A few months ago, I told you not to buy a Windows laptop with just 8GB of RAM. Now, Microsoft says its desktop OS runs much better on those machines, and the people who build it are making a personal case. “I feel like the system slows me down less,” says Marcus Ash, corporate vice president for design and research for Windows + Devices. Klaus Diaconu, who leads the Windows Fundamentals team, goes further: “I have two kids in college. One of them is using an 8GB device. It’s totally fine.”
Neither claims that 8GB is enough for everyone, but both argue it’s now enough for a lot of people. After testing it myself, I have to agree: Windows 11 on 8GB of RAM feels noticeably better than it did just a few months ago.
Don’t Trust the Task Manager’s RAM Graph
Diaconu tells me that the Task Manager often makes Windows 11’s memory problems look worse than they are. “We see a lot of perception around Windows memory efficiency being shaped by Task Manager,” he says. He points out that Windows tries to predict what it should store in RAM, arguing that it’s not necessarily a problem if you boot up a PC with 8GB of RAM and see that 7.5GB of memory is used. “It’s the system making efficient use of the resources available,” he says, and the OS can release memory when necessary.
I tested a PC with 8GB of RAM, and Diaconu is right. Windows often fills most of the available RAM at boot, but it quickly releases memory when you launch an app. If you launch a few applications or open a large number of browser tabs, you’ll see a visible slowdown. However, high memory usage in the Task Manager isn’t always a sign you need more RAM. You won’t know until you start launching more applications and seeing how the OS performs.
Windows loads data you may need into RAM to boost performance (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Diaconu says the Windows team is considering changes to the Task Manager to better indicate when Windows is under “true memory pressure.” I’m completely in favor of these changes, since Windows doesn’t currently make it clear when it’s slowing down due to a memory shortage.
Hundreds of Small Fixes, One Big Difference
Perception problems aside, the memory usage issues are real. I’ve tested multiple Windows 11 systems with 8GB of RAM over the last few years, and I’ve often had a poor experience.
So why is Microsoft focusing on this now? Almost certainly because of the RAM crisis and the launch of Apple’s MacBook Neo, which have pushed the industry toward laptops with less memory.
Microsoft tells me it’s made major changes to boost memory efficiency in Windows, and they’re already live on PCs as of the October 2026 update. Pavan Davuluri, who leads Windows at Microsoft, says the OS is up to 20% more responsive on PCs with 8GB of RAM and up to 40% faster at multitasking in internal testing.
Diaconu notes these tweaks extend throughout the entire OS. “We’ve done a ton of improvements,” he says, “finding smaller things like leaks or inefficient allocations.” He says Edge and Office now use less memory and are “8GB aware,” caching less data to save memory on such systems. He talks about how Microsoft is improving WinUI to make apps more efficient overall. He also mentions that Windows no longer preloads Widgets on 8GB PCs, saving 200MB of memory.
Finally, Microsoft says it’s optimizing Windows experiences to make them faster, too. The new search box is faster than the old Start menu search, for example.
Compression Gives You 2GB for Free
Diaconu also says Windows 11’s memory compression algorithm is now more effective, especially on 8GB systems.
“We are seeing users gaining about two gigabytes of memory,” he notes. “It’s not physical memory, but it feels like that.” This happens automatically, and decompressing data in memory is much faster than loading data from the disk.
The Task Manager’s Performance pane shows information about compressed memory (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Bloatware Gets a Memory Budget
Manufacturer-installed bloatware has historically been a big problem on Windows PCs, and it has an especially significant impact on 8GB systems.
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Diaconu tells me Microsoft is working with PC manufacturers to set “budgets” on the amount of memory preloaded applications can use. He also says the Windows team wants to avoid preloading applications unless it’s absolutely necessary. Additionally, he claims Microsoft is working to limit the amount of system memory PC manufacturers “carve out” for firmware and other tasks, so Windows can use more of it.
These initiatives remind me of Microsoft’s approach with Microsoft Signature PCs in the 2010s, but now applied to all PCs.
Windows 11 Feels Better on 8GB, But It’s Still Not Perfect
“People might be coming from a perception of 8GB devices a few years ago,” says Ash. “They weren’t at the same level of performance that we’ve worked hard to achieve.”
Windows 11 quickly bogged down during multitasking when I tested it on an 8GB machine several months ago. It could run an application or two with reasonable performance, but anything more ambitious dragged it down. PCMag hardware expert Matthew Buzzi had a better experience when comparing the 8GB and 16GB versions of the Dell XPS 13 in August, but he still noticed slowdowns with heavy multitasking.
To test the latest memory improvements, I booted up Windows 11 with 8GB of RAM once again. Multitasking was decently responsive with a few Chrome tabs, a Microsoft Word window, and a Spotify instance. If I were an average PC buyer looking for a reasonable desktop experience and could save hundreds of dollars by opting for 8GB of RAM, I might be happy with the performance.
That said, a machine with 8GB of RAM isn’t the right fit for me because I tend to push my PC’s performance with multitasking and professional apps. I can at least see the argument for using one now, given Microsoft’s improvements. And I certainly appreciate the company’s work on efficiency improvements that ultimately benefit all Windows users.
About Our Expert
Chris Hoffman
Senior Writer, Software
Experience
I’ve been writing about technology for more than 15 years and using it in earnest for over twice as long. As a member of PCMag’s software team, I focus on Windows coverage, but also write about other key desktop operating systems and system apps. (I used Windows 3.1 upon its release and have followed every subsequent release closely).
Prior to joining PCMag, I wrote for How-To Geek starting in 2011, and my articles amassed over a billion page views. I went on to run the publication as editor-in-chief for four and a half years. I have also contributed to Computerworld, Fast Company, PCWorld, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, and many other outlets about everything from AI to PC hardware to Windows. I founded and ran my own direct-to-reader Windows-focused newsletters, Windows Intelligence and The Windows ReadMe, working in partnership with Thurrott.com.
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