Memory usage comparison Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) and Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

To demonstrate how Windows is being optimized over time (i.e. from Windows 7 x86/x64 to Windows 8.1 x64) I have made a very fundamental performance benchmarking of the Windows memory consumption. The benchmarking has been done in a virtualized environment. Before measuring the below numbers the clean installation of Windows has been left idle for 5 minutes, then had a reboot. This was been repeated three times after which the below numbers were gathered:

The conclusion is that Windows 8.1 in its x64 edition is basically consuming as much memory as the 32-bit version of Windows 7 and running smoother with fewer processes running. Windows 7 64-bit is consuming some 100 megabytes+ compared to Windows 7 32-bit.