Vista Sucking All Memory - No Superfetch!

[mrk Reviews]

Halo is a piece of crap anyway though and not representative of a game that requires heavy RAM usage.

STALKER, now there's a game that will use a fair chunk of RAM as will Crysis in DX9 mode (it uses less than 1GB in DX10 mode)

[DrewJW]

Halo is a piece of crap anyway though and not representative of a game that requires heavy RAM usage.

STALKER, now there's a game that will use a fair chunk of RAM as will Crysis in DX9 mode (it uses less than 1GB in DX10 mode)

I am sure "halo" was just used as an example mate.

I found this interesting, as I used to disable superfetch as a must on first boot into Vista, I've since now re-enabled it.

[ManMountain]

Your screenshot is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It says that only 50MB are free and that 6817MB are cached but only 23% of your ram is in use.

Take this screenshot as another example

As you can see, physical memory presently being used is 1.95 GB which is also displayed as Physical Memory: 24% in status bar, so roughly speaking, 24% of 8GB is 1.95GB which is what is shown.

The cache of 7003 MB is superfetch caching system resources, but this memory is available as and when other programs require it. This will grow and shrink dependant on memory load. The Physical memory free 0 MB is the amount of memory not being used for anything. So as I said, it's using resources very efficiently indeed.

Edited March 9, 2008 by ManMountain

[Brandon Live Veteran]

From the perspective of an application that wants to allocate memory, Cached and Free are the same thing.

Cached simply means "there is data here, but it doesn't belong to anybody in particular, and doesn't need to be committed to disk." It's merely an optimization.

Consider this scenario:

1) You boot up your PC and log in.

2) Your "Free" memory usage is 100MB (not a realistic number, just for the sake of this example), and your "Cached" memory is also 100MB

3) You open a 1MB text file called "Something.txt" in Notepad

4) Now your Free memory drops by 1MB to 99MB, because the text file was loaded into it. Your "cached" memory doesn't change. That 1MB becomes part of your "in-use" memory.

5) Now you close Notepad.

6) You Free memory doesn't change, still 99MB. But your "in-use" memory drops by 1MB, and you "cached" memory goes up by 1MB to 101MB.

You started with 200MB that could be allocated by apps (100MB + 100MB), and you ended up with the same (99MB + 101MB).

Basically, the disk cache says "Hey, someone just freed a block of memory that was loaded from a file on the disk. Let's keep that data in memory until somebody actually needs to use it for something else, just in case they decide to open the same file again."

Now I'm not an expert in this area, and this is a drastic oversimplification of how memory management and disk caching works, but it should serve to illustrate the point.

[mad_onion]

basically, don't waste your time to optimize vista because you're not going to make much difference if any. just use your computer to do what you want to do and if you actually run into problems then ask for help.

[soldier1st]

unlike the way xp did things it would not put stuff into memory unless you accessed that file and the chances of that data being moved out to the pagefile are high just as in vista but with vista it actualy puts your data back in but xp does but from the slow hard drive and it may not bring all that app in just parts of it and it creates a slowdown.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

But ultimately Vista's overhead is such that it is surely impossible for it to be as (or even more) efficient than XP for memory intensive tasks. If Vista NEEDS 500MB to get to a normal running state, and XP only needs 150MB or 200MB, how can it be better - even if you have say 2GB or 3GB of RAM. Every last drop of actual, usable memory surely is what you want..?

What am I missing here?

[mrk Reviews]

What am I missing here?

Everything ?

It may have larger overheads but if you're upgrading to a modern OS then you need a modern system the same way if you want to play a game how the developer intended then you will gleefully upgrade your gfx card to cope.

There is nothing to complain about when it comes to Vista today with component prices so low.

[Witt3439]

Honestly, what good is it to have 2, 3 or even 4 GB of RAM if it is never used? At least Vista is constantly keeping a catalog of the RAM that is available, and releasing it to do it's work when needed.

Unlike XP, which let the RAM remain idle until it was needed, with Vista the RAM is always at an active state and doesn't have to take the time to "wake up" when needed.

[+allan MVC]

Actually, XP does an excellent job of managing memory. Vista's model is different from XP's, but that doesn't mean XPs' isn't efficient.

[ViperAFK]

Actually, XP does an excellent job of managing memory. Vista's model is different from XP's, but that doesn't mean XPs' isn't efficient.

For computers with more than 1 GB of ram I would say vista's is definitely more efficient and faster as it will make use of it all. Superfetch makes a large difference on my PC, without it some of my apps take twice as long to launch.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Actually, XP does an excellent job of managing memory. Vista's model is different from XP's, but that doesn't mean XPs' isn't efficient.

XP's is surely less optimal the moment something gets paged to disk, as it won't be paged back in until needed. Whereas on Vista, it will be paged back in when memory becomes available (ie. before it's needed).

[+allan MVC]

XP's is surely less optimal the moment something gets paged to disk, as it won't be paged back in until needed. Whereas on Vista, it will be paged back in when memory becomes available (ie. before it's needed).

What's your point? I never said XP is better at managing memory than Vista, just that XP does an excellent job of managing memory. The state of the art has improved with the latest incarnation of Windows, that's all.

[jjrambo]

The bottom line. More RAM, and more RAM, and more RAM. No superfetch or similar thing will speed up your computer but Fast RAM, lots of RAM, and Fast HDD.

I recommend 4GB of RAM for Vista at least if you're using computer the way i use and that's pretty heavy, otherwise 2GB at least.

If you do gaming, hell you want to go with 3 or 4 GB. How can you tell that you don't have memory?

Run Crysis and play it for like an hour and then quit the game. If your Windows has hard time refreshing desktop after quiting the game, it's time to get more memory :)

[faers]

hi im new here sorry for any troble

i wanna to know why windows vista, in my pc, use 754 mB? if im just using SpyBot, Mcafee, ATI CCC, uGuru, NetLimiter, COMODO and Vista Aero Theme (so dwm.exe is the first at the list)

and if the "Total" is the memory what i have, "Cached" is what superprefectch uses (i turned off the prefetch), where is mark by a red circle is what the vista OS really use? (at the next photo)

I turned off the superfetch to gain more extra ram, but this didnt happen.

Edited March 12, 2008 by faers

[faers]

[+allan MVC]

It would be easier if you read this thread. It will answer all your questions.

[faers]

It would be easier if you read this thread. It will answer all your questions.

yes i already ready all the thread

but i already have a question

so vista use at least 754mb?

i just wanna know how much ram just vista use to work normally

so thanks

[+allan MVC]

Vista uses ALL of your ram. The recommended minimum is 512Mb for Home Basic, 1Gb for everything else.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

yes i already ready all the thread

but i already have a question

so vista use at least 754mb?

i just wanna know how much ram just vista use to work normally

so thanks

Windows and all the applications / services you have running are using 754MB of virtual memory.

From that screenshot, you have 515MB of physical memory in use (Total - (Cached + Free)).

[zhangm Supervisor]

Lets face it, free RAM is a decorative item. You could remove all of your free RAM and nail it to a wall, and it wouldn't affect your computer's performance at the moment that you removed it. I have 3 GB of RAM and really would rather it be worn out by excessive use rather than sit idle.

[Unto Darkness]

Vista uses ALL of your ram. The recommended minimum is 512Mb for Home Basic, 1Gb for everything else.

1 GB is the bare minimum. 2 GB hits the sweet spot for Vista.

[Xenomorph]

1 GB is the bare minimum. 2 GB hits the sweet spot for Vista.

This is my advice as well.

[soldier1st]

but with superfetch 3GB is a good spot too on 32bit as it can cache more but still 2GB is the sweet spot for vista,for the x64 put as much as you can afford and as much as ur mobo supports.