Vista set to swallow 800MB of RAM

[imported_Grave]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30128

 

[stash]

lol what a useless article.

What it is it about BETAS that people do not understand?

 

[nweaver]

that there is at least as much debug code as normal code?

that its performance is most likely not tuned yet?

that it's not finished, and so all options are still open?

I'm really tiring of the "Vista Suxxors" and "Vista roxxors" threads. Posts about actual usage, experience, and documented features I don't mind, but the FUD from this website or that...

 

[notfred]

Vista caches commonly used applications is RAM so that they open faster. It frees up that memory if something else needs it. This is an advertised feature of the OS. The person who wrote that article doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: notfred
Vista caches commonly used applications is RAM so that they open faster. It frees up that memory if something else needs it. This is an advertised feature of the OS. The person who wrote that article doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

As does the bleating sheep who posted it. :laugh:

- M4H

 

[xtknight]

Sounds a little exaggerated to me but I wouldn't be surprised if it used 300 MB of RAM.

 

[Unkno]

bleh...by the time vista is out, 2048MB ram would be the minimum for all gaming systems (many systems already have 2gigs of ram already....)

 

[shortylickens]

Even if it doesnt use that much, I still wont get it.

I'm gonna make a cheap socket-A system, install Windows and Office 2000, then retire from professional computing.

Sh1t's too crazy man. And I dont care for Bill Gates acting like Big Brother with MY computer.

 

[blurredvision]

I installed the build 5308 last night on my laptop, and it's buggy as hell still. I'm running it on a Sempron 2800+ and 512MB of ram (64MB shared for SiS video), and it's quite slow. The hard drive churns quite a bit with this build, and windows take forever to open (I'm talking up to a minute or two at times). Startup takes approximately 3 minutes (a guesstimate). I've had several windows (network center, power mgmt settings, even the welcome center window) crash and lock up on me, one of which would absolutely not go away via task manager or anything. A couple of other times took a complete restart of what I'd call explorer in WinXP (the start bar completely disappears for a bit, then "restarts").

Oh well, it is a beta, I can't wait to see what gets worked out. Thinking of installing it on my 3800+ X2, 1GB ram main comp to see how it runs, and to see aero in action.

 

[n7]

Idiocy.

Even with the really old alphas, before it was even beta, Vista wasn't using that much RAM :roll:

Vista is unlikely to use much more RAM than XP when it comes out.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: notfred
Vista caches commonly used applications is RAM so that they open faster. It frees up that memory if something else needs it. This is an advertised feature of the OS. The person who wrote that article doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

As does the bleating sheep who posted it. :laugh:

- M4H

LOL, seriously.

You may or may not agree with what I'm about to say but anyways..
I disagree with notfred in that windows uses as much ram is available and when an application requests the ram, windows willingly gives it up.

I think it's a bunch of bull, I've run applications with windows running default everything and instead of windows giving up ram for the application, windows decides to be a douche and force the application to go into the pagefile :| It's only when I close unnecessary processes, change the themes and make sure it's using as little ram as possible, THEN the same application gets to occupy the whole memory space instead of being shoved into the pagefile.

Saying that windows gives up ram on a whim when an application needs it is simply a dream. Got a game that uses 512MB ram? Like litterally 512MB ram? Well then, one SHOULD be able to install a 512MB stick play that game, open up task manager and see that the game is using 512 or at least very close to 512MB ram, like 475MB of ram. But no, instead the application as you will see in task manager is using only 256MB of physical ram with the rest forced into the pagefile, so when you go back to your game, it becomes choppy since it needs 512MB of PHYSICAL ram. Install a gigabyte of ram and run the game agian, only NOW the game is using up 512MB physical ram with little bits of this and that in the page file.

So now you're thinking it's ludacris to think that ALL of windows is going to be shoved into the pagefile since you're staring right at the task manager. Fine, Install a 512MB stick + a 64MB stick and try it agian. You'll see, sure the game will occupy more physical ram but not much, and it's definately not anywhere near 512MB but will likely be 400MB as windows MUST HAVE RAM.

It's a complete ram hog, plain and simple. It's poorly coded, unoptimized, resource intensive code. Sure I'm no programmer and this is where I'll get flamed with "STFU man, since you can't program you don't know what you're talking about", yeah real great, give microsoft an excuse to bring a POS excuse of an OS out to market. There are so many things microsoft could've done to make XP much more lean, if XP only required 32MB of ram to run at full speed, I'd be more than happy.

But it doesn't and it seems that every release of a Microsoft OS has DOUBLE the memory useage and what makes things worse is that this doubling in system resources it totally unaccounted for, it's just absolutely ridiculous..

I wouldn't be surprised as well if the person who flames my post doesn't read my whole post, cause people are truely that lazy, like the people at microsoft.

If microsoft had memory constraints to work with like coding for a console, this would be a completely different situation but because they're essentially told "what ever it takes", it pretty much allows coders to make code that consumes much more system resources than it should..

Sighs
🙁

If there are errors in this post, I don't really care as I didn't bother to go and read through this post agian, feel free to post the errors, it's your time wasted, not mine.

 

[itachi]

Originally posted by: goku
It's a complete ram hog, plain and simple. It's poorly coded, unoptimized, resource intensive code. Sure I'm no programmer and this is where I'll get flamed with "STFU man, since you can't program you don't know what you're talking about", yeah real great, give microsoft an excuse to bring a POS excuse of an OS out to market. There are so many things microsoft could've done to make XP much more lean, if XP only required 32MB of ram to run at full speed, I'd be more than happy.

that is for a reason you know (the whole flaming bit).. windows is not poorly coded, not unoptimized, but can be resource intensive.. they're simply just trying to do too much. if people didn't care about a ui that lagged by a couple seconds on everything then microsoft could easily skim down quite a bit by loading on demand, and unloading immediately after it's out of scope.
and to end it off.. seriously, what gave u the notion that it's poorly coded and unoptimized? you can't even see the code since all of it's closed source. aside from that, your logic assumes that the statement 'A and B -> C' is reflexive.. 'ram hog' may result from 'poorly coded' and 'unoptimized'; but 'ram hog' does not imply that it's poorly coded or unoptimized.

But it doesn't and it seems that every release of a Microsoft OS has DOUBLE the memory useage and what makes things worse is that this doubling in system resources it totally unaccounted for, it's just absolutely ridiculous..

I wouldn't be surprised as well if the person who flames my post doesn't read my whole post, cause people are truely that lazy, like the people at microsoft.

If microsoft had memory constraints to work with like coding for a console, this would be a completely different situation but because they're essentially told "what ever it takes", it pretty much allows coders to make code that consumes much more system resources than it should..

Sighs
🙁

If there are errors in this post, I don't really care as I didn't bother to go and read through this post agian, feel free to post the errors, it's your time wasted, not mine.

i'm sure they do have memory constraints.. and theirs need to be far more stringent than a simple console program.

 

[Zebo]

And y'll wonder why I love 2000.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Sounds a little exaggerated to me but I wouldn't be surprised if it used 300 MB of RAM.

XP does that just fine after windows update and ATI CCC.

 

[mechBgon]

Vista set to swallow $45 worth of RAM

Fixed 😀 I mean hey, at the prices RAM's at right now, I'm considering 4GB. I used up all 2GB on my WinXP work rig today... :Q

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: xtknight
Sounds a little exaggerated to me but I wouldn't be surprised if it used 300 MB of RAM.

XP does that just fine after windows update and ATI CCC.

I just did an install of XP Pro on a machine yesterday, after windows updates & drivers loaded (i845g), XP was using just 100meg of ram. On my own computer, nVidia drivers installed and a few Mozilla windows open, page file is at 172mb. If that system you speak of is really at 300mb page file usage, it's gotta be taken up by the ATi software.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: Zebo
And y'll wonder why I love 2000.

XP can do that if you know what you are doing.

I had a 350Mhz laptop with 70 something MB of ram that I had running using only 52MB of ram once fully started. Granted that even putting in a wireless network card would use up the remainder, it's just a testament to my first statement.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: Zebo
And y'll wonder why I love 2000.

Yeah, but you pulled the old "task bar at the top" trick. That's known to reduce RAM utilization by 168MB alone. Hax, I say! 😉

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: Unkno
bleh...by the time vista is out, 2048MB ram would be the minimum for all gaming systems (many systems already have 2gigs of ram already....)

/thread

Besides, why is it that people act like we will one day be using floppys again and be booting an OS from a floppy? Same mentality.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: itachi

Originally posted by: goku
It's a complete ram hog, plain and simple. It's poorly coded, unoptimized, resource intensive code. Sure I'm no programmer and this is where I'll get flamed with "STFU man, since you can't program you don't know what you're talking about", yeah real great, give microsoft an excuse to bring a POS excuse of an OS out to market. There are so many things microsoft could've done to make XP much more lean, if XP only required 32MB of ram to run at full speed, I'd be more than happy.

that is for a reason you know (the whole flaming bit).. windows is not poorly coded, not unoptimized, but can be resource intensive.. they're simply just trying to do too much. if people didn't care about a ui that lagged by a couple seconds on everything then microsoft could easily skim down quite a bit by loading on demand, and unloading immediately after it's out of scope.
and to end it off.. seriously, what gave u the notion that it's poorly coded and unoptimized? you can't even see the code since all of it's closed source. aside from that, your logic assumes that the statement 'A and B -> C' is reflexive.. 'ram hog' may result from 'poorly coded' and 'unoptimized'; but 'ram hog' does not imply that it's poorly coded or unoptimized.

But it doesn't and it seems that every release of a Microsoft OS has DOUBLE the memory useage and what makes things worse is that this doubling in system resources it totally unaccounted for, it's just absolutely ridiculous..

I wouldn't be surprised as well if the person who flames my post doesn't read my whole post, cause people are truely that lazy, like the people at microsoft.

If microsoft had memory constraints to work with like coding for a console, this would be a completely different situation but because they're essentially told "what ever it takes", it pretty much allows coders to make code that consumes much more system resources than it should..

Sighs
🙁

If there are errors in this post, I don't really care as I didn't bother to go and read through this post agian, feel free to post the errors, it's your time wasted, not mine.

i'm sure they do have memory constraints.. and theirs need to be far more stringent than a simple console program.

You're partially right I'd say but then every time I think about ram usage and speed of an OS, I keep thinking of Windows 95 and Windows NT, those would be wicked fast on any modern day system, don't see why it can't be similar to that... Newer operating systems should be able to run on MORE COMPUTERS not less.

An operating system that is coded well would allow similar to the same performance on a P133 as it does on a PII400 or a PIII1GHZ or Athlon/P4....(Not saying that the faster systems would run as 'slow' as a P133 but they'd all have similar performance in a good way.. There is no option in XP for "lean mode" where it uses as few system resources as possible. And with the UI disable in vista, it's still a ram hog, which makes me come to the conclusion that it's poorly optimized...

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: Zebo
And y'll wonder why I love 2000.

Are you running SP4 with latest updates? I only get memory usage that low in '2000 when I don't have those installed yet.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: goku
You're partially right I'd say but then every time I think about ram usage and speed of an OS, I keep thinking of Windows 95 and Windows NT, those would be wicked fast on any modern day system, don't see why it can't be similar to that... Newer operating systems should be able to run on MORE COMPUTERS not less.

Sure, Windows 95 and NT used less resources. They also supported a lot less features than Windows 2000 and XP. They were also far less secure. Start tightening things up and adding new hardware support and what do you have? More resource usage.

An operating system that is coded well would allow similar to the same performance on a P133 as it does on a PII400 or a PIII1GHZ or Athlon/P4....(Not saying that the faster systems would run as 'slow' as a P133 but they'd all have similar performance in a good way.. There is no option in XP for "lean mode" where it uses as few system resources as possible.

That's an absurd notion. A modern operating system allowing similar performance on processors 5 generations apart? You're over-estimating the possibilities of code optimization. The comparison to consoles is inherently flawed, because PCs are not a closed hardware platform. If you limited PC hardware to a single type of processor with a single type of video card, a single type of sound card and a fixed amount of RAM, you probably could squeeze a lot more performance out of Windows or Linux or any other OS. As it stands, it's an apple and oranges comparison.

What people don't understand about XP (or any other modern OS) is that it uses the resources you have to make your experience better. Just because the OS is using x amount of RAM when nothing else is running does not mean some (or most) of that RAM will not be freed when another memory-intensive application requests more. Alas, few people have a good understanding of Windows and its memory subsystem. Pick up a copy of Inside Windows if you're really interested.

And with the UI disable in vista, it's still a ram hog, which makes me come to the conclusion that it's poorly optimized...

Of course it's poorly optimized, it's a beta operating system. Very few optimizations have been made to the code at this point.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: goku
You're partially right I'd say but then every time I think about ram usage and speed of an OS, I keep thinking of Windows 95 and Windows NT, those would be wicked fast on any modern day system, don't see why it can't be similar to that... Newer operating systems should be able to run on MORE COMPUTERS not less.

Sure, Windows 95 and NT used less resources. They also supported a lot less features than Windows 2000 and XP. They were also far less secure. Start tightening things up and adding new hardware support and what do you have? More resource usage.

An operating system that is coded well would allow similar to the same performance on a P133 as it does on a PII400 or a PIII1GHZ or Athlon/P4....(Not saying that the faster systems would run as 'slow' as a P133 but they'd all have similar performance in a good way.. There is no option in XP for "lean mode" where it uses as few system resources as possible.

That's an absurd notion. A modern operating system allowing similar performance on processors 5 generations apart? You're over-estimating the possibilities of code optimization. The comparison to consoles is inherently flawed, because PCs are not a closed hardware platform. If you limited PC hardware to a single type of processor with a single type of video card, a single type of sound card and a fixed amount of RAM, you probably could squeeze a lot more performance out of Windows or Linux or any other OS. As it stands, it's an apple and oranges comparison.

What people don't understand about XP (or any other modern OS) is that it uses the resources you have to make your experience better. Just because the OS is using x amount of RAM when nothing else is running does not mean some (or most) of that RAM will not be freed when another memory-intensive application requests more. Alas, few people have a good understanding of Windows and its memory subsystem. Pick up a copy of Inside Windows if you're really interested.

And with the UI disable in vista, it's still a ram hog, which makes me come to the conclusion that it's poorly optimized...

Of course it's poorly optimized, it's a beta operating system. Very few optimizations have been made to the code at this point.

Bold: This is where you're wrong, how is it that when I have 1GB of ram and I try to run a memory intensive application, that that application only gets about 2/3s of the ram that is available? The absolute maximum on a rig with 1GB of ram I've ever gotten in windows XP was about 650MB of ram, why is that?

Italics: Hardware support shouldn't take 50MBs more of ram, thats just absurd since most hardware support is going to be resident on a CDROM or on the HDD it's self, no need to be loaded into memory... And when you increase security, you should NEVER have an increase in system resources, that right there is proof of poor coding... When you increase security, system resources should be about the same not a 50-100MBs difference in ram usage... It's absurd to think that fixing up security holes should require signifcant amounts of more ram, it simply is.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: goku
Bold: This is where you're wrong, how is it that when I have 1GB of ram and I try to run a memory intensive application, that that application only gets about 2/3s of the ram that is available? The absolute maximum on a rig with 1GB of ram I've ever gotten in windows XP was about 650MB of ram, why is that?

How are you measuring that exactly?

Italics: Hardware support shouldn't take 50MBs more of ram, thats just absurd since most hardware support is going to be resident on a CDROM or on the HDD it's self, no need to be loaded into memory... And when you increase security, you should NEVER have an increase in system resources, that right there is proof of poor coding... When you increase security, system resources should be about the same not a 50-100MBs difference in ram usage... It's absurd to think that fixing up security holes should require signifcant amounts of more ram, it simply is.

I'm not sure where your getting those specific numbers from. I'm speaking in far more general terms. New features, whether they're hardware support, user interface improvements, or security features (Automatic Updates could be considered a security feature -- I'm not just talking about low-level code fixes), generally require some higher amount of resources than before. It's the nature of software; in order to market new versions, you need compelling reasons for users to upgrade. New features require new resources.

Consoles are no different in this respect. Certainly late-generation games look better than first-generation games on a particular console. But eventually the hardware is stretched, and new hardware with more resources is needed to create software that more people will want to buy.

 

[WT]

Back in my day, we had 1k to play with, and WE LIKED IT !!! You could type one character at a time, backspace it and type another !!! Ohh, the fun we had typing dirty words one letter at a time ...

you young'uns these days just don't understand what frugality is.