Microsoft Says Windows 11 is Now Up to 20% More Responsive on PCs with 8GB of Memory

There’s still no end in sight for the AI-fueled memory and storage crisis, and the situation is forcing many tech companies to adapt. For Microsoft, that means optimizing Windows 11’s memory use on PCs with just 8GB of RAM, which most tech-savvy people saw as insufficient not long ago.

Today, Pavan Davuluri, Executive Vice President, Windows + Devices at Microsoft, detailed new memory improvements enabled by the latest Windows 11 updates. According to the exec, Windows 11 is now up to 20% more responsive on PCs with just 8GB of RAM. These results are based on telemetry measurements of response times for Search, Start, right-click, Settings, Snipping Tool, and File Explorer on Windows 11 PCs with 8GB of RAM running the September Preview updates.

In another lab test, the company observed that multitasking was up to 40% faster on Intel-based and Qualcomm-based PCs with 8GB of RAM after installing the latest Windows 11 updates. These performance improvements are the result of Windows 11 making better use of compression to keep up to 2GB more of active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage.

Microsoft also did some work to reduce the memory usage of Microsoft Edge and Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft observed that these apps reduced committed-memory growth by up to 900 MB. To save an extra 200MB of memory, Widgets on PCs with 8GB of memory now only load when users open them.

To make Windows 11 more responsive in general, Microsoft implemented other under-the-hood changes. The OS is now capable of “briefly prioritizing the work you ask for and backing off background tasks such as search indexing while you’re active.” A new Windows capability can also streamline the launch of apps with already-running instances, and this already benefits Microsoft’s Edge browser.

Microsoft isn’t done optimizing memory use on Windows 11, however. The company is already planning to improve memory compression even further, and it’s working with app developers, PC makers, and silicon partners to optimize Windows 11 and apps for 8GB PCs. Lastly, this won’t be immediately noticeable to end users, but experiences like Windows Search, Widgets, OneDrive, and Photos will share the same web engine to save memory. “Windows features and apps will share common parts instead of each carrying its own,” Davuluri explained.