Due to the sharp rise in memory prices, PCs are taking a step back this year. Microsoft and many PC manufacturers will launch laptops with 8GB of RAM, claiming they have optimized 8GB to run smoothly enough.
The question is whether people believe Microsoft can optimize Windows 11 to deliver a good experience with just 8GB of RAM? Most probably don't, but this still requires actual testing to verify.Japanese media tested an 8GB Dell XPS 13 laptop, comparing Windows 11 with Fedora, a well-known Linux distribution.
The tests included boot-up, restart, Office productivity, OCR, web browsing, file extraction, VS Code, GIMP graphics editing, DaVinci Resolve video editing, Blender rendering, Cyberpunk 2077 gaming, and more.
In these tests, Windows 11 matched Linux performance in several categories.However, it lost to the Linux system in areas such as restart time, file extraction, image processing, and video editing, with significant gaps in some categories.
With identical hardware platforms, the difference lies in the operating system itself. Under 8GB of RAM, Fedora uses only 32.9% of memory at idle, leaving two-thirds available for workloads.Meanwhile, Windows 11 already consumes 85% of memory at idle, leaving very little for workloads.
Ultimately, it comes back to the issue KKJ has reported on multiple times: whether an 8GB PC can run smoothly depends largely on Microsoft itself. Too many resource-heavy components exist in Windows 11. Unless Microsoft takes drastic action, an 8GB Windows 11 system is unlikely to outperform Apple's MacBook Neo.