How much RAM for Win XP Pro SP3?

[Michael73]

I've got VMWare Fusion v2.0.4 running a copy of WinXP Pro SP3. As you can see in my sig I'm running it on an 8 core early '08 MP with 12GB of RAM. Right now VMWare is set to use 2 cores and 2GB or RAM and it seems a little sluggish although I'm not running anything more than MS Office, Quickbooks Pro and some other apps specifically suited to my business (website optimization and paid search consulting). VMWare says I can devote up to 8GB of RAM. While I think 8GB is overkill and Windows couldn't even use that much, does anyone know what the optimal amount might be to maximize performance? To make it more snappy!

 

[themoonisdown09]

Windows XP can only make use of about 4GB of RAM (I think it's something like 3.5GB). You could devote 4GB to Windows XP, but I wouldn't do any more than that.

 

[aiterum]

Because XP is only a 32-bit operating system, it only can take advantage of up to 3.2GB of RAM i believe. You shouldn't need more than that anyways though.

 

[armoguy94]

Because XP is only a 32-bit operating system, it only can take advantage of up to 3.2GB of RAM i believe. You shouldn't need more than that anyways though.

It is around 3.2gb of ram. I think thats the correct answer. But I do disagree with your last comment. Sometimes my system will get a bit laggy cause of lack of memory, even with my 4gb of ram in my iMac. But perhaps that is because the iMac runs off of mobile components.

 

[adrian.oconnor]

I recommend that you turn off 3D graphics in the virtual machine settings. Try also using a single core virtual processor -- two cores could, paradoxically, be creating an overhead in the emulation layer that makes it slower.

I use XP SP3 running on VMWare for my day-to-day programming work, which is pretty intensive compared to most uses, and it works perfectly well. I've noticed a little bit of a slow down in the past two months, which I've also noticed on 'real' Windows XP (i.e., non-virtual), and which, I suspect, is Windows update related.

My default setting for a virtual machine is 1 core, no 3D, 2GB RAM.

P.S. My 4GB iMac has a Vista image that I can only allocate 1.6GB RAM to -- any more and OS X starts to slow down. Even at 1.6GB it works pretty well, albeit that Vista is generally more sluggish than XP for most workloads.