Microsoft says Windows 11 on 8GB systems is now up to 20% more responsive on the latest 26H2 version, and its internal testing found multitasking can be up to 40% faster on the latest Windows 11 builds. The company ties those gains to changes in how Windows handles memory pressure and prioritizes foreground work.
Windows 11 on low-memory PCs
The new figures come after Microsoft introduced the latest Surface hardware, including the Surface Laptop Ultra, which starts with 24GB of unified memory and can be configured with up to 128GB. The company still says it is working on the lower end of the Windows market, and it has already announced optimizations aimed at 8GB PCs.
Microsoft said earlier this month that Windows could keep up to 2GB more active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, while also cutting background memory use. It now says Windows itself, along with apps such as Edge and Microsoft 365 apps, uses memory more efficiently. In its multitasking test, the system used up to 900MB less committed memory than before.
Microsoft 365 apps and Edge in the mix
Some of the memory savings came from Microsoft 365 apps, with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook accounting for as much as 360MB of the difference. Widgets are now closed by default on PCs with 8GB of RAM or less, rather than staying resident in memory, which saves about 200MB. Edge now puts inactive tabs to sleep after 15 minutes instead of two hours.
Teams can enable Efficiency Mode by default on 8GB PCs, and Windows can briefly back off background tasks such as search indexing when the user opens something that needs immediate attention, including Start, Search, Settings, or File Explorer. Microsoft says those interactions can now respond up to 20% faster.
Microsoft’s own results and update requirements
Microsoft says these are internal results and that actual performance will vary depending on a device’s configuration and use. It also says that a PC loaded with unnecessary scripts or processes may see little benefit from the optimization. To get the performance boosts, the system needs Windows 11 version 26H2, build 26300.9818, or later, and all apps also need to be updated to match the changes.
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