If you think getting Windows 11 to work on just 200MB of memory is impressive, how about running the operating system off your graphics card's VRAM? Remember that the best graphics cards aren't just one-trick ponies. They sport VRAM, which you can turn into a RAM drive. NTDev, the developer behind Tiny11, a stripped-down version of Windows 11, got his creation to run off his modest GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU.
RAM drives, also known as RAM disks, used to be a thing back when speedy and high capacity storage devices didn't exist. Converting leftover memory into a virtual disk can improve I/O performance substantially. Logically, we didn’t store operating systems on RAM drives but rather use the virtual disks for specific software that requires intensive read and write operations. RAM drives have lost their appeal over the years and nowadays, we just use them for fun, such as running Crysis 3 off a GeForce RTX 3090’s 24GB of VRAM.
