Superfetch cache limit

[ViperAFK]

And in reality XP still load and runs thing faster. You missed one step there i will fix it for ya.

Vista = 2GB system 1,4GB cached (HDD Trashes like nuts and by the time it does all cashing, i'm already in game with XP because, Vista feels so bloated while is doing cashing)

Superfetch has less and less meaning as HDD gets faster and faster not to mention Raid 0 with Raptors.

The bottom line is, With Superfetch ON and Superfetch OFF windows still have to load data from HDD to Memory, but the only difference is when. Loading data won't be any faster but limited by hardware factor, but with Superfetch ON it will require more of CPU and HDD time ultimately making whole experience bloated. If you keep Vista computer ON all the time that bloated experience is gone, unless you do enormous data saving to hdd or deleting or you run some new app and games.

From my point of view Superfetch will cache wrong things for 60% users out there. Afterall Superfetch is wasted CPU/Memory/HDD Time.

Now there will be somebody here saying NOT USED MEMORY is WASTED MEMORY. Not true...TAKING MEMORY SPACE FOR THE THINGS YOU DON'T NEED IS WASTED SYSTEM RESOURCE.

Another thing...Superfetch will not give you better performance in games or in your work in professional apps.

Already proved and tested. Windows XP SP3 > faster in term of performance then Vista SP1 in the application written for Vista primarily such as Office 2007, not to mention games.

MICROSOFT WAY IS NOT ALWAYS A RIGHT WAY, but they did a lot of good things i have to be honest.

Even RAID 0 with Raptors is MAGNITUDES slower than RAM...

"From my point of view Superfetch will cache wrong things for 60% users out there. Afterall Superfetch is wasted CPU/Memory/HDD Time. "

"Windows XP SP3 > faster in term of performance then Vista SP1 in the application written for Vista primarily such as Office 2007, not to mention games."

[Citation Needed]

and in that SP3 vs vista benchmark they benchmarked ONE application. You can't determine xp is way faster than vista from one random office benchmark.

"Now there will be somebody here saying NOT USED MEMORY is WASTED MEMORY. Not true...TAKING MEMORY SPACE FOR THE THINGS YOU DON'T NEED IS WASTED SYSTEM RESOURCE."

See below...

and as Brandon Live said:

Allocating cached memory in order to satisfy the game you are loading takes no longer than allocating free memory for the same purpose. Cached memory is not memory that has been altered. It does not get swapped back to the disk. It is merely overwritten when somebody needs that memory.

At the least if none of the program information is cached (say a new program) at the least it will load it at the same speed xp would. It is not going to make anything load any slower than xp and most things should load faster.

Edited April 27, 2008 by ViperAFK

[Squirrelington]

Quick interjection, I'm reading my perf tab as such.

1761.28 used (based on the size listed in the graph)

1333 free

5551 cached

8645.28 total usage

out of 8GB, i take it the excess of 8190 (-2) is disk page file thats being used?

Edited April 27, 2008 by FuhrerDarqueSyde

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Quick interjection, I'm reading my perf tab as such.

1761.28 used (based on the size listed in the graph)

1333 free

5551 cached

8645.28 total usage

out of 8GB, i take it the excess of 8190 (-2) is disk page file thats being used?

You have 1655MB allocated (see the "page file" readout), all of which should be backed by physical memory. That is, none of your page file is being used. I forget exactly where the 1.72GB number comes from, the difference may be that it includes memory-mapped files. I'll have to remember to look into that.

You have 5551MB of memory that is being used either by the disk cache or SuperFetch. You have 1333 which is completely empty.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

And in reality XP still load and runs thing faster. You missed one step there i will fix it for ya.

Source? This statement itself is meaningless - it depends entirely on the hardware you're working with.

Vista = 2GB system 1,4GB cached (HDD Trashes like nuts and by the time it does all cashing, i'm already in game with XP because, Vista feels so bloated while is doing cashing)

The caching will not affect your system. It only loads when the disk is idle, and even then at a slow rate. Is it the noise from the hard drive that bothers you? Are you constantly rebooting from some reason?

Superfetch has less and less meaning as HDD gets faster and faster not to mention Raid 0 with Raptors.

Are you freak_power? He makes the same proposterous claim. That's like saying as bicycles get faster, the difference between them and fighter jets is narrowed. It's absurd. There are several orders of magnitude difference between RAM and RAID 0 raptors (which is what I run). And they work very well with SuperFetch.

The bottom line is, With Superfetch ON and Superfetch OFF windows still have to load data from HDD to Memory, but the only difference is when. Loading data won't be any faster but limited by hardware factor, but with Superfetch ON it will require more of CPU and HDD time ultimately making whole experience bloated. If you keep Vista computer ON all the time that bloated experience is gone, unless you do enormous data saving to hdd or deleting or you run some new app and games.

That makes no sense. Yes, over time Windows will end up loading things from the disk that end up not getting used, although that's fairly rare on large memory systems. But when it does happen, there's no penalty, it's just a cache miss. It doesn't cost you anything. But since it hits the cache most of the time, that means most of the time things are much faster. I very much prefer that when I click to open WMP or Visual Studio or whatever, I don't have to hear a single thing from my hard drive.

From my point of view Superfetch will cache wrong things for 60% users out there. Afterall Superfetch is wasted CPU/Memory/HDD Time.

Your point of view is incorrect. There is hard data to back this up, you don't need to make up numbers. SuperFetch caches useful code and data for 100% of users out there, and the more memory you have, the less often you'll need to hit the disk when launching an application (or when it loads libraries / data after it's running).

You're also forgetting SuperFetch's other purpose, which is to swap pages from the disk back into memory when it becomes available. If you have free memory and pages that are out on the disk, you are going to hit a page fault sooner or later and it is going to cost you performance. This happened on XP frequently, but in Vista it's virtually eliminated, particularly on high-end systems.

Now there will be somebody here saying NOT USED MEMORY is WASTED MEMORY. Not true...TAKING MEMORY SPACE FOR THE THINGS YOU DON'T NEED IS WASTED SYSTEM RESOURCE.

That is not correct. Free memory is wasted memory. There's no getting around that. There is positively no advantage to having free memory. Besides, you make it sound like it is hard to know what code or data should be cached. It is not.

Another thing...Superfetch will not give you better performance in games or in your work in professional apps.

Games may start faster, but obviously it is going to have no impact on rendering or computational performance. Professional applications will be faster. They will start faster, they will load cached libraries faster, and they will load cached data faster.

Already proved and tested. Windows XP SP3 > faster in term of performance then Vista SP1 in the application written for Vista primarily such as Office 2007, not to mention games.

It's not exactly fair if you're allowed to make things up to back up your argument (like this, and your "60%" number above).

[iZoom]

While I don't understand the complexities of the system, from what I have read thus far...why would any of us want to have 3+ GB of relatively new, fast RAM and not use it as cache? Is there something that I don't see that having half of the RAM sitting idle just taking up space? As your habits change, yes I can imagine that the needs of the caching would need to change as well. However, if I am using Firefox, Winamp, Steam, MSN Messenger, and maybe Audacity on a daily basis, why not have those cached in RAM so they load in little to no time instead of reading them from the HDD? I'm not saying that Superfetch is the greatest thing ever, but if I understand its basic operation, then it seems to make a lot of sense to a user like me.

[ViperAFK]

While I don't understand the complexities of the system, from what I have read thus far...why would any of us want to have 3+ GB of relatively new, fast RAM and not use it as cache? Is there something that I don't see that having half of the RAM sitting idle just taking up space? As your habits change, yes I can imagine that the needs of the caching would need to change as well. However, if I am using Firefox, Winamp, Steam, MSN Messenger, and maybe Audacity on a daily basis, why not have those cached in RAM so they load in little to no time instead of reading them from the HDD? I'm not saying that Superfetch is the greatest thing ever, but if I understand its basic operation, then it seems to make a lot of sense to a user like me.

I agree with you here, many people just like to spew out misinformation about how raid 0 is faster than ram and superfetch slows down games.

"As your habits change, yes I can imagine that the needs of the caching would need to change as well."

And yes, superfetch does change according to your habits. :)

[nVidiaalltheway]

Hmm.

I'm not sure who I should quote on this statement, or where the quote I'm looking for is, but I'm going to give my input anyway.

There's been the big XP-vs-Vista memory performance debate, obviously. I'm going to have to side with XP as being the best OS to this date.

At idle, Vista uses up to 1.5 Gigs of RAM, while XP uses at most 400ish. Not to mention the fact that Vista is technically using more for SuperDurge. It's not a question of how much RAM is being used though, it's HOW it's being used. If you run XP you always have free RAM left so that it's eaiser to load large, demanding applications such as 3D games directly into the RAM. Superfetch, on the other hand, has to make room for whatever you're doing by pushing it's own interests out of the way until it decides your application has enough room. This may explain why it's been proven that running games on Windows XP delivers higher performance.

Sorry about this everybody. :( It's my first time here and I didn't mean to make a bad impression. This debate has been going on forever and apparently my level of knowledge in this subject isn't adequate for this forum.

[soldier1st]

for my 3GB system i would not put xp on it as half the memory would not be put to good use bit vista makes use of all of it and why have tons of memory only to have it sitting there idling and not doing anything and using power for nothing?superfetch is designed to use all memory availible and put it to good use but of course vista needs to be trained but once that happens no worries and the beuty of superfetch is when you exit out a big game or app it will pull the memory pages that were forced to the pagefile and back into memory but xp cannot do that.prefetch works 1 way but not the other but superfetch works both ways.xp wont put the pages that were forced from the ram to the pagefile back into the ram again wheras superfetch will and thats what you want i assume.

[+allan MVC]

soldier1st - Please don't be offended by this - I've been trying to read your posts for some time now and I just find them unintelligible. I realize that a lot of people "talk" in "text lingo" these days, but on a forum such as this the lack of punctuation makes your posts VERY difficult to understand - at least for me.

[iZoom]

for my 3GB system i would not put xp on it as half the memory would not be put to good use bit vista makes use of all of it and why have tons of memory only to have it sitting there idling and not doing anything and using power for nothing?superfetch is designed to use all memory availible and put it to good use but of course vista needs to be trained but once that happens no worries and the beuty of superfetch is when you exit out a big game or app it will pull the memory pages that were forced to the pagefile and back into memory but xp cannot do that.prefetch works 1 way but not the other but superfetch works both ways.xp wont put the pages that were forced from the ram to the pagefile back into the ram again wheras superfetch will and thats what you want i assume.

Three punctuations in that paragraph ;)

That was definitely difficult to read as well, I agree.

[+allan MVC]

Three punctuations in that paragraph ;)

None of which make any sense :)

[ViperAFK]

for my 3GB system i would not put xp on it as half the memory would not be put to good use bit vista makes use of all of it and why have tons of memory only to have it sitting there idling and not doing anything and using power for nothing?superfetch is designed to use all memory availible and put it to good use but of course vista needs to be trained but once that happens no worries and the beuty of superfetch is when you exit out a big game or app it will pull the memory pages that were forced to the pagefile and back into memory but xp cannot do that.prefetch works 1 way but not the other but superfetch works both ways.xp wont put the pages that were forced from the ram to the pagefile back into the ram again wheras superfetch will and thats what you want i assume.

Holy run on sentences, Batman!

[+allan MVC]

solder1st - sorry - didn't expect others to pile on. I just meant it as a request to help make your posts more readable in the future.

[frbubba]

Personally, I find that with my 4GB machine, the superfetch is great. I start the machine, walk away (just like I did with XP) but when I get back about 2 minutes later, the apps I normally start are instant on, practically speaking. I have had a positive experience with superfetch. Now if they could find some way to superfetch the OS at startup, I would be impressed. ;)

[soldier1st]

Also why would you want to limit superfetch?.If Anything superfetch should be extended but that of course would mean more memory needed.

ubba: i Agree about superfetch on startup but at least try to preload some more boot data like applications that you use often so superfetch would fill up Faster but who knows about superfetch. Maybe the next version will be Quadfetcher or TeraFetch.

+allan:No Offense Taken and your comments have been noted of course.

[ViperAFK]

If you limit the amount superfetch caches it really just goes against the way it was intended to work. It would probably reduce its effectiveness, which is why it is disabled on low RAM systems; because it really starts to give speed benefits when it can cache a lot of data.

If superfetch was limited to only 512 mb of cache less programs would open faster and there would be a larger chance programs you use would not benefit from it. I just really don't see any tangible benefits of limiting superfetch in this way, all it would do is hinder its functionality.

This should be stickied as "The Great Superfetch Debate!" lmao

Edited April 29, 2008 by ViperAFK

[+allan MVC]

This should be stickied as "The Great Superfetch Debate!" lmao

Not much of a debate IMO. Just a few people trying to explain how Superfetch works and a whole lot of people who don't know what they are talking about arguing with those who do (plus the few usual suspects who want to sound like they know what they are talking about, but clearly don't ;) )

[ViperAFK]

Not much of a debate IMO. Just a few people trying to explain how Superfetch works and a whole lot of people who don't know what they are talking about arguing with those who do (plus the few usual suspects who want to sound like they know what they are talking about, but clearly don't ;) )

I think that pretty much summarizes the UAC thread too haha

[frbubba]

New possible names for the next-gen of superfetch:

1) Quadfetch

2) ultrafetch (my favorite)

3) hyperfetch

4) overfetch (uberfetch?)

5) radfetch

6) exofetch

6) acceleratofetch

7) amphetaminofetch

8) fastfetch

9) rushfetch

10) speedfetch

11) zipfetch....

:p

[+Warwagon MVC]

soldier1st - Please don't be offended by this - I've been trying to read your posts for some time now and I just find them unintelligible. I realize that a lot of people "talk" in "text lingo" these days, but on a forum such as this the lack of punctuation makes your posts VERY difficult to understand - at least for me.

Oddly enough I read that sentience no problem. Though I tend to run sentence on to. Maybe that's why I can read it without problem.