Superfetch cache limit

[aydc]

I'm now extremely annoyed with Superfetch and how it spends 5-6 minutes trying to cache everything it can find onto my 2 GB RAM. Isn't there a way to limit the amount of RAM it may use? I mean, if there was a way to limit it to 512MB, that would be super.

If not, let's say in three years we'll have 16 GB RAM, which is a realistic guess. Will it try to cache 16 GB of programs??? Will our hard drives have to read 16 GB of data on every boot just to fill the cache? There must be a hidden registry setting to limit this thing.

[soldier1st]

you can turn off superfetch if you dont like it,i personaly like it,if you have loads of memory then keep it on but if you got limited memory then turn it off but performance will suffer.superfetch will release memory if it needs to.

[Evolution]

In 3 years most of us will have SSDs that are super-fast :p Not to mention that memory will be a lot quicker. Instead of shutting down you could always just use sleep instead, thus avoiding the problem.

Have the computer startup by itself before you want to turn it on if you're really concerned about it. Even though it takes about a minute to cache everything, you can still do other tasks...

[franzon]

  aydc said:

I'm now extremely annoyed with Superfetch and how it spends 5-6 minutes trying to cache everything it can find onto my 2 GB RAM. Isn't there a way to limit the amount of RAM it may use? I mean, if there was a way to limit it to 512MB, that would be super.

Please stop complaining about something you don't understand!!!

CACHED RAM doesn't mean USED RAM

[+Tantawi Subscriber²]

  franzon said:

Please stop complaining about something you don't understand!!!

CACHED RAM doesn't mean USED RAM

He understands what he said very well, you just couldn't bother to read well.

He is complaining about the time it take the system to copy the cached files to the RAM, it's VERY intensive process on the HDD, although it only happens when the system first start from a cold boor/reboot.

I'm in the same boat as you man and would like very much to have the ability to set the RAM limit to be used by SuperFetch, because I can imagine the nightmare it'll be if I have 8GB+ RAM in the future.

[franzon]

  Tantawi said:

He is complaining about the time it take the system to copy the cached files to the RAM, it's VERY intensive process on the HDD

Again... Please stop complaining about something you don't understand!!!

Superfetch loads data from HDD in LOW I/O priority, it is NOT an intensive process

Windows Vista's memory managment has been developed by engineers, it isn't as stupid as you think.

Don't judge something you don't understand!!!

Edited April 21, 2007 by franzon

[+Tantawi Subscriber²]

What's wrong with you and your green text? Are you actually running Vista with large memory at the first place? (2GB+).

It's an intensive process when you are trying to load applications/games while it's copying GBs of data to my free RAM.

And one more green line and you're not gettin your cookie!!

[aydc]

It's not intensive on the CPU, but it's intensive on the hard disk. If you have 8GB RAM, the hard disk has to read 8GB data each time you reboot just to fill the cache.

It's only only during booting either. When you load a game the system releases the cache. When you exit the game, the system starts caching again to fill the RAM. I'm afraid our hard disks won't last long under this stress unless we find a way to limit this thing.

----

By the way frazon: I have an MSc degree in engineering, I think I understand things quite better than you. :)

[ManMountain]

Strange that. I have 4GB RAM and it does not take 5-6 minutes of drive thrashing for Superfetch to consume my memory, and even if your modern hard drive(s) do thrash, I wouldn't worry about it. It does not necessarily mean its going to shorten it's lifespan.

Edited April 21, 2007 by ManMountain

[Brandon Live Veteran]

1) It shouldn't take that long, as ManMountain said.

2) It happens on background I/O, so while you might hear your hard drive working if it's loud, it shouldn't slow down any other processes.

[freak_power]

By disabling superfetch, you won't lose performance neither you will gain by having it enabled. Whoever tells you that you will lose performance by disabling superfetch doesn't know what he is talking about. Superfetch is nothing but preloading software into memory, and you will gain no performance increase in the games or apps. It supposed to only speed up your program execution. With fast HDD especially RAID 0 it means absolutely nothing. Superfetch is a waste of CPU, HDD, RAM time...at least for me. I keep it disabled since day one, and i have no single problems and games/apps just scream. I say get 2GB of 4Gb of RAM + Raid 0...and you're set.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

  freak_power said:

By disabling superfetch, you won't lose performance neither you will gain by having it enabled. Whoever tells you that you will lose performance by disabling superfetch doesn't know what he is talking about. Superfetch is nothing but preloading software into memory, and you will gain no performance increase in the games or apps. It supposed to only speed up your program execution. With fast HDD especially RAID 0 it means absolutely nothing. Superfetch is a waste of CPU, HDD, RAM time...at least for me. I keep it disabled since day one, and i have no single problems and games/apps just scream. I say get 2GB of 4Gb of RAM + Raid 0...and you're set.

If you've have it disabled from day one, what business do you have telling someone that it doesn't improve performance?

Of course, you're completely wrong. I run RAID 0 WD Raptors and SuperFetch still offers considerable performance improvement (especially since I have 4GB of memory). It's part of the reason that Vista runs so very much faster than XP on this box.

Also, SuperFetch isn't just about app start-up. It also prefetches DLLs and more, and does it based on a number of finely tuned heurestics and usage metrics. Basically, SuperFetch "learns" how you use your computer, which programs you run together, and what code gets loaded based on things like the time of day. It's very, very good at it as well.

I also wouldn't be surprised if turning off SuperFetch made things like UAC prompts slower as consent.exe is more likely to be paged in from the disk versus being in RAM ready to go.

[aydc]

I tried disabling it but then Vista runs seriously slower than XP. If you disable Superfetch, you don't fall back on XP's caching method. You lose all caching completely. So it's Superfetch or nothing.

The main point of this thread is not if Superfetch is useful or not. That's been discussed a lot. I believe it is useful. I just don't want it to use all the RAM there is.

I find it hard to believe that there's no registry setting to limit it. There are registry hacks for everything.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

I honestly don't know if there are any to control it. If I find out something I'll let you know.

[franzon]

  aydc said:

I just don't want it to use all the RAM there is.

Stop complaining for something you don't understand!!!

It's not USED ram but it's CACHED ram.

FREE RAM IS BAD.

Edited April 22, 2007 by kinetix63

[kinetix63 Veteran]

Thread Cleaned

Enough of the name calling already...

[brand]

Thanks kinetix. ;) (even deleting my post flaming the flamers)

Please read this TechNet article explaining memory management improvements in Vista, including the controversial SuperFetch.

[MrCobra]

  franzon said:

Stop complaining for something you don't understand!!!

It's not USED ram but it's CACHED ram.

If it's cached then it is used. It may not be active but it's still used.

  aydc said:

The main point of this thread is not if Superfetch is useful or not. That's been discussed a lot. I believe it is useful. I just don't want it to use all the RAM there is.

Sometimes it doesn't release enough of the memory back when it's needed. I hope there's a fix for that eventually.

[Peppers30]

Ok I am thinking about getting Vista with my new build. However I play RAM intensive games such as Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 that can use up to 1GB on 64 player maps. Well this Superfetch affect my peformance ingame? I am thinking about sticking with XP. Have never really had a problem with XP.

[Boeing 787]

  Quote

Windows SuperFetch

A new memory management technology in Windows Vista, Windows SuperFetch, helps keep the computer consistently responsive to your programs by making better use of the computer's RAM. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and preloading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...erformance.mspx

[Rave]

My experience has been that SuperFetch is ok for fast machines with fast disk subsystems. My workstation at home has 4GB of RAM and 2 x 320GB WD drives in RAID 0. SuperFetch will rapidly load what is thinks I am likley to use into RAM caching it for what it thinks I am likley to do next. No real performance hit while it does that (may take a min or 2). It does however provide great response for the apps that it caches. Almost everything seems to open instantly.

The nasty side of SuperFetch I have seen when using on my now retired laptop. I was running a Dell D810 with 1GB of RAM and 100GB 5400rpm HDD. SuperFetch would literally bury the poor laptop for at least 5-8 mins after boot up. During this time I was lucky if I could even open my email! Absolutely bad news with 1GB of less RAM and a slow HDD.

With the new laptop D620 (C2D 2.00ghz and 1GB of RAM 100GB 7200rpm HDD) SuperFetch is much much quicker at getting it's job done and letting me get on with my work. Seems that it is very HDD dependant. Slow HDD is always going to have issues with SuperFetch.

[Peppers30]

If we want do we have to use the "SuperFetch"? If I try it and see performance decreases can I go to a way without the SuperFetch. Like how Windows XP uses RAM? I do realize that it probably is better with SuperFetch but not right now. Probably in the future it will perform better when everyone has over say 4GB of Ram. I don't know, I'm just skiptical of this "SuperFetch". I would imagine that by having all my ram cached that it would slow down games.

[Leddy]

  Peppers30 said:

If we want do we have to use the "SuperFetch"? If I try it and see performance decreases can I go to a way without the SuperFetch. Like how Windows XP uses RAM? I do realize that it probably is better with SuperFetch but not right now. Probably in the future it will perform better when everyone has over say 4GB of Ram. I don't know, I'm just skiptical of this "SuperFetch". I would imagine that by having all my ram cached that it would slow down games.

Vista would clear out the cache to make space for the game. Not a crisis.

[+stereopixels Subscriber²]

  Peppers30 said:

If we want do we have to use the "SuperFetch"? If I try it and see performance decreases can I go to a way without the SuperFetch. Like how Windows XP uses RAM? I do realize that it probably is better with SuperFetch but not right now. Probably in the future it will perform better when everyone has over say 4GB of Ram. I don't know, I'm just skiptical of this "SuperFetch". I would imagine that by having all my ram cached that it would slow down games.

I play games on Vista and I've never noticed any performance loss against playing on XP; like every other computer running any other OS, if you've got RAM that's in use when you need to execute a program the OS will temporarily move the data in RAM (inc. cached data) to the hard disk and when the RAM is freed again it will move it back; this is 'paging' and it happens all the time anyway so Vistas superfetch system makes no difference at all to the process.

[Churma]

All I can say is XP on my rig is way faster then Vista. When I boot up in Vista and enable super fetch I lose on performance. Different hardware and different scenarios for rigs will have different outcomes, but all I can say is boo hoo when it comes to super fetch. This is a list of services that I disable with Vista with a decent speed increase. I disable super fetch, ready boost, windows search (I can find my own files), windows media player network sharing service. I disable windows defender (I use spy sweeper), turn off error reporting, and disable my paging file. This works for me and may work for you. Now Brandon don't attack me. =P I must say I am a bit disappointed with Vista so far. Microsoft invested years and even with an insane rig it still comes up short if you ask me. Just my thoughts...

Oh and BTW Playing current games in XP I score almost 50fps higher in Oblivion. I am sure I will be flamed with Nvidia drivers are not optmiized yet for Vista...=P

Mikee