Welcome to Vista Banter. You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions, articles and access our other FREE features. By joining our free community you will have access to ask questions and reply to others posts, upload your own photos and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today! If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact support. |
|
Installation and Setup of Vista Installation problems and questions using Windows Vista. (microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup) |
|
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
All, I have Vista Ultimate x64 Extreme, with 8 GB of memory, Q9300, and 2 velociraptors. I do NOT overclock, but would like Vista to use more of the memory. Typical load usage of memory is 2GB - about 25% of my total memory Maximum use of memory was 3GB - I would rather have Vista use memory than to use swap file. How can I get this done? Regards, AraiBob -- araibob |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
araibob wrote:
All, I have Vista Ultimate x64 Extreme, with 8 GB of memory, Q9300, and 2 velociraptors. I do NOT overclock, but would like Vista to use more of the memory. Typical load usage of memory is 2GB - about 25% of my total memory Maximum use of memory was 3GB - I would rather have Vista use memory than to use swap file. How can I get this done? Run more memory intensive applications. The OS automatically uses all of the memory it needs. If you're not doing advanced 3D modeling, or high-end video editing, you've likely no need for that much RAM. -- Bruce Chambers Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers. ~ Denis Diderot |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
In message araibob
was claimed to have wrote: I would rather have Vista use memory than to use swap file. How can I get this done? Vista doesn't have a swap file, although it does have a page file (similar, although not the same concept) What makes you think Vista is paging at all? |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
Sorry, 'page file'. I use "swap file" and "page file" interchangeably. Old O S programmer Slang is still slang. I don't have specific 'knowledge that the swap file is in use, however, The Performance tab in Windows Task manager has these values that make me think so. Total Physical Memory (MB) Total 8190 Cached 6712 using the page file? Free 28 Page File 2300M / 16565M using the page file? Kernel Memory (MB) Total 382 Paged 294 using the page file? NonPaged 87 I have also seen threads on this topic (some time ago) and they noted that even when there is lots of memory MS insists on writing things to the page file. Regards, AraiBob -- araibob |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
In message araibob
was claimed to have wrote: Sorry, 'page file'. I use "swap file" and "page file" interchangeably. I only mention it because this is actually one case where a more traditional "swap" system and Windows "page file" system are very different, and understanding those differences are critical to understanding pagefile use. Old O S programmer Slang is still slang. I don't have specific 'knowledge that the swap file is in use, however, The Performance tab in Windows Task manager has these values that make me think so. Total Physical Memory (MB) Total 8190 Cached 6712 using the page file? Free 28 Cached is actually the opposite, this is memory that is otherwise available, but is being used to cache something on disk in memory. So despite being used, this is as good as free RAM in that it can be released at a moment's notice, but should the resources that it's caching become needed, it will result in a performance increase. Page File 2300M / 16565M using the page file? Page File is a bit of a misnomer here, this actually indicates that, aside from caching, the OS has 2300M of allocated memory to running processes. This allocated memory can be backed by physical memory, or by disk (either in the pagefile, or elsewhere in many cases.) For example, when a large program loads into memory, the EXE or data files are mapped to memory, but the data is not necessarily kept in memory at all times. Rather then writing data back out to the pagefile, Windows know that it can release the memory when needed, and re-read the original data from disk on demand. The pagefile counter gives you an idea of the total number of allocated pages in use, when combined with the data from the Memory tab, you can get an idea of how many pages would need to come from disk vs physical RAM. Kernel Memory (MB) Total 382 Paged 294 using the page file? NonPaged 87 "Paged" here is actually the kernel's version of a pagefile, it's not necessarily paged to disk right, but rather, it's the memory that is paged (whether those pages are in RAM, in the pagefile or elsewhere on disk), vs NonPaged which is address space directly used by the kernel (typically for lower level drivers, and lower level kernel components including the paging subsystem itself) I have also seen threads on this topic (some time ago) and they noted that even when there is lots of memory MS insists on writing things to the page file. Many things are actually paged automatically, but few are actually "written" to the page file as much as just space in the page file is reserved. For example, if an application requests a 1GB chunk of memory address space, but doesn't write anything to it and the OS can't immediate satisfy the request from available memory, this address space is "paged out" to the pagefile without anything actually being written (although the pagefile may be expanded to satisfy the memory request) -- This is the most common situation people are referring to when they talk about Windows insisting on writing some things to the page file. In your case, with the ratio of total ram minus cached vs the page file allocation being where it is, I doubt you're seeing any performance impact due to paging. You can set up performance counters to monitor page file use as well as read and written pages if you want, but unless you're doing something that uses 8GB of memory (virtual machines, video or large photo encoding, etc) I'd be surprised if you ever see any significant amount of any data being written to the pagefile. |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
Thanks for the great explanation of the ctrl-alt-del display. It would seem that having 8GB of Dominator memory in my PC is wasted electricity. Perhaps I should remove 4GB and hold them as 'backup' in case the 4GB memory left should die? Best regards, AraiBob -- araibob |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
In message araibob
was claimed to have wrote: Thanks for the great explanation of the ctrl-alt-del display. It would seem that having 8GB of Dominator memory in my PC is wasted electricity. Perhaps I should remove 4GB and hold them as 'backup' in case the 4GB memory left should die? Given that the "Free" memory is so low, I'd leave it in, even if all your RAM isn't actively being used, it's still being used by the OS for caching, so it may improve performance (or it's possible you were using more RAM previously, and said apps have quit) RAM doesn't use much power, and since you've already paid for the RAM itself you've paid the biggest portion of the cost, so I'd keep it in at this point, at least if it were me. |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
As far as I understand it, no. Here's a bit from MS themselves: Pagefile RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual address spaces to the computer’s hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these “paged out” pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. There can be one such file in each disk partition. The location and size of the page file is configured in SystemProperties, Advanced, Performance (click the Settings button). A frequently asked question is how big should I make the pagefile? There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the amount of installed RAM and how much virtual memory that workload requires. If there is no other information available, the normal recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good place to start. On server systems, a common objective is to have enough RAM so that there is never a shortage and the pagefile is essentially, not used. On these systems, having a really large pagefile may serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, disk space is usually plentiful, so having a large pagefile (e.g. 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not cause a problem and eliminates the need to fuss over how large to make it. ----http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223---- Considering your max ram usage you know of is 3GB, I doubt your page file gets much use, as it's rare for a user to actually need 8 gigs unless they use some high end multimedia rendering software. -- truthkid |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
truthkid wrote:
Considering your max ram usage you know of is 3GB, I doubt your page file gets much use, The OP is running the 64-bit version of Vista... the 3GB limitation is for 32-bit. |
|
|||
How to get Vista to use more memory?
Manny Weisbord;1091456 Wrote: truthkid wrote: Considering your max ram usage you know of is 3GB, I doubt your page file gets much use, The OP is running the 64-bit version of Vista... the 3GB limitation is for 32-bit. The OP is the one that mentioned the 3GB, I can read. He said: Typical load usage of memory is 2GB - about 25% of my total memory Maximum use of memory was 3GB - -- truthkid |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|