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Win XP Task Manager Performance

G

ginfest

Golden Member
Hello All,
I was reading Maximum PC (Feb 03 issue). there is a story about the WinXP Task Manager. They say that on the Performance tab, Commit charge(K), that if you check the Peak value after running any program and the value is more than your physical ram, adding more ram will show a performance increase. I'm running 512 MB, most times after running a program or game I'll check this value and it's below the amount of physical ram. But when I run the game Combat Flight Sim 3, this value shows higher than the amount of ram I have.
I must note that the Physical Memory (K) section shows 350MB free after boot, and I don't notice much paging althought PF Usage shows from 120-150MB even after boot.
Can any1 confirm that I should add another 512MB? I don't mind the cost as long as it will really increase performance.
I ask because the general consensus seems to be that anything over 512MB is a "waste" unless you are running Photoshop or something similar.
I do use Photoshop but sparingly and it seems to run fine but once again the Peak value is higher than the amount of ram I have installed .
I do understand that if the app or game has to page out, performance will suffer, but outside of some minor stutters in the game mentioned (which may or may not be poorly coded) I don't notice any performance degradation on a daily basis.
Comments?

TIA,
Mike G
 
I wouldnt say that more than 512 is a "waste", however there are few applications that can take advantage of it. If you find that your system is having to page than it would "go faster" with more RAM.

-Spy
 
I must note that the Physical Memory (K) section shows 350MB free after boot, and I don't notice much paging althought PF Usage shows from 120-150MB even after boot.
Click to expand...

PF usage doesn't mean your actually using 120-150mb of swap, only that 120-150mb of the available swap is already committed and *could* be used if needed.

As for the question, the commit charge is basically how much memory your using. You should notice some benefit to always having that amount of physical memory (or more) installed.

Bill
 
Thanks, seems clearer now.
If the Commit is consistently larger than the amount of physical mem when running any program, the difference is swap used. So having more physical mem would help as physical mem is by nature faster than swap mem.
Mike G
 
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