What can you do with 768MB of RAM??

[seewhy]

With all the RAM price dropping, it is not that expansive to get 512MB more RAM to my 256MB system running win2k. But just wondering, other than letting win2k do its thing and manage the RAM, is there anything we can do to tweak the system further with that much RAM. There are mention of RAMDisk, where you can use RAM for Swap files/programs instead of HDD. How can you do that, and is that doable in win2k? Beside that, what are things you can do to significantly boost the performance with that much memory???

Thanks

 

[whizler]

Heck ya there's something you can do:

Install Win2k on the RAMdisk! j/k

 

[Howard]

You could do that... Maybe there are instructions floating around on the 'Net that tell you how to make your own SSD (Solid-State Drive), a storage drive made of SDRAM. My guess is that you need a board that has a battery (so that the memory can keep its data without main power), a board with DIMM slots, a SCSI port, and an in-between chip that translates the data or something like that.

 

[AndrewR]

I remember reading that if you make a RAM disk for running Quake, you'll be the first on the server.

 

[superbaby]

Hey I have 640MB of RAM, how could I use this effectively? Loading Windows into it doesn't sound like a bad idea.

 

[whizler]

Actually, you would need to keep your PC on 24/7 and just hope it doesn't crash...

Probably a more realistic scenario is to load the swap file onto a RAMdisk. Never tried it, however, so YMMV.

 

[Sukhoi]

But, would you even need a swap file with that much RAM? I thought the swap file was only for when your physical RAM ran out of space, which would make it useless to put your swap file into RAM.

 

[Looney]

I would just load Quake3 into the ramdrive! I remember doing that with Quake3 beta on my friends computer. Boy did it fly.

 

[seewhy]

It would be cool if we can load the OS to the RAMDrive, but I heard it is impossible unless you have the solid state drive, which is pretty much a drive made out of RAM.

Moralpanic:

If you can tell us how you load a program to the RAMDrive, it would be much appreciated!

 

[whizler]

I don't know. I've seen computers with tons of memory still using a swapfile.

 

[Vegito]

I maxxed out my cusl2 @ 512mb and 1gb on my bx6r2.. if you run a lot of programs, (excel sheets) it helps.. I was thinking of using a 384MB RAM disk and put the swap on that... but if you shut down, windows has to recreate swap everytime.. it is faster..

 

[urbantechie]

Have many big photos open in Photoshop.

 

[ModemMix]

with 768mb of ram you can brag to your friends about how your dad can beat up their dad.


ModemMix

 

[Howard]

whizler,

add this following line under [386enh] in your system.ini file:

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

What this does is tell the system to use up every single MB of physical RAM before moving onto the swapfile. Therefore, if you use this setting and have 16GB of memory (possible), I don't think you'll ever need to use the hard drive, beside loading things up for the first time.

 

[Howard]

Type in sysedit in Start > Run and then click the SYSTEM.INI window inside the program.

 

[superbaby]

Anyone care to list out the steps to create a RAM drive?

 

[whizler]

WARNING! There is no guarantee that the following will work. In fact, it may just mess up your entire computer!

You'll need to add the following two lines in your config.sys file. To edit your config.sys file, click Start -> Run -> then type SYSEDIT

device=[drive:][path]himem.sys
device=[drive:][path]ramdrive.sys [size of RAMdrive from 4 to 32767] /e

Notes:
[drive:][path] of course means the path to these files. I'd make sure you have them on your computer first. In Windows 9*, they are typically located in the c:\windows\ folder. So the line might read:

device=c:\windows\ramddrive.sys 32767 /e

I found out there may be a 32mb (32747 kb) limit on a RAMdrive But go ahead and experiment.

Reboot your computer. Hopefully, Win 9* will recognize the RAMdrive and assign it a drive letter.

Yucky: thanks for the tip bud.

 

[superbaby]

Great tip for Win9x users, but actually I was looking for Win2k instructions

 

[imhotepmp]

Ram Drive

Straight from the horses mouth
MS

hope this helps

imhotepmp

 

[superbaby]

Wow exactly what I was looking for but damn, I need to compile this thing? What's DDK... is it included in Windows?

 

[xtreme2k]

damnit m$

why cant they just make a utility or whatever that simplify the process of making a ram drive in win2k

 

[superbaby]

In that Ars Technia link I found this:

http://www.jlajoie.com/ramdskNT/

That looks like a more useable product, I will have to try it out when I get home.

 

[Origen]

With 768MB of RAM you can take a nap during the memory check at boot up.

 

[seewhy]

This software might do the trick for creating the Ramdisk RamDisk