Which is better at memory management: Windows 10 or Windows 8.1?

Question

I ordered an Acer Aspire Switch 11 Touchscreen Windows 8.1 PC with a Core i3, but it only comes with 4GB of RAM.

I want the 4GB to work as well as possible, so my question is should I upgrade to Windows 10, or does Windows 8.1 have better memory management?

Thank you.

Solution

The only information about changes to memory management in Windows 10 that I've seen so far is this

In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10. The compression store lives in the System process’s working set. Since the system process holds the store in memory, its working set grows larger exactly when memory is being made available for other processes. This is visible in Task Manager and the reason the System process appears to be consuming more memory than previous releases.

Source: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/08/18/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-10525/

Comments

[user]

The memory manager is unlikely to have any significant impact on this. The minimum memory requirements in real life usage are more likely to be a deciding factor.

[Benji A.]

Thank you! Also should have asked if Windows 10 has more bloatware or background tasks running vs Windows 8. I know Cortana always runs and you can't kill it in task manager.

[Peter Hahndorf]

Keep in mind this is new in build 10525, so not in the current retail version. But it should help using memory more efficiently and will give Windows 10 an advantage over Windows 8.1 especially if you only have 4GB or RAM.

[David Marshall]

@PeterHahndorf This also seems to be true for the current build as you can see the effect on the System process's working set in Task Manager. I suspect they put this in the blog post to stop people reporting it as a memory leak.

[magicandre1981]

@PeterHahndorf no, this also happens in Build 10240: superuser.com/a/952142/174557

[Benji A.]

Thank you! Also should have asked if Windows 10 has more bloatware or background tasks running vs Windows 8. I know Cortana always runs and you can't kill it in task manager.