Suggestions on how to keep my ram busy

[LittleNemoNES]

Seeing as DDR2 is so incredibly cheap right now, I couldn't pass up the idea of 8GB of ram for ~$150.

Now I realized I'm not sure how to best utilize it. Any ideas?

BTW, Vista Ultimate x64 (Yes legit from Technet)

 

[Billb2]

Sell 4 gigs or buy a server OS.

 

[SickBeast]

I know that 3D Studio Max can use that much RAM quite easily (along with as many CPU cores as you can throw at it).

I've often wondered if people would pay to outsource some CPU power for tasks like rendering.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Start running lots of VM's or editing large images in Photoshop.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

is there a way to force windows to use more of the ram?

I know about superfetch but I was wondering if there are any tweaks.

THe only thing that comes to mind is to have Crysis on my startup folder and just leave it running minimized 24/7 lol

 

[QuixoticOne]

Vista 64 uses 8G just fine... superfetch, disc cache, for applications, etc.
I maxed out 8G just the other day when encoding video.

And it isn't uncommon to be sitting there with 3G used just between the usual sort of applications, MS office, firefox, visual studio, shell windows, pdf readers, help browsers, etc. etc. etc.

You could always run a distrubuted computing project like seti@home, folding@home, rosetta@home, etc.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=1818634&enterthread=y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...ted_computing_projects

 

[LittleNemoNES]

thanks, guys -- keep em coming

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: gersson
is there a way to force windows to use more of the ram?

I know about superfetch but I was wondering if there are any tweaks.

THe only thing that comes to mind is to have Crysis on my startup folder and just leave it running minimized 24/7 lol

You don't need to force Vista to use more, over the course of normal usage it'll take care of that by itself. On reboots it'll have to repopulate the cache but again, the more you use your PC normally, the smarter and faster it is about repopulating your cache.

For Crysis there's a CFG line option e_precachelevel = 1 to load textures for each level so you don't have to leave it running 24/7, although that's certainly one benefit of having more RAM. You'll be able to leave a game running and do non-gaming tasks or even run multiple games or game instances simultaneously without having to worry about RAM and system slowdowns.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well vista is probably using it all anyway, so you're pretty much set. You'll have a few gigs left over for your regular apps.

On serious note, install VMware and mess around with various OSes, setup test environments etc. Some graphics design tools may take advantage of it (such as 3DSmax like suggested, maybe also Autocad, or even photoshop when dealing with super huge images)