How much memory does winxp hog?

[simsalabim24]

Im trying to speed up my system for better game performance. I am specifically playing titan quest. Anyway I have a geforce 6800 128meg wintek video card, AMD A64 3200mhz processor, Gigabyte nforce 3 motheboard, 1 gig 2x 512meg corsair value select 400mhz ram.

Anyway in an effort to free up some ram, I am closing programs in the task manager and when I close all the unnesacery ones, I still only have around 780megs out of the 1 gig available to me. Which seems a bit rediculous. Is this normal?

Thanks.

 

[Jeff7181]

That's pretty normal. If you need more memory, buy more. It's not worth the time it takes to "clean up" Windows XP when you can buy another gig of RAM for $80.

 

[John]

Yea last time I checked a clean XP install uses around 180-200MB of memory.

 

[Nothinman]

I still only have around 780megs out of the 1 gig available to me. Which seems a bit rediculous. Is this normal?

Ridiculous? How did you come up with the amount of memory that you think XP should be using?

 

[simsalabim24]

edit

 

[imported_FishTaco]

As other posters have said, your install of XP is using a typical amount of RAM. Are you sure RAM is your bottleneck when you're playing? Have you measured how much memory is being used by your game? If its a matter of only needing to free up 10 or 20 MB of memory then you can try to shut down more processes, however if you need more than that you'll need to buy more memory.

 

[Atheus]

I'm playing titan quest with 1GB of RAM and it's smooth as butter. Got an Opteron at 300x10 though, and an x1900. My OS install is pretty spartan and uses about 180MB.

I suspect you're not memory limited, but overclocking it a bit wouldn't hurt.

 

[Noema]

780 sounds quite good. I doubt you can get more on XP unless you started disabling essential services.

Plus, more free RAM won't 'speed up' game performance. You won't increase your frames per second. If anything, it will make games stutter less as bigger chunks of it can be loaded at once into the memory and there is thus less swaping with the HDD.

If you do want more free available memory, get more RAM. It's dirt cheap these days, and with 2 gigs you'll be able to have as many processes running at the same time without sacrificing performance.

 

[sandorski]

Some games will eat >1gb of ram, get 2gb.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: simsalabim24
What do you mean? I did not come up with any number? Thats just what the task manager tells me I have available. I was wondering what the normal amount of memory windows uses.

Try being a little less insipid and a little more helpful there buddy.

I think he means, how did you determine that 220 MB was "ridiculous"?

 

[simsalabim24]

So are we pretty similar in our hardware, other then brands and everything?

I have to run the game in low detail textures and it is real jerky.

oh and it crashes all the time. Dont have this prob with other games.

 

[simsalabim24]

Gotcha, I guess I didnt think the os used this much ram. Duly noted.

Thanks.

 

[simsalabim24]

Okay what and where is the most economical ram for me?

Thanks

The motherboard is This model from Gigabyte:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Mother...roductID=1881&ProductName=GA-K8NSC-939

Dad works at Frys Electronics and I believe on most things is discount is cost +10%

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: simsalabim24
Okay what and where is the most economical ram for me?

Thanks

The motherboard is This model from Gigabyte:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Mother...roductID=1881&ProductName=GA-K8NSC-939

Dad works at Frys Electronics and I believe on most things is discount is cost +10%

Woah cost +10%; I hope you mean -10%. I thought we were talking discount here

At any rate, even with that discount you will probably still find a better deal at Newegg. I believe the lowest price right now is something like $79. Check the hot deals forum also.

-Kevin

 

[imported_FishTaco]

Usually "cost" refers to what the store paid for the item, not the retail price that the public pays. So "cost" +10% can be really good on items with high markup, not so good on items with little markup.

 

[simsalabim24]

Okay so someone said my monitor might be a bottle neck. I have this model:

http://search.reviews.ebay.com/Dell-Ult...D-Monitor_W0QQfvcsZ2982QQsoprZ52109994

It has kind of a slow response time I guess 25ms, would that really make a huge difference or subtle one? I am thinking of replacing it with a new one that has a faster response time. What would be the best 15" LCD for the job. I want to do 15" because I want to game at 1024x768 doesnt require so many resources to game at this resolution I believe.

Thanks in advance.

 

[secretanchitman]

15"? heck no...get a nice 17"/19". 1280x1024 isnt that much of a strain for your 6800nu. if my 6600GT can play most of my games at that resolution, than im sure your card can too. i think your system is totally fine, unless you think you need a video card update (which there arent many out there for AGP unfortunately) or more ram. if you can get 2x512MB for under 100 bucks at frys through your dad, then you should be okay.

 

[hans030390]

HA, Vista uses like 600-700mbs, so I wouldnt' be complaining. If it really bothers you though, RAM isn't that expensive.

Thankfully I'm running on 2gb, so the major ram usage in Vista doesn't bother me.

 

[simsalabim24]

Well the 15" is fine, I just want all the speed I can get so I think sticking to 1024x768 is going to help. No?

Well what would be the most economical 17" then?

Also could my hdd be bottlenecking my system. It is a very old model. Its a maxtor 20 gig 7200rpm ide hdd.

What would be the most noticeable improvement here.

Thanks.

 

[Auric]

220MB is a tad high. Closer to 150 is more reasonable after ending unessential processes. The only way any of this is relevant is if the commit charge peak is well beyond physical capacity and thus results in dreaded paging and thus performance and playability degradation. However, it is important to understand that even given unlimited system RAM, insufficient VRAM necessates paging to system RAM. So, if CCP is only borderline, the best upgrade may be a viddy card with at least equivalent power but more VRAM.

If you are content with 1024x768 then the 6800 will continue to be adequate for newer games longer than if the display was replaced with a 1280x1024 max and games were run at that. There is always the option to run games at the reduced area and benefit from the larger desktop though (as long as it is via DVI with an Nvidia card). Scaling up is an option but degraded quality.

HDD performance is only significant during loading games into RAM and during paging when necessary. Ideally, paging is to be avoided as above. Unless you are talking about general Windows performance in which case it can be the bottleneck to certain tasks (and especially multi-tasking).

I would concentrate on whether VRAM or system RAM is the best upgrade first by monitoring useage during play.

 

[simsalabim24]

How would I monitor the vram and ram useage during gameplay?

Thanks.

 

[Rangoric]

My 32bit windows xp install tends to be 100-120 on first boot. While I have seen as low as 80, and perhaps 61, but that might have been win2k.

Try uninstalling parts of windows you don't need, also see if you can turn off "Pre-Fetch" as that might be a large part of that amount.

(Uninstalling forces windows to load nothing related to those items at all, like if you don't use outlook, you can remove the messenger support and the IE support for it only by removing it)

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: simsalabim24
Okay so someone said my monitor might be a bottle neck. I have this model:

http://search.reviews.ebay.com/Dell-Ult...D-Monitor_W0QQfvcsZ2982QQsoprZ52109994

It has kind of a slow response time I guess 25ms, would that really make a huge difference or subtle one? I am thinking of replacing it with a new one that has a faster response time. What would be the best 15" LCD for the job. I want to do 15" because I want to game at 1024x768 doesnt require so many resources to game at this resolution I believe.

Thanks in advance.

no, even 25ms won't lead to jerky games. it might have ghosting effects, but it wouldn't jerk or force lowering of texture settings etc. i don't have that game so i don't know how mcuh fps you can expect to get from that geforce card. maybe try to find a site that benchmarked that game, might be hard since i've never seen it benchmarked as for ram usage.. i dunno, leave task manager open on a second monitor? i just know it goes down if you minimze the game to look. you should probably get 2gb anyways.