video, so in the end it's more than 3 GB available to the OS, and it's a huge improvement over 2 GB in Window 7.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[ronbo613]

Have you disabled superfetch? Like I said, if prefetching is enabled (as it is by default), then just because your RAM usage is over 2GB it doesn't mean that all of that 2GB is being taken up by Windows' running overhead and active apps/programs. Some of it might just be predictively cached program data that is only there because Windows knows you have plenty of RAM headroom.

Yeah, I disabled prefetch and superfetch when I installed my SSD.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[accguy9009]

classic style gives maybe 5% improvement but an ugly desktop...so no thanks.
Kinda sux that windows 7 alone uses like 900mb of ram.

i have an older Lenovo Idea pad Y430 running Windows 8 Pro. It has 2 GB DDR2 and a Mobile Core2 Duo 2GHz. As i type this it is in dual screen mode via HDMI and I am watching a 720p video on big screen tv. I have a USB 2 external HD plugged in and a USB wifi dongle and USB mouse. I count 9 firefox tabs open. Using 80% of memory. i can and do use XBMC on this thing. It is a backup machine and I always planned to double the ram and max it out just never got around to it. Runs office 2010 fine. I wouldn't be gaming on this thing but yours should be ok on Win 7 for moderate use.

 

[mikeymikec]

Incidentally, why do people disable prefetching with SSDs? SSDs might be fast, but RAM is still much, much faster. I never understood the logic.

My Win7 SP1 system (with a boot SSD) has the SuperFetch service set to manual. I didn't do that.

My guess (as to why) is that SuperFetch had probably been designed to cache content relevant to it otherwise needing fetching from a high-latency-access device (relatively speaking - ie. a HDD), so SF probably targets data that is located in smaller files. Since an SSD doesn't have anywhere near as high latency access times, why bother with SuperFetch.

Interestingly, SF is set to auto on the Haswell SSD build (running Win81) I'm preparing at the moment. Perhaps MS redesigned it to also help out SSDs?

 

[accguy9009]

Dont install 7 on a HDD. Use XP. XP runs much better than 7 on a HDD. 7 will have you tearing your hair out. You dont really gain anything anyway. DX10 is irrelevant to a budget machine. And official support for XP doesnt amount to a hill of beans.

could not disagree with you more on just about everything in your post

 

[Cerb]

Wow, really? Not sure how you managed to get over 2GB of usage with the stated workload...

Incidentally, why do people disable prefetching with SSDs? SSDs might be fast, but RAM is still much, much faster. I never understood the logic.

TANSTAAFL.

If you need some RAM, and it's being used by a cached file's data, that set of blocks needs to removed from any lists of cached data, then all the pages involved put in a list to be zeroed, then all written to zero, then put in a free list, and then some can be given to your program. The faster the disk can be accessed, the more chance there is of the combination of that overhead, plus doing the IOs to load it all, to either not help, or possibly even hamper, performance. Once access is quick enough, there's no point in trying to make those guesses, anymore.

 

[Cerb]

Interestingly, SF is set to auto on the Haswell SSD build (running Win81) I'm preparing at the moment. Perhaps MS redesigned it to also help out SSDs?

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/The-...ibernation-Superfetch-onboard-VGA#time=05m50s

 

[Lisathedinosaur]

It will be fine. I am a tech assistant and one person I see runs Windows XP with 256MB of RAM. It is just very slow.

 

[mikeymikec]

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/The-...ibernation-Superfetch-onboard-VGA#time=05m50s

Thank you, that was informative.

 

[Blue_Max]

It will be fine. I am a tech assistant and one person I see runs Windows XP with 256MB of RAM. It is just very slow.

My last workplace was like that. Ancient single core machines with 512MB... it was just painful! I snuck in an extra 1GB I had lying around when no one was around - typically against most IT policies, but I just needed to get my work done! Smalltime company, not as punishable offense as a big place with draconian ITnazi policies, but these guys were cheap to the extreme!

 

[tidy]

.

 

[mikeymikec]

I wasn't aware that Windows did that automatically. I just checked on an SSD system, and sure enough, it was set to manual. I always assumed it was left on, because the times when I've installed Samsung's SSD Magician, It always has a whinge about some kind of prefetch. I guess Magician was either referring to non-superfetch prefetching of some sort, or it just doen't understand "Manual" and wanted the service to be "Disabled".

I haven't installed any SSD software like that. It's possible that the AMD AHCI driver did it, but I don't think I've seen a third party driver mess with a core Windows service before.