No, they're not "better positioned" to utilize memory.

NT has a far better VMM than macOS does and handles OOM significantly better than macOS (and Linux, for that matter).

Look no further than the various Mac subreddits for applications such as TextEdit, Calculator, Safari, and other first and third party applications leaking like a sieve to the point of OOM for multiple versions of macOS at this point.

Not to mention, Macs are sharing that precious memory with the CPU; on those 8GiB machines, leaving 7.5GiB or less (depending on what you're doing) for the kernel to use for non-graphics services.