I have 4GB of Ram in Vista Ultimate 64-bit but I'm running out of memory?

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: eboughey
I still don't see where anyone has told you how to uncache the memory.

I actually need 800m of that memory to create a virtual drive and I can't find out how to release it. The Vista resources won't let it go for me to create the ram disk.

If someone requests memory, the supercache memory is available for allocation, there is no reason to 'free' it as the allocator can still allocate from it.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: wired247

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: Dari
The computer says I only have 16MB of free ram and over 2200MB cached. How do I uncache my memory? This is beyond ridiculous.

Don't be alarmed, that is how Vista works. It aggressively fills the cache. RAM will be released as it is needed.

This is a pretty common outcry as folks don't understand the huge difference in the way XP and Vista handle RAM.

A big +1 to this.......



VISTA IS USING YOUR RAM INTELLIGENTLY... don't be alarmed

QFT

 

[mb]

Originally posted by: Harvey
I'm afraid the best answer is still XP. My new Compaq lappy with 2 GB of RAM took forever just to shut down, let alone do any real work, until I UPgraded it back to XP.

Give Vista a couple of years. By then, M$ may have debugged Vista enough to be something more than a poor solution in search of a non-existent problem, and the hardware that will be fast enough to handle the bloat will be cheap enough to afford and in wide distribution.

Of course, that same newer, faster, cheaper hardware will probably run like a slug under whatever newer, more bloated OS they'll be shoving on us, then.

I wouldn't expect a senior mod to be such a troll :thumbsdown:

While I disagree with Harvey's statement, he posted it as a user. Commenting on his mod status is a mod callout and next time will result in a vacation. bsobel

 

[postmortemIA]

I disagree that unused RAM is wasted RAM. What Vista does results in bigger energy bill, and less battery life for laptop users. There's no way that you'll use all of the cached data by prefetch everytime, but it is gonna load from hard disk into RAM everytime.

Imagine that you have start-up program that reads 2GB/4GB file everytime you start the windows. You'd get pissed off pretty soon on HD activity. That is what vista essentially does.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I disagree that unused RAM is wasted RAM. What Vista does results in bigger energy bill, and less battery life for laptop users. There's no way that you'll use all of the cached data by prefetch everytime, but it is gonna load from hard disk into RAM everytime.

Imagine that you have start-up program that reads 2GB/4GB file everytime you start the windows. You'd get pissed off pretty soon on HD activity. That is what vista essentially does.

Im guessing your not familiar with the new IO priority system.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Pabster
This is a pretty common outcry as folks don't understand the huge difference in the way XP and Vista handle RAM.

XP did the same thing, but the caching was not as intelligent. I think it kept track of what should be cached all the time. Vista goes a step beyond that and caches things based on time of day and who's logged in.

how Windows XP Prefetch works

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Pabster
This is a pretty common outcry as folks don't understand the huge difference in the way XP and Vista handle RAM.

XP did the same thing, but the caching was not as intelligent. I think it kept track of what should be cached all the time. Vista goes a step beyond that and caches things based on time of day and who's logged in.

how Windows XP Prefetch works

XP didnt' really do the same thing. There was no memory priority and no io priority systems.

 

[Pabster]

XP's "Prefetch" was an infant compared to Vista. It's night and day. (Superior, that is.)

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I disagree that unused RAM is wasted RAM. What Vista does results in bigger energy bill, and less battery life for laptop users. There's no way that you'll use all of the cached data by prefetch everytime, but it is gonna load from hard disk into RAM everytime.

Imagine that you have start-up program that reads 2GB/4GB file everytime you start the windows. You'd get pissed off pretty soon on HD activity. That is what vista essentially does.

You've got it backwards. This system results in less power usage.

Sure, it accesses the HD a lot on boot, but will access the HD less thereafter, also giving it the opportunity to spin down more often. Suspend to RAM (sleep) works very well on laptops as well - my laptop drains about 10% battery per 24 hours left in sleep mode. One button and its back on in 5 seconds, no booting, no refilling of the cache, its all there.

 

[SilthDraeth]

Originally posted by: Harvey
I'm afraid the best answer is still XP. My new Compaq lappy with 2 GB of RAM took forever just to shut down, let alone do any real work, until I UPgraded it back to XP.

Give Vista a couple of years. By then, M$ may have debugged Vista enough to be something more than a poor solution in search of a non-existent problem, and the hardware that will be fast enough to handle the bloat will be cheap enough to afford and in wide distribution.

Of course, that same newer, faster, cheaper hardware will probably run like a slug under whatever newer, more bloated OS they'll be shoving on us, then.

Harvey, I see your operating system analysis is as insightful as the political propaganda you spout. Stick to the P&N sections of the forums, at least there one expects to argue with people that have no idea what they are talking about.

 

[NoStateofMind]

The only time I had a problem with Vista Memory usage was after I downloaded the Crysis demo (1.5GB) onto my desktop and tried to install. Took over a half hour for it to complete. The clue as to why it took so long on my system (E6400 @ 3.2Ghz 2GB RAM Vista 64) was just mentioned. I had the entire 1.5GB file on my desktop. Under heavy CPU usage and page file seemingly maxed out it finally completed 30min later. Is this Vista's fault? Hell no! I should have downloaded the file to "My Documents" instead of my desktop and I could have avoided that situation. Moral of the story, its not always Vista's fault, more than likely, the problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

 

[clarkey01]

I'm pretty sure Vista uses ram in such a way that if you add more, it will use more.

I built my system with 2GB to begin and Vista used about 700 MB idle after it loaded my applications.

Now I have gone to 4GB it uses about 1.2-1.3 GB.

It runs fine ;-)

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
The only time I had a problem with Vista Memory usage was after I downloaded the Crysis demo (1.5GB) onto my desktop and tried to install. Took over a half hour for it to complete. The clue as to why it took so long on my system (E6400 @ 3.2Ghz 2GB RAM Vista 64) was just mentioned. I had the entire 1.5GB file on my desktop. Under heavy CPU usage and page file seemingly maxed out it finally completed 30min later. Is this Vista's fault? Hell no! I should have downloaded the file to "My Documents" instead of my desktop and I could have avoided that situation. Moral of the story, its not always Vista's fault, more than likely, the problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

Why does it matter where you save the file? I'm using XP, and this restriction on where I should and shouldn't save files is definitely not making me more enthusiastic about Vista.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Originally posted by: munky

Why does it matter where you save the file? I'm using XP, and this restriction on where I should and shouldn't save files is definitely not making me more enthusiastic about Vista.

There is no "restriction". Its just that when a huge file sits on your desktop, I think its the same with XP and Vista, its cached into RAM. For a test, open task manager and click the performance tab. Notice the amount of RAM in use. Go into "my documents" (or where you have a large file) and drag and drop the file on to the desktop. After Task Manager settles, and you have closed My Documents, your idle RAM usage should have increased by about the same size as the file you placed on your Desktop.


Hmmm, after testing this in real time. I am unable to reproduce the same RAM usage as before even when placing a bigger file on my desktop. For some reason, I thought or was told that items that sit on your Desktop are cached into RAM. Could it be that the Crysis.exe caused this problem? It's looking that way now, but I don't know for sure. It could have been an earlier release of the .exe that maybe didn't use proper RAM allocation but even that is out of the scope of my understanding ATM. Anyways, I'm going to see if there is any known issues like this with Vista.

 

[Nothinman]

Most likely it was just the fact that the file you downloaded, the temporary files it extracted to do the installation and the target installation directory were all on the same drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I disagree that unused RAM is wasted RAM. What Vista does results in bigger energy bill, and less battery life for laptop users. There's no way that you'll use all of the cached data by prefetch everytime, but it is gonna load from hard disk into RAM everytime.

Imagine that you have start-up program that reads 2GB/4GB file everytime you start the windows. You'd get pissed off pretty soon on HD activity. That is what vista essentially does.

+1

It's an agressive optimization, one that has questionable utility for many people, and lacks the ability to disable this optimization in any fine-grained way.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
The only time I had a problem with Vista Memory usage was after I downloaded the Crysis demo (1.5GB) onto my desktop and tried to install. Took over a half hour for it to complete. The clue as to why it took so long on my system (E6400 @ 3.2Ghz 2GB RAM Vista 64) was just mentioned. I had the entire 1.5GB file on my desktop. Under heavy CPU usage and page file seemingly maxed out it finally completed 30min later. Is this Vista's fault? Hell no! I should have downloaded the file to "My Documents" instead of my desktop and I could have avoided that situation. Moral of the story, its not always Vista's fault, more than likely, the problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

What are you saying? That there is a noticable difference between accessing/installing files from different directories on the HD? That should NOT be so. It does sound like an OS bug. There should be no difference.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: SilthDraeth

Harvey, I see your operating system analysis is as insightful as the political propaganda you spout. Stick to the P&N sections of the forums, at least there one expects to argue with people that have no idea what they are talking about.

SilthDraeth -- I see you're ignorant of the large backlash against Vista by users who would rather have Microsoft release fully functional operating systems that don't knock fully configured entry level systems to the floor, rather than beta testing each version of Windows on the public for years before it works anywhere near their hype.

I didn't post a general, unsupported rant about Vista. I said that Vista needs a couple of years to develop, and FOR NOW, XP is still the best answer. I have no doubt that many of the technological advances started in Vista will eventually evolve into stable, useful, and even better resources, but like every previous version of Windows, Vista is a premature resource hog that also requires investing hundreds of dollars or more in new software to accomplish the same thing we were already getting done with earlier versions of the same products and requiring far less overhead. AFIC, it's an inexpensive, premature solution in search of non-existent problems.

That is my conclusion based on what I have observed, including the fact that my own brand new Compaq laptop with an Athlon 64 X2 with 2 GB of RAM runs much faster and is far easier to use under XP Pro than it was with the Vista Home Premium that came with it.

I didn't attack you or anyone else, personally. I posted a direct reply to the OP's question. If you disagree with what I said, try replying with facts, instead of personal insults.

However, since you raised the issue, if your insight and understanding of operating systems is as pathetically vapid as your understanding of how your Traitor In Chief and his gang of traitors, murderers, torturers, war criminals and war profiteers has raped our nation and our Constitution, you really should consider going back to less intellectually demanding forums like the kiddies' sandbox in OT. :laugh:

 

[SilthDraeth]

Bravo Harvey.

I actually apologize for the personal attack. It was unwarranted. As for your laptop, I also have a Turion X2 notebook, and I run Vista 64. Mine ran fine with 2GB of RAM, and runs great on X64 with 4GB. I have had zero hitches. My wife never even asks for my assistance on the PC I built for her, and she is running Vista X64. SO I feel that people that are having problems are creating them themselves.

It is hit or miss.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

What are you saying? That there is a noticable difference between accessing/installing files from different directories on the HD? That should NOT be so. It does sound like an OS bug. There should be no difference.

This situation only happened once with that one file. It was big, like 1.5GB big. Page file and CPU usage were pretty much maxed. After deleting the file off of my desktop (after installation) page file and CPU usage dropped to normal areas. How or why this happened I am not sure. I think nothingman knows more about this stuff so I'll take his explanation.