Windows Vista RAM question

[Jamtex]

I still find it funny that my Toshiba Liberto with a overclocked 166Mhz Pentium with a huge 32Mb RAM (and a 2GB CF card as another hard drive) running Windows 98SE still boots up and can load up a couple of webpages quicker then Vista on a Core Duo 1.7Ghz with 2GB RAM can boot.

[mairsil]

Before bashing ram usage, bear in mind that XP wouldn't run well with less than 256-512mb, and that 5 years went between the 2 OSs - a 4x increase in ram in that time is more than reasonable

Uh, no, actually it isn't. I have yet to see any real reasons why Vista eats up more RAM than XP. Hell, I'm irritated that my XP currently idles around 400MB.

[Fonzie]

I add something to offtopic, sorry... but it is something that irritate me too ^^

I think there is also something wierd with nowadays OS... my very crap laptop (DELL inspiron 1000 with Celeron 2ghz + 160MB of ram) dont have problem to run Photoshop+Illustrator+Indesign at same time (using XP)...

But the lastest Mac latptop (core2Duo, 1.4ghz, 512MB of ram) barely run photoshop only....

Another exemple is application switching... My Windows98 (depsite its memory issues due to the OS itself) can react to click at lightening speed even with several tools opened... (when u open a folder, or click somewhere). While all the others OS I have or could try (especialy MAC OSX and a bit XP) are just pure lagging... like a boat, you know...

I know the memory management is different and more complex and secure... but where is the point when your Keyboard do not respond imediately anymore... I could saw that on MacOSX, expecialy...

As an exemple of pure processing waste : Why having giant unreadable icons of 128*128pixels jpeg-real-time-scalled while a 16*16 bitmap could do better the job... why?, because its hype? WTF! Please leave processing to our applz! ^^

[peekb]

The one thing everyone misses about Vista's RAM usage: It's pre-caching applications, DLLs and data in empty RAM on your most used apps to speed their launch. You've got 2GB of RAM, why do you want 1.5GB of it to sit empty? Why not pre-load your commonly used apps into RAM so the data's there when you start?

You'll notice that as you start using applications your RAM usage will go up, and then as it starts to hit the upper boundary, it'll start dumping out pre-cached stuff and hover.

As an example, at idle, my 2GB machine uses about 1GB at idle. I'm currently running SQL Managment Studio and one instance of Visual Studio 2005 along with Outlook, Firefox and various other apps, and it shot up to around 1.5GB or so and now it's back to 1GB without closing anything. I'm adding process yet the RAM usage is the same as it was when I started the machine.

In reality the machine is only using 500MB of RAM or so...the rest is pre-cached info that it loads/dumps as required.

Go read up on Superfetch. Turn it off if you want your RAM to sit idle and unused. It's like filling up a glass of water with enough for one mouthful and going back to the sink every time until you're not thirsty anymore. Just fill up the glass!

[the_steadster]

Uh, no, actually it isn't. I have yet to see any real reasons why Vista eats up more RAM than XP. Hell, I'm irritated that my XP currently idles around 400MB.

Well what does XP/2000 do over NT4 to explain the amount of RAM usage? very little - new OSs use more RAM - Its been that way for a long time, and it's unlikely to change.

I add something to offtopic, sorry... but it is something that irritate me too ^^

I think there is also something wierd with nowadays OS... my very crap laptop (DELL inspiron 1000 with Celeron 2ghz + 160MB of ram) dont have problem to run Photoshop+Illustrator+Indesign at same time (using XP)...

But the lastest Mac latptop (core2Duo, 1.4ghz, 512MB of ram) barely run photoshop only....

Another exemple is application switching... My Windows98 (depsite its memory issues due to the OS itself) can react to click at lightening speed even with several tools opened... (when u open a folder, or click somewhere). While all the others OS I have or could try (especialy MAC OSX and a bit XP) are just pure lagging... like a boat, you know...

I know the memory management is different and more complex and secure... but where is the point when your Keyboard do not respond imediately anymore... I could saw that on MacOSX, expecialy...

As an exemple of pure processing waste : Why having giant unreadable icons of 128*128pixels jpeg-real-time-scalled while a 16*16 bitmap could do better the job... why?, because its hype? WTF! Please leave processing to our applz! ^^

Running photoshop CS2? if so it isn't native to intel chips which is why its running slowly. upgrade to CS3 if you can and you'll get a decent speed boost

[mairsil]

I understand that each new OS takes up more and more RAM, but that doesn't mean that the increase is reasonable instead of just lazy programming. :lol:

[graciano1337]

That is why I don't and most likely won't own Vista.
It just seems to much of a pretty pile of shit with visual flare and mass appeal. I'm sure there are some sort of revolutionary features burried in there, but I don't plan on digging through crap to find it until I have to.

But you can play Halo 2 on Vista! Surely that's worth the purchase of a new OS. :icon_bigg

[the_steadster]

I understand that each new OS takes up more and more RAM, but that doesn't mean that the increase is reasonable instead of just lazy programming. :lol:

Well we're agreed there. I was just pointing out that the increase from xp->vista is no more than any other transition

[retro]

Also known as how to kill a flash drive (which can rewrite something like 10,000 times) very quickly!

It isn't a good idea. Flash memory is SLOOOOOW. We're talking slower to access than most hard drives.

I ran some tests with fast Flash memory as virtual RAM in XP. Whilst it offered a small boost over using C: as virtual RAM, it wasn't really worth it - and using a spare hard drive would be faster.

[PhreQuencYViii]

It isn't a good idea. Flash memory is SLOOOOOW. We're talking slower to access than most hard drives.

I thought flash was fast? :confused:

[madhatter256]

Just to clear the smoke and answer some questions. Vista Readyboost is good when you put the system in hibernation. It stores the data (as much as it can) into the flashdrive designated for Readyboost. This is where you see its advantages as Vista will load faster on a Readyboost drive than loadiing from the HDD.