Why won't Vista use more memory?

[Obsoleet]

So I put in 8gb of memory, and Vista64 is still only using 2gb of my ram. Do I need to use more apps to get the ram usage to increase with superfetch??

I'd like to see 8gb filled up with superfetched app and game data if I could, I'm guessing it will increase over time but I wouldn't mind if it filled up my 8gb now.

 

[nerp]

This should happen automatically. Superfetch will use all available ram. Can you post a screenshot of the memory usage in task manager? One trick might be to delete the superfetch cache so it will rebuild it. Another option might be to disable the superfetch service and re-enable it. Maybe reboot in between. Have you done any modifying with your page file or set it to a fix size/disabled it?

 

[Obsoleet]

No I haven't tried those things. I was wondering if a reinstall of Vista or deleting the cache might fix it. I'm going to try disabling the service now though, reboot and and see what if that changes anything. I've left the page file alone because I figured that was inconsequential.

 

[Scarpozzi]

RAM is an investment that doesn't always get a good ROI (return on investment).

You have to think of it like this, your core OS takes x MB to startup and even less to run. Each application uses a certain amount. Where having extra counts is when you start running a lot of background processes....or in many cases, when you run poorly written applications (like java apps) that have memory leaks and don't discard memory into the heap when its done using it.

Memory managers are probably keeping your RAM consumption in check.

 

[Obsoleet]

True, but this changes with SuperFetch.

I personally felt like I would've been a fool to not invest in going from 4gb to 8gb for $100 with todays pricing. I mean, that's a hard investment to lose on considering it costs near $50 to put gas in my car.. I considered the ram a bargain and didn't want to miss out on these prices. I'd feel awful if I missed out on that. $100/4gb is just amazing.

As time goes on, more and more ram is necessity, so if I'm going to use 4gb and move to a 64bit OS.. I'm going to go all out and max out my mainboard if I'm going to lose a little bit of compatibility leaving 32bit.

Not that I've encountered any compatibility issues, but still its the principle and temptation to use 8GB ftw. 😛

 

[lxskllr]

Make sure you're accounting for it correctly also. Open Task Manager, and open the Performance tab. Under the Physical Memory heading it shows Total, Cached, and Free. The amount under Free should be very small. In my case it's showing 3mb free of 4gb.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I agree, for the cost of RAM these days, it's a bargain. What kills it for me is that I was able to get 4GB of RAM for $30 thanks to the HP promotion... If I had gotten 8GB, it would have cost me a lot more than that at the time (just because I only have 4 slots and would have to go with 2GB modules). I didn't have Vista64 at the time, so it just wasn't worth it.

You're smart for trying to get the most out of your RAM investment. My statement was just to say that sometimes the system performance doesn't reflect how much RAM you have....it ain't linear. System speed will eventually level off. Indexing is funny....the more you index, the slower the indexing is....

Originally posted by: lxskllr
Make sure you're accounting for it correctly also. Open Task Manager, and open the Performance tab. Under the Physical Memory heading it shows Total, Cached, and Free. The amount under Free should be very small. In my case it's showing 3mb free of 4gb.

Good call. I forgot it broke down cached memory there. Mine is actually showing 4GB total, 3GB cached, and 200MB free. (812MB in use)

 

[Obsoleet]

Ok, I disabled the service, rebooted.. set it back to automatic.. rebooted and it works correctly now. I watched it cache up and I was like a kid in a candy store. I have 19MB free now, 6814MB cached out of 8189MB total. This must be with 1356MB in use.
That's cool.

I do know a lot of guys who swore off Vista immediately after installing it because of the indexing grind and superfetch. I don't know why someone would buy an OS though without reading the new features. I read about Vista and wanted it for SuperFetch alone, and the fact we were finally getting a good 64bit OS from MS to use. I chose to avoid XP64.

I'd love to checkout exactly what Vista decided to cache on a list of applications that it decided to cache from.

 

[Piuc2020]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
Make sure you're accounting for it correctly also. Open Task Manager, and open the Performance tab. Under the Physical Memory heading it shows Total, Cached, and Free. The amount under Free should be very small. In my case it's showing 3mb free of 4gb.

This is right, Vista reports "free memory" as the amount that is available -POTENTIALLY- for an application to use btu in reality all the memory is currently being used, I only have 32mb free out of my 4GB and yet Windows reports 70% available memory.

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
Ok, I disabled the service, rebooted.. set it back to automatic.. rebooted and it works correctly now. I watched it cache up and I was like a kid in a candy store. I have 19MB free now, 6814MB cached out of 8189MB total. This must be with 1375MB in use.
That's cool.

I do know a lot of guys who swore off Vista immediately after installing it because of the indexing grind and superfetch. I don't know why someone would buy an OS though without reading the new features. I read about Vista and wanted it for SuperFetch alone, and the fact we were finally getting a good 64bit OS from MS to use. I chose to avoid XP64.

I'd love to checkout exactly what Vista decided to cache on a list of applications that it decided to cache from.

I guess everything that's on your desktop gets cached and then the rest is based on your usage. Personally, every item on my start menu and desktop opens up instantly and some I don't even use so I think it's not based on frequency of use only.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
Ok, I disabled the service, rebooted.. set it back to automatic.. rebooted and it works correctly now. I watched it cache up and I was like a kid in a candy store. I have 19MB free now, 6814MB cached out of 8189MB total. This must be with 1375MB in use.
That's cool.

I do know a lot of guys who swore off Vista immediately after installing it because of the indexing grind and superfetch. I don't know why someone would buy an OS though without reading the new features. I read about Vista and wanted it for SuperFetch alone, and the fact we were finally getting a good 64bit OS from MS to use. I chose to avoid XP64.

I'd love to checkout exactly what Vista decided to cache on a list of applications that it decided to cache from.

The only way I've found to have any idea as to whats in that cache (initially at least) is to load up the reliability and performance monitor, open the disk tab, and take a peek at what files are being accessed. On my system with 4gb, I've found that after preloading stuff like firefox and outlook, alongside a bunch of firefox cache data, it reads *huge* chunks out of the games I've been playing.

 

[Obsoleet]

That's awesome! I've noticed in games it doesnt take very many level loads for SuperFetch to simply keep that level in ram. It seems pretty adaptive. I can't imagine a Raptor trying to out-level-load a rig with those particular maps SuperFetched..

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
That's awesome! I've noticed in games it doesnt take very many level loads for SuperFetch to simply keep that level in ram. It seems pretty adaptive. I can't imagine a Raptor trying to out-level-load a rig with those particular maps SuperFetched..

True, but imagine a raptor with superfetch. 🙂

 

[j0j081]

If you disable the readyboost service it won't effect superfetch will it?

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
That's awesome! I've noticed in games it doesnt take very many level loads for SuperFetch to simply keep that level in ram. It seems pretty adaptive. I can't imagine a Raptor trying to out-level-load a rig with those particular maps SuperFetched..

True, but imagine a raptor with superfetch. 🙂

After I got vista, I ended up dumping my raptor. Wasnt necessary anymore.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: j0j081
If you disable the readyboost service it won't effect superfetch will it?

Not really, no, it won't affect superfetch. But disabling the Readyboost service also disables ReadyBOOT, since Readyboost controls that. Prepare for longer startup and shutdown times.

Disabling the service isn't recommended and you won't see a performance gain by doing so, so don't bother.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
That's awesome! I've noticed in games it doesnt take very many level loads for SuperFetch to simply keep that level in ram. It seems pretty adaptive. I can't imagine a Raptor trying to out-level-load a rig with those particular maps SuperFetched..

True, but imagine a raptor with superfetch. 🙂

After I got vista, I ended up dumping my raptor. Wasnt necessary anymore.

I highly disagree.

 

[Obsoleet]

I'm curious to see a debate here about this.. because its wholly interesting.
My level loading with SuperFetch is pretty fast.. I don't have a raptor but I have friends that do and the drive noise makes them crazy. It would me too if I had to listen to one. But thats beside the point.

My opinion is that for small file seeks, the Raptor is still gonna be useful. For level loading, nothing is going to beat prefetched data sitting in RAM... because thats its final destination anyway! Loading large levels is really where I personally would like the gain so of course I'm happy. I'm pretty much always the first one in a map in online games like Quakewars, TF2. It was nice when I recently beat Prey using quick save/load how it was nearly instantaneous.

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: j0j081
If you disable the readyboost service it won't effect superfetch will it?

Not really, no, it won't affect superfetch. But disabling the Readyboost service also disables ReadyBOOT, since Readyboost controls that. Prepare for longer startup and shutdown times.

Disabling the service isn't recommended and you won't see a performance gain by doing so, so don't bother.

thanks I'll turn it back on then.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: j0j081

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: j0j081
If you disable the readyboost service it won't effect superfetch will it?

Not really, no, it won't affect superfetch. But disabling the Readyboost service also disables ReadyBOOT, since Readyboost controls that. Prepare for longer startup and shutdown times.

Disabling the service isn't recommended and you won't see a performance gain by doing so, so don't bother.

thanks I'll turn it back on then.

Cool. I sorta wish MS made this more clear since a lot of people think the readboost service is safe to turn off if they're not using USB sticks with it, etc. I'd never have known this detail if it weren't for some obscure whitepaper I read some time ago.

 

[Obsoleet]

Guys, I was over at my buddys house today that I sold my 4gb ocz reaper too, and his Vista install did the same thing mine did.. it only was caching as if he had 4gb total. Disabling/reenabling the service fixed it for him as well. He also didn't reinstall Vista when he put in the additional 4GB.
This is definitely not an issue specific to me, in case you've upgraded your RAM on Vista!

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Obsoleet
I'm curious to see a debate here about this.. because its wholly interesting.
My level loading with SuperFetch is pretty fast.. I don't have a raptor but I have friends that do and the drive noise makes them crazy. It would me too if I had to listen to one. But thats beside the point.

My opinion is that for small file seeks, the Raptor is still gonna be useful. For level loading, nothing is going to beat prefetched data sitting in RAM... because thats its final destination anyway! Loading large levels is really where I personally would like the gain so of course I'm happy. I'm pretty much always the first one in a map in online games like Quakewars, TF2. It was nice when I recently beat Prey using quick save/load how it was nearly instantaneous.

Well, it depends on what you play, and how much ram you have. Its precaching, so for single player games, its not going to preload levels you havent played already. It also shouldnt matter with load/saves, since that would have been cached just as well in XP since its rarely reloading the whole level again and that data has been recently accessed. Where it does help is in multiplayer games where you randomly play the same maps over and over, loading the same data enough times that itll think to stuff it in the cache beforehand. But you'll probably need 4gb of ram for it to make a huge difference with most new games.

Either way, a raptor isnt necessary, since its not like you *need* one to load levels fast. Overall, having a raptor will be faster than not having one, but the sound drives me crazy. After playing COD4 multi for a while, I found that it had precached so much that it loaded super fast as soon as I started, always the first one in the map, and that didnt change when I dropped the raptor.

 

[nerp]

Yeah you're on the money. I enjoy using dual raptors in my system since it does give that extra bit of pep for all disk operations. I took care of the noise issue by using a Lian-Li case with a rubber HD mounting system. The system sits under my desk on a crate and I can't even hear the raptors -- only when I'm really listening for it. Once headphones are on or the speakers are going, I'm not hearing a thing.

 

[Obsoleet]

Noise levels on Raptors probably vary by the generation they were from. My friend has the 150gb that was the newest before the recently launched ice raptor, and in his 900 case it's enough to drive anyone crazy.

I've always liked larger storage sizes and so Seagates in RAID0 is always how I've always used my hardware. When I upgrade my hdds I'll get two 500gb and put them in raid0 again probably. But yes, for habitual games like TF2/CS the precaching is invaluable. If I'm stuck in a game though and have to use a quicksave more than once, I noticed that superfetch doesn't take long at all to keep that data in memory. It's basically immediate with 8gb.