Vista RAM usage - How low can you go?

[tsupersonic]

I decided to tweak Vista to see how low I can get the RAM usage. After turning every service that I didn't need, I ended up with Vista using 314 MB of RAM with 24 processes. It's also very functional, everything I need works. :D

I know some XP setups can start at this much.

So, how low can you go?

[Izlude]

:o OMG CHARGLEBERRY SUACE! Please share your secret!!!!

I'm using about 507 right now.

Answer me this... (yes/no)

1- can you game?

2- can you network? (share files)

3- can you surf?

4- can you print?

5- can you watch movies/play music?

6- does everything feel faster?

What drawback is there to such tweaks, whatever it is you did? (obviously no sidebar and aero, but who cares)

[Justin-]

I have about 1300MB's free after a clean reboot, out of 2GB's. So I use around 700-800MB's. But this includes some other things, like Last.fm, stuff for my TV Tuner recording, along with a few other things. I mainly just surf, and usually have between 1000-1250MB's when I do that (Firefox <3's my ram).

On another note, I've seen my explorer.exe process go up to over 700MB's after playing a game before. :o That put me with about 200-300MB's free after the game. ;)

Also, doesn't Vista use more ram if you have more ram to use? You also have to look at how much of your pagefile is in use.

[tsupersonic]

1) Game - I tried Audiosurf, and it works just fine. Not really a gamer, so don't have other games. Sorry

2) Network - yes, I'm on a college network, so I can see other computers. Tested file sharing with roomate (He's on XP pro), and it works fine.

3) Surf - Yes, Firefox, Opera, and IE all work fine.

4) Print - Yes, just need to enable the Print Spooler service, and it works.

5) Movies/music - Yes, everything seems normal with VLC player.

6) Definitely. I also had Aero enabled before, but now that I have classic mode, UI is more responsive (I have integrated graphics :()

My specs:

AMD Turion ML-32 Single Core 1.8GHz

1.5 GB of RAM

Integrated ATI X200M (set to 128MB video RAM in BIOS)

60GB 5400 RPM drive

Vista Business (no SP1)

I basically used this website to disable services. Blackviper also has a good guide for Vista.

Drawbacks - really none for me. If I want Aero, I'd have to enable the Themes service. The sidebar works fine in classic mode, but without the glass.

Also, doesn't Vista use more ram if you have more ram to use? You also have to look at how much of your pagefile is in use.

Yes, I also disabled the Superfetch service (I probably shouldn't have done this, since Superfetch does improve application start up times and such). If you have more RAM. Vista uses it so that it can "improve performance." It goes on the principle of free RAM is wasted RAM.