[THIN] Windows 2008 RAM Usage testing

Guys,

I’ve been doing a bit of research for my own purposes but which might be helpful for others, and I’ve got some gaps. I made a throwaway comment  a week or so ago about how Office 2007 seemed to use less RAM under Windows 2008, and thought it would be helpful to quantify that.

 

I’ve therefore tested, not very scientifically, different versions (2003 and 2007) of Office, running under different TS OSes (2003/8, 32/64-bit). Please note that I only tested each app once, the platforms have different hardware on them, and different numbers of users plus other apps running on them, so these figures should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt.

 

This is also absolutely not an analysis of how an OS runs with 20, 50, or a hundred different sessions of the same App; I wasn’t looking at Total Ram, just taking the reported figure out of Task Manager.

 

Also please note that these were running pure TS, no Citrix involved.

 

I also have gaps; if others could test to fill in those gaps this might become quite useful.

 

The obvious conclusion (With all the  ‘take with a pinch of salt bits’ above) from this is that either Windows 2008 64-bit is vastly more efficient at handling Office 2007, *or* that it’s Task Manager reports differently (?More accurately?) – perhaps cleverer people than I might comment?

 

	32-bit	32-Bit	64-Bit	64-bit
	Windows 2003	Windows 2008	Windows 2003	Windows 2008
Office 2007
Word	57992			15084
Excel	38360			11928
Powerpoint	40416			25548
Outlook	117216			17096
Office 2003
Word	34420		117828
Excel	24244		16156
Powerpoint	12952		17168
Outlook	20788		117716
Testing for Word, Excel, Outlook
Opened App
New Document
Typed word 'Test'
Forced Spell Check
Saved document
Checked RAM
Testing for Outlook
Opened App
Opened New Email
Typed Word Test
Used Gal to address to myself
Sent Email
Checked RAM
All tests run as Domain Admin with Local Admin Rights
In Office 2003, Outlook was using Word 2003