Windows XP Professional x86 SP2 Torture Test

While I was in the process of getting some baseline numbers to compare other distros to, I decided to see just what XP was really capable of running off of surviving. So, we start off with 1 CPU core instead of 2 as I usually give and the usual 4 GB of RAM. Of course, no issues here. RAM usage was at ~105 MB after start up. Then I started making things interesting by begnning to cut the RAM in half each time. We progressed to 2 GB. No issues. Think the RAM usage was the same. So I kicked it down again to 1 GB. And here, we see Windows begin to scale its RAM usage down from ~105 MB to ~75 MB. No loss in performance or responsiveness. This was the only time Windows scaled the RAM usage. After that, we went down to 512, 256, and 128 MB with no perceivable loss in performance or snappiness whatsoever. I had to lower the RAM ALL the way down to 32 MB, and only then did I finally see some serious slowdown. And then, at 16 MB, it FINALLY stopped working completely.

Absolute legend.

Give Windows Vista and above or even most modern Linux distros only 512 MB of RAM, and they'll absolutely flip ass, but Windows XP?



Maybe it's pretty unrealistic to expect modern operating systems to work off of 2004 standards, but Windows XP had everything you needed and still ran on a toaster. In fact, I think the only thing that's stopping it from running modern applications and from running on modern computers is drivers and some other pieces of software such as Vulkan/DirectX. And then there's the Windows Embedded line...

Well, anyway. Here's the final specs with VMware Workstation 15 Player:

Minimum-Recommended
CPU: 233-300 MHz
RAM: 64-128 MB (32 MB Unofficial Absolute Minimum)
HDD: 1.5-4 GB
Monitor: 640x480

RAM Usage (SP2) w/ 4 GB RAM: ~105 MB
RAM Usage (SP2) w/ 1 GB or less RAM: ~75 MB

Storage Usage (SP2): 3.16 GB

What's the Maximum Win XP 64-bit version can handle though? ,)
(32-bit being capped at 4GB I think)

Vendor-Lazarus said:

What's the Maximum Win XP 64-bit version can handle though? ,)
(32-bit being capped at 4GB I think)

Click to expand...

I didn't test it because, frankly, I have heard pretty bad things about Windows XP's 64-bit edition. lol

EDIT: After doing a little bit of reading, it looks like it the biggest problem with it by far was that it didn't support 32-bit drivers which, back in the 2000s, was probably a death sentence, but in this very 64-bit world, I guess it's not an issue now. But there is one other thing. The system requirements for Windows XP go way up when switching to its 64-bit counterpart, so honestly, I think it would be kind of a disappointing test.

Arnox said:

I didn't test it because, frankly, I have heard pretty bad things about Windows XP's 64-bit edition. lol

EDIT: After doing a little bit of reading, it looks like it the biggest problem with it by far was that it didn't support 32-bit drivers which, back in the 2000s, was probably a death sentence, but in this very 64-bit world, I guess it's not an issue now. But there is one other thing. The system requirements for Windows XP go way up when switching to its 64-bit counterpart, so honestly, I think it would be kind of a disappointing test.

Click to expand...

Ah, I see..though I was sort of wondering how forwards-compatible it was. Instead of testing backwards-compatibility..