Minimum memory requirements

[xoggoth]

Trying to define minimum requirements for a program. Software always specifies some minimum physical memory requirement but not sure how this figure is arrived at.

I have monitored the free physical memory in a VB program while progressively opening up full colour images for every single item in a database. It drops to a certain point and then remains steady, presumably because its starts using virtual memory. So, apart from that necessary to load the exe file in the first place I can't see there is any minimum.

Anyone have any ideas of what criteria is used? Ta for any comments.

[DimPrawn]

Microsoft

Tend to go for really low minimum requirements. i.e. the absolute minimum that is required for the software to even load.

They then have the recommended requirements, which is the level that is required to obtain reasonable results from the software.

Personally, I would go with whatever is the standard PC spec of the day, assuming your software does not actually need anything special.

So recommend:

256 MB RAM
Pentium class processor at 800Mhz
1024x768 video (true colour)
X MB of free disk space etc
Sound blaster compatible sound card

[AtW]

Re: Microsoft

no wonder all memory requirements have always been unrealiable - programmers simply dont know and make a guess! how about take a few typical scenarios with different size of data that you feed into your program (assuming your software actually grabs more dynamic memory as it needs it), profile it then have nice web page with stats, ideally showing which one of the data scenarios is most typical. needless to say methodology should be simple and reproducible by client.

[xoggoth]

Re: Microsoft

Ta for comments. In fact what I said above only appears to be true of 2000/XP. Now doing detailed testing on 98 and you do eventually start to get part drawn images followed shortly after by an out of memory error. However, there seems to be no simple memory threshold one can check. At least have stopped all the memory leaks, close some forms and it all recovers so have just put in simple check on number of open forms.