Today my friend came by for a planned work session on his new laptop. The machine in question was an HP dv6000 series with 1GB of Ram, a 60GB 4200rpm HD, 1.6Ghz Turion 64 X2 and a 128MB shared ram nVidia GeForce Go 6100 series video card.
It has the shiny little Vista Ready logo on it so I thought why not give it a go. I installed Vista Home Premium on it and it was off and running. After updating video drivers it got a very meager 2.3 Windows Vista Performance Index score but was still capable of running Aero and it ran it quite well.
Over all the entire system runs very well, after installing the standard fair of software, I also installed Office 2007 in about 12 minutes, not bad at all.
I thought it was fair to relate the results of this install just to offset the tons of posts I have read saying you need 4GB of Ram to run Vista well.
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VISTA Home Premium runs absolutely fine for me on my 1GB DDR-400 RAM. There’s a lot of bull doing the rounds that you need 2GB at the very least. They couldn’t be more wrong tbh.
I’m also running Vista on a P4 2.6ghz with 1GB DDR-400… however, I find that while it runs ok, it’s still a bit sluggish. I’ve used Vista on another machine that had 2GB and I could definitely see a difference. After running Vista on mine for almost 2 years with 1GB, I know for a fact that my box needs a RAM upgrade – I found two matched sticks of 1GB RAM at Newegg.com for $57 shipped so I’m thinking I want to upgrade. My poor PC is over 5 years old now – I built it back in ’03 – but it still runs great. XP on this box is LIGHTENING fast.
So – my overall opinion is that yes, Vista is operable on 1GB … kinda smooth, runs my games (Sims 2, Need For Speed series – Underground, Most Wanted, Pro Street) with no problem, but for this OS to be “happy” it needs 2GB or more. It’s functional but it can be so much better.
@Bob: I totally agree Bob, more is always better, I run with 4GB on 64-bit Vista and 3GB on 32-bit Vista and with RAM as cheap as it is, I would go higher on the 64-bit just for the “Tim Allen” factor (grunts) but my point was that people saying it will not run on 1GB are wrong, in which it seems you agree, thanks for the comment!
I was wondering this… thanks for the help!
How well does Sims 2 and most expansions work on Vista with 1GB?
Hmmm. I guess it depends on how patient you are or what you are doing with it. I had 2GB on my XP machine and it was constantly out of RAM. For me, 3GB is the ideal amount on XP.
My mother’s computer with better CPU specs than mine has 1GB with Vista Home Premium and it is a complete snail. Vista pretty much idles at 1GB of RAM once you get even a few applications installed on it.
I have a desktop with 1 GB of ram and Vista basic and it runs good. Yes, it is slow only a few times here and there. I am pissed because I bought my computer last Aug for $400 and now I am seeing better computers with 3GB of ram for the same price!!!!!!!!!
My laptop is Windows Vista Home Basic, and it runs quite good with just 512MB, although it can be sluggish on start up when its going its fine.
But i am getting a memory upgrade as more is always better,
and yes vista on 1GB is more than enough
im running vista ultimate on a intel centron 2.7 gh 1 gb ram and 120 gb hard drive and i think its best to have atleast 2-3 gb ram
Windows Vista is like watching a ballet…
Where everyone is wearing an osmium-lined tutu…
On one GB of RAM, try adding Holocaust in there somewhere, and I guarantee Windows will stall when you start typing. Any Windows is better than Vista. ANY. WINDOWS. AT ALL.