I think the kind of applications also matter.
It's perhaps necessary to look back in time, to get a more complete picture.
Programs from the early Windows 95 days were rather small. Say, 30 KiB to 300 KiB roughly.
Partly also because 16-Bit or early 32-Bit development tools were in use at the time.
Some even created Win32s compatible binaries, still.
The year of change was roughly around 1997, when Windows 98 was on the horizon.
Compact, Windows 3.1 era applications became less and less.
So if the PC does run "period-correct" applications only (how I dislike that term),
then a 386/486 with low memory will do.
For example, I believe that the original Windows 95 runs Windows 3.1 and early Windows 95 programs "okay" with 16MiB.
That's what I remember from the 90s, after all.
That being said, I vaguely remember reading about an interview in which MS devs explained that Windows 95 doesn't stop excessive swapping with less than 32MB RAM.
Considering that OS/2 had similar "high" requirements at the time (8-16MB minimum recommended in that shootout video), it seems believable to me.
Also, I do remember how the HDD lights constantly flashed on my fathers 386 under Windows 95.
Not just that usual, soft blinking pattern every second or so.
No, Windows 95 was constantly doing something on the HDD even when idle.
Edit: Considering that memory is available these days, I would considering maxing out the RAM.
Up to 64 MiB is no problem for MS-DOS 6.x+Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.
Both Himem.sys and EMM386 can use that.
The cacheable area in most 486 era motherboards covers 16 or 64 MiB maximum, also.
In some situations its necessary to expand the cache memory, also.
64KiB.. 16MiB, 128KiB.. 32MiB, 256KiB.. 64MiB
In Write-Back mode, the values must be twice the size.
Source: http://dosdays.co.uk/topics/cache.php
Another esoteric "thing" is the direction in which memory is allocated, maybe.
Bottom-up vs Top-down. Himem.sys might be involved, also.
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 do work differently here.
And that's why some older mainboards with cache issues have low performance under Windows 95.
What order does Windows 3.11 use memory?
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