Superfetch cache limit

[Peppers30]

Alright well the good thing is that if I dont like the "SuperFetch" I can always disable it which is good to know. Thanks guys.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

  Peppers30 said:

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.

Nope, it will have absolutely no effect on Battlefield's ability to allocate memory. The only difference is that after you finish playing the game, your other apps will respond faster (than they would after playing on XP) as SuperFetch will pull their data back into RAM, instead of leaving it paged to the disk.

[freak_power]

  Brandon Live said:

Nope, it will have absolutely no effect on Battlefield's ability to allocate memory. The only difference is that after you finish playing the game, your other apps will respond faster (than they would after playing on XP) as SuperFetch will pull their data back into RAM, instead of leaving it paged to the disk.

XP didn't have any response problems after quiting Battlefield 2, absolutely zero. With the same system 2GB of RAM under Vista, system absolutely has problems to refresh desktop after playing Battlefield 2 for like 2 hours. Vista needs 4GB of RAM to be responsive as XP with 2GB. It sort of makes sense because more things are running under Vista in the background then under XP. As far as superfetch, there is no performance gain or loss with or without it except that Battlefield 2 will quit sometimes saying system is out of memory :whistle: .

I'm planning to get additional 2GB of RAM to overcome poor memory management in Vista...more RAM will do it.

[freak_power]

  Ledward said:

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

See, why would you do that? Load and unload with no reason? Windows was never good in releasing memory. Everytime you load something and superfetch clears out more and more garbage stay in it. Initially system will idle with 600MB, after few hours of using it ended up using 800+ MB of RAM and same number of processes are running :no:

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Well that's all just BS.

  freak_power said:

XP didn't have any response problems after quiting Battlefield 2, absolutely zero. With the same system 2GB of RAM under Vista, system absolutely has problems to refresh desktop after playing Battlefield 2 for like 2 hours.

XP absolutely had problems where if you played a game or used any application that loaded a lot of memory, after you closed it, other applications would take longer to start or respond. Or if they were minimized, they would pause while loading from the disk when it came time to restore them. This is one of the main advantages of SuperFetch, as it reduces this problem by swapping data back into physical memory.

I don't even know what you're talking about regarding refreshing the desktop.

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Vista needs 4GB of RAM to be responsive as XP with 2GB.

Well that's just wrong. On a 512MB machine, Vista will probably be less responsive than XP (assuming default configuration). However, on a 2GB machine it leaves XP in the dust. My 2GB Macbook being a good example of that.

  Quote

It sort of makes sense because more things are running under Vista in the background then under XP. As far as superfetch, there is no performance gain or loss with or without it except that Battlefield 2 will quit sometimes saying system is out of memory :whistle: .

The out of memory error is actually a bug in Nvidia's driver, and affects many games (it's not actually an out-of-memory error, but STATUS_NO_MEMORY is the generic exception used by developers when a resource allocation fails). Either you're hitting that, or you disabled your page file.

  freak_power said:

See, why would you do that? Load and unload with no reason?

Huh? There's no unloading taking place. It is exactly as if that memory was already free... since it is, it's just cached.

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Windows was never good in releasing memory. Everytime you load something and superfetch clears out more and more garbage stay in it.

That doesn't even make sense. That's not even how computers work.

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Initially system will idle with 600MB, after few hours of using it ended up using 800+ MB of RAM and same number of processes are running :no:

Duh, that's what happens when those processes actually do something.

[SnowRanger13]

  franzon said:

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

CACHED RAM doesn't mean USED RAM

  franzon said:

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!!!

Dude you need to settle down, rather then telling us over and over again "stop complaining about something you don't understand!!!" how bout you try and be useful and explain it? Telling us to stop complaining isn't answering anyones questions.

  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.

ram is much faster then hard drives, hard drives are pretty much the slowest part inside of a computer these days. I forget some real world numbers but there is a huge difference. What type or ram and hard drive are you using that you notice no difference with?

[freak_power]

Raid 0 WD Raptor, and DDR2-800. It's not about hardware...i honestly really don't see difference with or without superfetch.

[freeza]

after 8 days of uptime, superfetch is not allowing me to run Virtual machines via VirtualPC because i dont have enough memory (4GB)

Superfetch is starting to annoy me.

82% of my ram is used and it won't unallocate the ram so that i can use my virtual machines.

[Linkinfamous]

  Brandon Live said:

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.

  franzon said:

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!!!

I have 2gb of DDR2-667 RAM, and a 7200rpm drive in my laptop, and I disagree. After the computer starts and I have a desktop, there is a definate 'sluggishness' to the entire system until the 'Free Memory' reading in the task manager hits 0, and this can take a few minutes. I'm just glad I very rarely reboot.

[Doli]

  MioTheGreat said:

I have 2gb of DDR2-667 RAM, and a 7200rpm drive in my laptop, and I disagree. After the computer starts and I have a desktop, there is a definate 'sluggishness' to the entire system until the 'Free Memory' reading in the task manager hits 0, and this can take a few minutes. I'm just glad I very rarely reboot.

I think the free memory reading has a bug in it, I get the same reading sometimes. 1 GB total, 564 Cached and 0 free?. There will always be a 'sluggishness' at startup (except for coming out of sleep mode) because Vista is moving data from the HD to the Ram for superfetch while doing other tasks (services), for me it takes less than 1 min and everything is smooth.

[Linkinfamous]

  Doli said:

I think the free memory reading has a bug in it, I get the same reading sometimes. 1 GB total, 564 Cached and 0 free?. There will always be a 'sluggishness' at startup (except for coming out of sleep mode) because Vista is moving data from the HD to the Ram for superfetch while doing other tasks (services), for me it takes less than 1 min and everything is smooth.

There's nothing wrong the reading. That's the reading it's supposed to give.

The sluggishness shouldn't be happening because of the low i/o priority of superfetch. But it's the only thing that it can be, because the second it hits '0' mb free and superfetch is done loading stuff my computer is fast again.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

  freeza said:

after 8 days of uptime, superfetch is not allowing me to run Virtual machines via VirtualPC because i dont have enough memory (4GB)

Superfetch is starting to annoy me.

82% of my ram is used and it won't unallocate the ram so that i can use my virtual machines.

That doesn't sound like a Superfetch problem. It sounds like you have disabled your pagefile and now are complaining that your pagefile isn't doing its job.

[CPressland]

  Brandon Live said:

That doesn't sound like a Superfetch problem. It sounds like you have disabled your pagefile and now are complaining that your pagefile isn't doing its job.

+1 set yourself up a nice 10GB pagefile and you'll be away!

[war]

No sluggish here at system startup. :) Yes superfetch is running fine.

People with issues, have you tried to disable apps that run on startup to see if that makes any difference or services?

And to disable superfectch simply disable the service...

[freeza]

  Brandon Live said:

That doesn't sound like a Superfetch problem. It sounds like you have disabled your pagefile and now are complaining that your pagefile isn't doing its job.

Wrong, I narrowed it down to enabling LargeSystemCache. Funny how in Windows XP I never had this problem with a pagefile disabled. :) Also, it's interesting how the GUI has an option to turn it off. You'd think of something were so legacy, a definite-do-not-do-under-any-circumstances feature, that it'd be 'hidden registry setting' kind of like LargeSystemCache is in Windows Vista now.....instead of something that anyone fooling around in their system properties can stumble upon.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

  freeza said:

Wrong, I narrowed it down to enabling LargeSystemCache. Funny how in Windows XP I never had this problem with a pagefile disabled. :) Also, it's interesting how the GUI has an option to turn it off. You'd think of something were so legacy, a definite-do-not-do-under-any-circumstances feature, that it'd be 'hidden registry setting' kind of like LargeSystemCache is in Windows Vista now.....instead of something that anyone fooling around in their system properties can stumble upon.

Why would you disable your pagefile? Are you that short on hard disk space?Enabling the LargeSystemCache key is a bad idea. There's even a whole KB article devoted to it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895932You're moving the memory pressure limit from 1,000 available pages down to 250. I'm not even sure what effect that combination of settings would have with the pagefile disabled, but it's definitely ill-advised to do so.

[freeza]

I agree that LargeSystemCache setting was not right for me.

Let's test my theory, another 8 days and we'll see if the system is fine. :crossing fingers:

[TheRPG]

would love to say something on this subject.. There is a way to limit the cache or at least what it caches.. in the registry memory Manager options 1-3 values .. 1 is appz, 2 is boot and 3 is everything on prefetch and superprefetch reg keys.. HKEY local machine > system > Control > session manager > memory manager..-

however this doesn't work as planned hopefully someday it will.. Anyhow, this 'Theory' that superprefetch would work faster for you if yo got large amount of ram and that it would work better with out it with small amount of ram is false.. As it all depends what you run.. not about how much ram you have..

If you got like I do 4Gb and turn off Superfetching so it leaves everything else (except Windows Vista boot files) out of cache and you commonly run huge ars hell software rendering or games or what ever lets say taking around 2Gb of RAM constantly that will be with superfetcher ALOT slower... You can test this "theory" and come here with results.. Run something massive like some new 3D game..

However in day to day actions MS Office use, http/www browsers FTP clients what ever small superprefetch is insane working with insane speeds.. and gives you damn well balanced usage even with those larger softwares, but no if you run large games keep it off or at least mod the registry to have it as value 2 as in boot files only seems to also give some performance results..

anyhow there's my 2 cents..

[Roger H. Veteran]

  MioTheGreat said:

I have 2gb of DDR2-667 RAM, and a 7200rpm drive in my laptop, and I disagree. After the computer starts and I have a desktop, there is a definate 'sluggishness' to the entire system until the 'Free Memory' reading in the task manager hits 0, and this can take a few minutes. I'm just glad I very rarely reboot.

what's probably happening is that you're used to the programs openning sooner because of SuperFetch than from the HD. Turn off SuperFetch and then reboot and then after 10 mins start to load your programs and see if it opens faster than with SuperFetch.

What you've got is the "it's faster but i want it faster!" bug.

[freak_power]

  SHoTTa35 said:

what's probably happening is that you're used to the programs openning sooner because of SuperFetch than from the HD. Turn off SuperFetch and then reboot and then after 10 mins start to load your programs and see if it opens faster than with SuperFetch.

What you've got is the "it's faster but i want it faster!" bug.

I still don't see Superfetch being useful. There is no performance improvement with it. Vista needs more then 2Gb of RAM, i prefer 4Gb. 2Gb won't cut it...It all depends on what are you doing, but for what i'm doing 2Gb is not enough. Vista X64 Edition is much better. You wont gain performance but overall stability. Vista X86 Edition never worked for me right. I'm running X64 Edition for two months now, and i'm really enjoying it. I don't have a single problem with it. Also my system runs 4Gb...Experience with 2Gb and 4Gb is a quite different...trust me.

Vista doesn't work right on every hardware. I suggest not to install it on nforce 4 or lower platform. I recommend Nforce 5xx or up, or Intel 965 and later chipset.

Edited July 20, 2007 by freak_power

[Brandon Live Veteran]

  freak_power said:

I still don't see Superfetch being useful. There is no performance improvement with it. Vista needs more then 2Gb of RAM, i prefer 4Gb. 2Gb won't cut it...It all depends on what are you doing, but for what i'm doing 2Gb is not enough. Vista X64 Edition is much better. You wont gain performance but overall stability. Vista X86 Edition never worked for me right. I'm running X64 Edition for two months now, and i'm really enjoying it. I don't have a single problem with it. Also my system runs 4Gb...Experience with 2Gb and 4Gb is a quite different...trust me.

Vista doesn't work right on every hardware. I suggest not to install it on nforce 4 or lower platform. I recommend Nforce 5xx or up, or Intel 965 and later chipset.

Vista doesn't even need 2GB of RAM for most people. My dev machines at work are 2GB machines running the 32-bit OS, and they're very quick.

Vista x64 is no more or less stable than the x86 version. They're the same code. The only difference you might see is drivers. You probably had a bad 32-bit driver installed and when you moved to 64-bit, you either got a newer driver or didn't install one at all for the problematic device.

A 64-bit machine will use more RAM, though. 2GB should be the minimum anyone is running the 64-bit OS on, though really even then there's not much point. As soon as you get above 2GB, that's where 64-bit becomes a necessity.

If you have 4GB of memory, it's just stupid to turn off SuperFetch. Turning it off is just wasting gobs and gobs of memory. The difference between running with and without it is huge on systems like that.

[soldier1st]

i've been testing vista for awhile and i found if i turn off superfetch all gets slowed down and i have 1 GB allocated to vista and i do not hear the drive making noises at all and no it does not take 5-6 minutes for superfetch to do it's thing it takes like 1-2 mins at most and the superfetch does not slow down apps all that much but only during the first 1-2 minutes of booting up,superfetch is a low priority app so it does not slow anything,vista works ok at 512MB though it is slightly slower,all those who think superfetch is crap you need to relearn how caching works and having an engineers degree does not mean anything.

[stockwiz]

ram is so cheap these days that there's no excuse not to have 2 gigs of it, which is really all you need. I have 4 gigs and vista itself doesn't use any more of my memory then when I have 2 gigs.. about 830-900 MB or so it says, but nothing ran slow and games ran fine with 2 gigs. 4 gigs should be plenty for probably 3-5 years.

[FATILA]

  stockwiz said:

ram is so cheap these days that there's no excuse not to have 2 gigs of it, which is really all you need. I have 4 gigs and vista itself doesn't use any more of my memory then when I have 2 gigs.. about 830-900 MB or so it says, but nothing ran slow and games ran fine with 2 gigs. 4 gigs should be plenty for probably 3-5 years.

Really? I have 4gigs and currently 2270 is used. I assume you are also on x64 otherwise 4gigs would not be recognised.

[Linkinfamous]

  FATILA said:

Really? I have 4gigs and currently 2270 is used. I assume you are also on x64 otherwise 4gigs would not be recognised.

Wow.

What on earth are you doing? I only have 2 gigs, and I haven't seen it go over 90% once in the last month. (It usually hovers at 50%) You aren't counting cache in that, are you?