anyone know how much RAM Windows 7 might use?

i can see Vista is a drain on my computers system RAM, i've heard it takes almost up to 1.2GB from your RAM to run vista period, taking away from what you can use to run games

so i'm asking what was the amount of RAM XP needed to run in the background and are there projections of what 7 will need? will it be lower than Vista or will it increase? thanks

No one can answer that question. The more ram you have the more it will use to speed up your PC. Stop worrying about ram if you have it.

It somewhat depends on what version of windows 7 you will be going with, if your going with the 32bit version more then 2-3gb of memory won't even be recognized much less used. If you go with the 64bit version of Windows 7 you can basically go with 8gb/16gb system setups (depending on what the max is that your motherboard supports). As far as how much windows 7 will ACTUALLY use that is really hard to determine at this point. The more ram the better in most cases, but it someone depends on what you plan on doing. Obviously if your a software designer/graphic artist/etc. a lot of memory will drastically increase the performance of the OS.

On the beta version of windows 7 that i'm running, the system has 4gb of memory and Windows 7 runs like a dream for the most part.

Well windows 7 can work efficiently on less ram than vista, but i found both 7 n vista 64-bit using around the same amount, i have 4gb, windows 7 used 1gb sometimes lil more, vista 1.2gb but in all reality, i dont actually see a performance hit at all, in fact its using my ram to make my experience faster so the amount used as others have said is pretty much irrelevant. Its also true that once you enter a game vista/7's processes go into a low priority mode, and aero UI goes to the basic scheme and puts more of the PC's resources into the game itself running it.

Oh forgot to mention 32-bit verson will use alot less ram. I read around and this guy had windows 7 on 512mb ram using 400mb lol, but say if you got 2gb ram on ur system windows 7 would use around 600-700mb idle.

running it on a laptop with 512mb it's using around 400mb right now