Flunk, from our forums, has explained some of the differences between Vista and XP’s memory management, and I wanted to highlight his comments here.
I think you may be a bit confused by the way that Vista manages memory. The memory management system in Vista is completely new it is actually designed to fill almost all memory on any system all the time. It does this by caching data from the hard drive that you use frequently (Superfetch). This can speed up drive access because it is cached in RAM (especially if you have a lot of RAM).
You can’t use the free ram displayed in the task manager as a metric to the amount of RAM that is free for use. When more memory is requested windows pages off the cache to virtual memory (or a readyboost flash drive) to free physical memory.
The best way to judge subjective performance is to use the machine for about week to see how it works. I have used Vista on a Athlon XP 2500+ with 1GB of RAM and found it very responsive.
I am not saying Vista is not more resource intensive than XP (because it obviously is). Just that the metric you are useing to measure RAM useage does not mean anything. Even on systems with 4GB+ the memory usage will be constantly 90%+.
If you feel like reading about this.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2163
Now this does make me feel a bit better. Vista is still of course a resource hog, but it’s a resource hog that I can respect a lot more. I only now want to know ad hoc how much memory that Vista cache is utilizing in real time. I’m sure there must be a feature in there to see that.
Mind you, I guess this wouldn’t change the views of the business customers who make up the majority of those asking to downgrade to XP. For them, XP SP2 is stable and reliable. Meanwhile, Vista has AeroGlass which business users don’t care for and view as a deterrent because of its intense graphics needs (even though AeroGlass can be disabled). And more importantly, business users will inherently have a huge number of initial bugs due to its relatively new status and inherent complexity. Thank goodness for SP1, huh?
And while it’s not enough for me to want to upgrade from XP, it does make me more open to having Vista pre-installed if I buy a new computer. Thanks for the info, Flunk.
IMO there’s no reason not to have at least 2GB of ram in a system now, whether it’s your main desktop, or a laptop you’ve been using for a few years. Ram is cheap, buy it, install it, and enjoy :)
Yeah, I agree with you^
This really changes my opinion about Vista, now I don’t see it as a flashy RAM eater.
Why not eating memory? what the benefit of empty RAM if every click and other the system will call files from the hard drive and wast alot of time and downgrade the system performance. its true the Vista may have minor bugs, and its ture that its more demanding than XP, but look at the bright side, we have OS that utilize your hardware to the maximum……..by the way to I upgrade my system memory from 2GB to 3GB………….Memory is CHEAP ;)
There is nothing fundamentally new in Vista memory management. Any good virtual memory system will try to find some use for as much memory as possible, even if it is only of trivial value. Vista is simply more aggressive in this attempt and uses a number of new methods.
A virtual memory system uses both RAM and disk to store it’s code and working data. RAM is typically much too small to store all of this code and data. This will be true even on systems with more than 2GB of memory. The system will attempt to keep frequently used data in RAM while the remainder will be kept on disk. RAM might then be thought of as a cache. A fundamental principle of cache design is that it must kept full. Free memory is wasted memory and the enemy of performance.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA
if you upgrade to vista plan to have 1/3 of your hd free so that it can set aside the ‘freed up’ memory. if not it will bsod the shit out of you because it has nowhere to dump it’s memory when opening another memory hogging program, or just when having alot of things open
i use my computer as my legit recording studio computer and vista’s a disaster for that since vista needs to preread things before they can be executed. (obvious example; a large exe install file 500mb-1gb, it’ll take 15 or so minutes just to get the ‘install’ cuz it needs to analyse the file first) for heavy audio editing it’s simply a disaster because of the way vista handles reading files and its memory.
not to mention opengl purposely nerfed in vista
as well as rewiring being completely uncompatible with vista
i should have installed xp the day i got the computer i never had any problems with xp when using it for gaming and recording.
True, a full memory is best because that means the overall performance will go up; but only if Vista can dump it fast enough. If you keep a constantly full Memory cache, and can’t dump it fast enough when something new comes in, you’ll still run into a performance hit.
So, in the final analysis re Vista memory managent, or not, should an independent or stand-alone memory manager program be installed on my Vista 1MB RAM system? I’ve applied the max performance tweaks mentioned. Set ‘plugged in’ at 65%, but not sure how to accurately, if possible, measure any performance gain or loss. Anybody familiar with this?
thanks
Vista’s memory management is very good, there is no need or benefit in any kind of external memory manager. Using one may result in more free memory but this will almost always impair performance. Free memory is the enemy of performance. I know that this is difficult to understand and goes against the common perceptions of how memory should be managed. RAM is used essentially as a cache for your data on disk. This data will consist of application code and data, system DLL’s and the pagefile. A fundamental principle of a cache is that it must be kept full at all times. This is not some new fad in computer design. It is a mature technology that has been used in large computer systems since the 1960’s. Microsoft first used it in NT3.1, released in 1993. Virtually all modern operating systems are using it. It has been extensively researched and tested for many years.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA