Idle memory usage in Vista is LESS than in XP? Shocking :)

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minc3d

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So I've been going back and forth with a friend of mine over various aspects of XP and Vista, and in particular, we can't agree about memory usage in Vista v XP. So I decided to do what any informed individual would.... test it!

Now I'm going to admit, my test of the two OS'es wasn't apples to apples by any means. My XP machine is a custom built AMD64 rig (desktop) and my Vista machine is an IBM THinkpad T60. The desktop has 2GB of DDR400 while the laptop uses 1GB of DDR2.

Both machines are running the latest patches and SPs as of today, March 19, 2007. This means XP has SP2 plus all other patches to date, and Vista has its 7-10 patches loaded as well since release.

However, for purposes of this post, I think my comparison was pretty accurate. This was an IDLE load test, nothing running on either machine but my AV program (NOD32) and Ad Muncher.

Have a gander.



Any ideas as to why this is? Everyone is complaining that Vista uses soooo much more memory, but as my (un)scientific test proved, this is entirely false.

Any other people test this theory? Post your findings!
 
my proccess show 53 and 1gb memory usage in the graph...so i duno how mines so high or how yours is low
 
Pretty slick, and something I've been thinking about doing myself, but I have to admit, I'd suspect something is like seriously freakin' wrong with that XP box myself if the RAM usage is that high.

If all you've got running on that XP machine is NOD32 and something else, with almost 400MB of RAM usage, that box is fuckin' broken in so many ways it's not even funny, there's just no getting around it. :)

Besides, the ONLY way to do this accurate in any way would be to install Vista on the desktop just as XP is installed and redo the "results" - comparing a laptop running Vista with less RAM to a desktop running XP will only invite speculation and crap...
 
I'll take a guess. You're XP usage is actually quite high for XP. However, the Vista system has half the memory, which means Vista won't prefetch as much as it would if it had 2 GB. Those two factors might account why they are almost identical in actual MB. My bet is, if you upgraded your Vista machine to 2 GB of memory, you'd see an increase in usage.
 
Taking into account those factors of half the memory, placing in some error of about 5-10%, doesn't this still seem shocking? And no, my desktop isn't broken :) I run most games fine and dont have any performance issues with it.

Nonetheless, I think these findings are interesting. After accounting for differences among the machines, I think the usage would be around equal.
 
Reboot both machines and then let each machine sit for 5 solid minutes, I mean 5 solid minutes, don't touch either one of them for 5 solid minutes - I did say 5 solid minutes, right? :)

Then bring up Task Manager on each (Control+Shift+Escape is pretty quick), snap the same screenshots and then repaste 'em here - don't run anything before you fire up Task Manager and press PrintScreen or Alt+PrintScreen to capture just the Task Manager window (easier that way) and then you can do whatever you want. But until Task Manager is fired up and that image is saved to the Clipboard, don't manually run any applications.

Then we'll see what's going on...
 
would 1gb memory usage be normal for vista...im running 2gb.........just curious
 
What skinning app are you using on your XP box? Windowblinds?
Does that have anything to do with it.. at all?
 
You have 2 diff machines looking like something is using alot of ram on the XP machine, i'd like to see what apps are running on each cause i'm betting alot of those vista process don't use much to any ram. Why not do a dual partition on the laptop with XP and then look and see how much ram is used. I bet you will see alot less then.

My XP machine has 23 processes running at startup with only 203mb used! Thats with AVG free, Thoojse Vista sidebar, rocket dock, system booster, and the rest are services running.
 
An update on my situation... I can tell you I dont use any skinning apps on XP. Actually that theme was a hidden theme from the Media Center 2005 edition that was released a few months ago on MS website for free.

I will give this a go once more to see if anything has changed.
 
Looks like Royale Black (the theme), used that myself in the past. A Google search should turn it up for you, along with Royale which is the official theme. Royale Black is a mod of that theme someone did.
 
your XP memory must be alcoholic because its HIGH.:D

I could trim my XP down to 70mb idle with no applications running. you should turn off the service you don't need and do some disk/registry cleaning.
 
Yeah, you need to run both tests right after a fresh install and fresh boot with absolutlely no other applications having been installed or run. It looks like XP is winding down from a gaming session.
 
ryan_975 said:
Yeah, you need to run both tests right after a fresh install and fresh boot with absolutlely no other applications having been installed or run. It looks like XP is winding down from a gaming session.
Click to expand...

... on the same hardware, even, to keep the test meaningful in the long run. Right? :)
 
ryan_975 said:
Yeah that too. at least have the same amount of memory. See there's the perfect excuse to thrown another gig of ram into the laptop.:)
Click to expand...

QFT, which I knew would come out sooner or later. A C2D laptop with just a gig? It's almost blasphemy I tell ya... :p
 
RogueTrip said:
Do you run vista sidebar with alot of non MS gadgets? I've read that they can be major resource hogs!
Click to expand...

yea..i had a feeling that was it...i remember when i used yahoo widgets it was a hog....im running 4 gadgets from ms website...
 
Im running sidebar for Vista but only with Weather Watcher and analog clock enabled.
 
The pagefile usage is almost double though. Although, Vista manages physical RAM differently.

Vista uses as much physical RAM as it can. I've seen the free RAM as low as 5MB before, whereas there is 200MB free running the same stuff on XP. Now, most anti-Microsoft folks are quick to jump on this bandwagon and say "Vista Sucks!" because it cannot handle RAM.

If you think about WHY Vista does this though, it is really a great idea which I am surprised nobody has used sooner.
Think... What is unused (free) RAM? Well, it is wasted RAM for one. It also is a waste of voltage. While that free RAM is degrading with time- it has never gotten used.

That being said- Vista uses as much physical RAM as possible before utilizing the paging file. This equates for much better performance.

Vista is actually able to run on about the same system XP can run on. For all the eye candy included, it is amazingly easy on resources. A friend of mine has ran it with 512MB of RAM just fine with no problems at all. He has even ran it with OLD processors in the 800Mhz range.
I wasn't quite aware that Vista used LESS than XP, however. That is an interesting find, for sure. Vista manages resources in a totally different way- MS will not say how or why, but I am sure there is something at work we just don't know about yet :)
 
Can you provide info on the processes running?

I couldn''t get XP SP2 to report that much memory at idle if I tried. My last fresh SP2 install, before I did any tweaking, took about 150MB at idle.
 
Mine is running 457MB right now on idle.

All I have running is Trillian (11MB) and Outlook (13MB) actively.
 
ok, quit worrying about idle usage. XP and Vista both cache programs and data for a while after they've been needed. And they only release them after a certain amount of time or if the RAM becomes needed for something else So if you play an hour of BF2142 and look at your memory usage when you exit out of the game it's going ot be a lot higher than a just booted machine that has run no applications at all yet.

e.g. I just got through playing WoW, have been out of it for about 4-5 minutes and my Vista Home Premium is reporting 886MB used, but after a fresh reboot I've only got 400ish used.
 
This is why I use programs like Cacheman XP.

You can set it to automatically clean out the programs that hoard memory (Firefox is a huge culprit) every X amount of minutes.
 
I also noticed that Vista resorts to the pagefile less, which is less HDD cranking going on for all of us. A good thing, I hope.

I used to use RAMbooster back in the Windows 2000 days. Ahh that was quite an app.
 
minc3d said:
I also noticed that Vista resorts to the pagefile less, which is less HDD cranking going on for all of us. A good thing, I hope.
Click to expand...

Assuming you have enough physical memory, that will be used more and the pagefile less. That's why you see so many threads in which people are complaining about Vista's memory usage. I don't know about others, but if I paid for 2 GB of RAM, I'd like to use that, as intended. I didn't put 2 GB of RAM in my computer so I could use as little of it as possible.
 
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