Being that the same questions keep coming up, mostly about the same things, perhaps now would be a good time to consolidate a thread about performance and tweaks that actually work, rather than those silly tweak programs that are usually counter-productive in the end. Contrary to popular belief, short of disabling features that you do not use, there is no registry hack or tweak that will actually make your system any better.
Think about this rationally - if you could gain performance by just changing a single registry key, it'd have already been the default. The things you can turn off that will add meaningul performance are accessible from the OS without resorting to "tweak" programs. Anyone who thinks tweaking is about fixing what is broken is only going to make things worse in the end.
Vista is a very different beast than XP. Vista is far more proactive in using your entire PC to stay one step ahead of you. So by default, it will use some more memory, and crunch the HD at completely random times for no obvious reason. It might appear that something is wrong, but it's quite the opposite. Performance tweaking in XP was mainly about disabling things that utilize resources, but you can not carry that thinking over to Vista, since you may end up disabling something that is beneficial in the big picture. Since the emphasis is on efficiency, features that may appear to be bloat may not be so. But don't get me wrong - there's still plenty of bloat.
In other words, this thread is as much about what to tweak as what NOT to tweak. Most are vista specific, yet I will still list a few carryovers from XP that I believe are too important to not mention.
There are three things you MUST understand about vista before you go tweaking away.
1) What kind of PC do you need for Vista?
The single biggest factor is the amount of memory you have. Vista, or any other OS, does not chew through huge amounts of CPU cycles in the background. Programs run pretty much the same (generally speaking) on ANY OS, all hardware being the same. But newer OSes require more RAM. And RAM is cheap! You don't HAVE to tweak much of anything if you have more than enough RAM, as the vast majority of tweaks is geared towards reducing memory usage.
2GB of memory is about $50 or less now. This is the single best investment you can make for your Vista system. You can spend hours tweaking unnecessary things in the name of shaving resources, and many more hours fixing what you've broken, or you can drop in an extra stick and be done with it.
Vista + 512mb = Bad idea.
Vista + 1gb = Good for desktop applications, pre-2007 games.
Vista + 2gb = Good for 2007 games.
Vista + 4gb (x64) = Plenty of headroom.
Really, its that simple. Really. Seriously.
2) Disk grinding
In XP and every instance before, we've been trained to equate disk grinding with swapping, and the general ugliness that comes along with it. Thats the most common scenario you'd hear it, and if your disk was grinding away for no apparent reason, something MUST be really, really wrong.
You need to get over that. Vista will do a LOT that will cause disk grinding - indexing, precaching, system restore, defrag, etc. It will ususally do this when it senses youre idle (you havent touched mouse/kb in over 60 secs), but occasionally (usually on boot), it will grind away while you actively using it, although ALWAYS at low priority I/O.
When you hear that lovely crunching, even if it isnt slower, it will feel slower. You need to untrain yourself from having that reaction. Nothing is wrong.
3) Memory usage
Vista will precache to fill your memory. It will also keep a lot more in active memory, depending on how much ram you have. The more RAM you have, the more it will use, and this will be reflected in both used memory and cached memory.
No matter how much its using, it will give up as much as is needed to ANY program or game.
Therefore, stop staring at your memory meter, and going nuts over how vista is using 2gb of your 4gb with a single browser window open. Nothing is wrong. Free memory = wasted memory.
So in summation = More ram needed, disk grinding ok, staring memory meter bad. I know its hard, it took me a while to get used to it too.
C O N T E N T S
[*]<<<<<Gaming/Drivers
The time has come that Vista drivers are relatively mature both in 32-bit and 64-bit. The performance difference between the vast majority of games between XP and any flavor of Vista is so small that you'll only notice a difference in benchmarks. Other than a few remaining issues with my X-Fi, I have ZERO gaming/driver related issues.
[*]<<<<<Task scheduler
The new task scheduler is vastly improved over XP's, and allows you to set up tasks much easier, as well as chain them in sequence. This can enable you to make a nightly maintenance task to take care of things while you sleep, without having to worry about the utility apps all conflicting, trying to run at the same time.
I just set the computer into standby, when 2AM strikes, it wakes up, runs the tasks, then goes back into standby. Due to superfetch, when I wake back up, I don?t have to worry about the system being sluggish in the morning either.
Being that such maintenance is now a set it and forget it option, even though it may seem excessive to do this nightly, there's no good reason *not* to.
[*]<<<<<Optimizing for low end machines
By low end, I mean 512mb, 1.5ghz Celeron type machines. To be perfectly honest, you shouldnt be running Vista on 512mb. It can be done, but RAM is so cheap nowadays that there is absolutely no reason to. If youre willing to spend $200 on Vista, you need to be willing to spend $30 on a stick of ram.
[*]<<<<<Bad Tweaks
I left this at the end since most of this is just as specific to XP as it is to Vista, but I'd like to take some time to elaborate on some common tweaks that are really, really bad idea. There is another guide on the net that has covered this quite well:
http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks11.htm
A few really need to be mentioned though.
Memory "optimizers" - Those programs that "clear memory" for you. They're stupid, and you're stupid if you use them. If a program needs memory, it will take it. Clearing memory beforehand isn't going to make the process more efficient, and will likely dump out of memory things that didn't need to be. Vista memory management is better than ever, don't screw with it.
LargeSystemCache - Also set in system options, by setting "Background services" as more important than "Applications". Unless you want your file cache to eat away at the memory of running programs, don't set this option. Superfetch will make the cache as large as it can and should be - this probably isn't going to help you unless your box is a total server that doesnt even have a display.
Any prefetch settings - You don't need to "clean it". It's kept current and updated...there is NOTHING you can do to make the prefetcher any more efficient than it is by default.
[/list]
edit: 2/1 Added a bit about DEP, a few new links, and edited for clarity.
edit: 2/2 Reorganized a bit, added info about current state of drivers, fleshed out audio support.
edit: 2/12 Reorganized/updated a bit again, added specifics about CPU, indexing, and bad tweaks.
edit: 2/28 Added a little more about readyboost.
edit: 4/4 Updated the drivers, a few other little things.
edit: 9/15 Removed some outdated information, updated a few sections, particularly the audio (in its own post).
edit: 12/29 Cut out outdated stuff, added a bit to the beginning.
Think about this rationally - if you could gain performance by just changing a single registry key, it'd have already been the default. The things you can turn off that will add meaningul performance are accessible from the OS without resorting to "tweak" programs. Anyone who thinks tweaking is about fixing what is broken is only going to make things worse in the end.
Vista is a very different beast than XP. Vista is far more proactive in using your entire PC to stay one step ahead of you. So by default, it will use some more memory, and crunch the HD at completely random times for no obvious reason. It might appear that something is wrong, but it's quite the opposite. Performance tweaking in XP was mainly about disabling things that utilize resources, but you can not carry that thinking over to Vista, since you may end up disabling something that is beneficial in the big picture. Since the emphasis is on efficiency, features that may appear to be bloat may not be so. But don't get me wrong - there's still plenty of bloat.
In other words, this thread is as much about what to tweak as what NOT to tweak. Most are vista specific, yet I will still list a few carryovers from XP that I believe are too important to not mention.
There are three things you MUST understand about vista before you go tweaking away.
1) What kind of PC do you need for Vista?
The single biggest factor is the amount of memory you have. Vista, or any other OS, does not chew through huge amounts of CPU cycles in the background. Programs run pretty much the same (generally speaking) on ANY OS, all hardware being the same. But newer OSes require more RAM. And RAM is cheap! You don't HAVE to tweak much of anything if you have more than enough RAM, as the vast majority of tweaks is geared towards reducing memory usage.
2GB of memory is about $50 or less now. This is the single best investment you can make for your Vista system. You can spend hours tweaking unnecessary things in the name of shaving resources, and many more hours fixing what you've broken, or you can drop in an extra stick and be done with it.
Vista + 512mb = Bad idea.
Vista + 1gb = Good for desktop applications, pre-2007 games.
Vista + 2gb = Good for 2007 games.
Vista + 4gb (x64) = Plenty of headroom.
Really, its that simple. Really. Seriously.
2) Disk grinding
In XP and every instance before, we've been trained to equate disk grinding with swapping, and the general ugliness that comes along with it. Thats the most common scenario you'd hear it, and if your disk was grinding away for no apparent reason, something MUST be really, really wrong.
You need to get over that. Vista will do a LOT that will cause disk grinding - indexing, precaching, system restore, defrag, etc. It will ususally do this when it senses youre idle (you havent touched mouse/kb in over 60 secs), but occasionally (usually on boot), it will grind away while you actively using it, although ALWAYS at low priority I/O.
When you hear that lovely crunching, even if it isnt slower, it will feel slower. You need to untrain yourself from having that reaction. Nothing is wrong.
3) Memory usage
Vista will precache to fill your memory. It will also keep a lot more in active memory, depending on how much ram you have. The more RAM you have, the more it will use, and this will be reflected in both used memory and cached memory.
No matter how much its using, it will give up as much as is needed to ANY program or game.
Therefore, stop staring at your memory meter, and going nuts over how vista is using 2gb of your 4gb with a single browser window open. Nothing is wrong. Free memory = wasted memory.
So in summation = More ram needed, disk grinding ok, staring memory meter bad. I know its hard, it took me a while to get used to it too.
C O N T E N T S
- 32bit or 64bit?
- User Interface
- Networking
- Unnecessary Apps and Services
- Windows Security Center
- Audio
- File System
- Application Compatibility
- Power Settings
- Backup
- Gaming/Drivers/CPU
- Task Scheduling
- Optimizing for low end machines
- Bad tweaks
- <<<<<32bit or 64bit?
Have 4gb of ram? Plan on having 4gb of ram anytime soon? Just cant decide? Go with x64.
The drivers are mature, the OS is stable, and aside from a VERY, VERY small population of apps with compatibility problems (many of which have workarounds, ex. Itunes), theres no reason NOT to use x64.
- <<<<<UI
- Aero Glass - Although you might be tempted to turn it off, believing it is bloat, the new 3d GUI is generally faster and more efficient than the old GDI+ one, since it utilizes a previously untapped resource - your GPU. On a dual monitor, 2560x1024 setup, the desktop window manager service uses <1% CPU. Dropping down to vista basic shaved about 50mb of ram, however, so if you?re really hard up for RAM, (512mb/1gb gamer) you might want to consider switching to Vista Basic.
Don?t bother manually turning it off before gaming, if you believe it might case a drop in frame rates; it won?t. There?s zero performance hit.
http://www.firingsquad.com/har...ero_glass_performance/
Glass is automatically disabled when a game runs in DirectX exclusive mode, even on dual monitors ? so if you have a system powerful enough for today?s games, there?s no reason not to use aero glass.
- Dual Monitors - I don't know about you, but one monitor isn't enough for me. Vista support for dual monitors is fairly good right now.
One important thing to note is that if you are using two separate video cards for dual monitors, they *must* be able to use the same driver. So you can't mix an Ati and nvidia card, but you can use a GF7 and GF4 together, for instance.
One thing that has always annoyed me is how the taskbar is only on one monitor. I use the program Ultramon to rectify this.
http://realtimesoft.com/ultramon/
It has the "smart taskbar" feature which will create a secondary taskbar containing only the tasks from the second monitor.
I don't know whether it's just the games I've been recently playing, but it could be Vista - some games don't lock the mouse properly, and you can mouse over from the game to the secondary desktop, making the game impossible to play. First, try alt tabbing out of the game, and then go back in. I'm not sure why, but it fixes it for many games. If that doesnt work, you can use ultramon.
Ultramon allows you to temporarily set your desktop to single monitor while you play the game. This corects the mouse problem, yet it shifts anything from the secondary monitor over to the primary. It tries to move everything back when done, but it's not perfect - a few sidebar gadgets get left behind sometimes, etc. But it's better than nothing, and hopefully will improve with time. If you use dual display, in Vista or XP, GET ULTRAMON - I couldnt live without it.
- Window Animation ? The new minimize/close animations are cool, but get old quick. The animation is far too slow IMO, and I recommend disabling them ? the system feels snappier without them. The animations don't drag on actual performance per se, they just subjectively make the system feel less responsive. AFAIK, there?s no way to speed them up. In advanced system options under the system CP applet, uncheck ?animate windows while min/maxing?. And while you?re at it, you might as well uncheck the fading and sliding, effects which have not changed since Win2000, IMO have never looked good and again, only serve to subjectively slow you down.
I've received several PMs from members saying that if there was any "tweak" that made the biggest difference, this was it. The system feels so much more responsive afterwards - I'm all for beautifying the UI, but not if it slows you down so much. Its personal preference in the end, it has zero effect on resourcves.
- Explorer
Movies and Pictures load as thumbnails and do take up memory, as well as CPU while being initially decoded, so you can disable that in folder options ? ?Always show icons, never thumbnails?. Thumbnails are stored in a hidden file in each folder called thumbs.db - once they are made, they can be reloaded very quickly.
- Sidebar ? The sidebar eats up a good 10-30mb depending on your gadgets, so if you hate the entire idea, no reason to keep the sidebar on, and disable it from starting up in the properties tab of the tray icon. You can turn off the actual ?bar? by right clicking and choosing close sidebar ? any gadgets you pulled off onto the desktop will remain.
I highly recommend against using the included CPU meter, or any others you find online in the gallery ? they use WMI and eat up a decent amount of CPU time themselves ? there are better alternatives out there.
The included RSS feed headlines is also pretty terrible ? it spikes 50-100% CPU usage every few minutes. And if you?re going to use the clock, turn off the seconds hand, which drops CPU usage down from 1% or so to near nothing.
Of the included gadgets, the weather, clock (without seconds) and calendar ones are pretty useful and harmless towards performance. On the downloads side, look up ?express calculator?, ?notes? and ?outlook appointments? and ?outlook tasks? for some useful, lightweight gadgets.
At any rate, if you?re concerned about the gadgets slowing you down while you game, you can set sidebar.exe to low priority in task manager.
- User folders ? Vista doesn?t hide your user folder like XP, it?s easy to find in C:\Users\Username. If you want to keep your documents elsewhere (which I highly suggest), you can change the location of any particular user folder (music, movies etc) by right clicking the folder, properties, and changing it in the location tab. I prefer to keep my data on a separate partition from my OS, and by changing it here, you can do so while maintaining transparency to the user subsystem. If you change the location of a user folder that already contains data, it will also move all the files to their new location.
Unfortunately, this has to be done on a folder to folder basis ? you can?t move the entire user directory to another partition.
- Start menu- There?s little to tweak here performance wise ? you might consider turning off the window previews if they annoy you (they annoy me), but that didn?t save me any memory.
- Autoplay ? Something I?ve always hated since it invariably gets in the way, and causes unnecessary lag, you can completely disable it for everything in the autoplay CP applet.
- Boot/Startup config
You can easily configure startup programs (start menu and registry) by using the system configuration utility under administrative tools.
- Aero Glass - Although you might be tempted to turn it off, believing it is bloat, the new 3d GUI is generally faster and more efficient than the old GDI+ one, since it utilizes a previously untapped resource - your GPU. On a dual monitor, 2560x1024 setup, the desktop window manager service uses <1% CPU. Dropping down to vista basic shaved about 50mb of ram, however, so if you?re really hard up for RAM, (512mb/1gb gamer) you might want to consider switching to Vista Basic.
- <<<<<Networking
The networking applet is much improved. I suggest turning off ?media sharing? and ?public sharing? unless you actually use them for security reasons. If you only have one PC, you can safely disable ?network discovery?. Likewise, if you never use it, disable ?offline files? from it?s own applet.
- Flow Control- In the device manager, for your network adapter, there is an advanced option called ?flow control? which is disabled by default. If you're running a server with heavy networking I/O you may want to enable it, but for most general users, it's just overhead and is best left disabled.
Forget about the old MTU/TCP window tweaking tricks ? vista optimizes it automatically.
- <<<<<Unncessary Windows Apps and Services
I used to be a big fan of disable ?unnecessary services?, only to find out they were quite necessary later. The descriptions given DO NOT always encompass their entire functions. In general, the included services use fractions of fractions of fractions of percent CPU time, and very little memory. In general, if you don?t know what it does, leave it alone!
Under programs and features, you can disable plenty of included but unnecessary apps under ?turn windows features on or off? ? such as tablet PC components, meeting space, fax and scan etc. Uncheck anything you're *SURE* don?t need, and if you?re not 10000% sure ? leave it alone.
I really can't stress this enough - in the past, I've spent HOURS trying to figure out issues with my PC that eventually traced back to services. The ONLY thing you gain from disabling services is a paltry amount of memory, up to 50-100mb in the most EXTREME of cases that you can practically guarantee will cause problems. Unless youre a true enthusiast that tweaks for the sake of tweaking, you will invariably be better served by an extra stick of RAM than every other tweak combined.
- <<<<<Security Center
I'm a believer that the main line of security is and always will be the user. Unless you consistently expose yourself to risks, much of this is excessive and overbearing IMO. That being said, if security is critical to you, or you are a bit of a noob, leave everything on and you?ll be much safer for it.
I want to be very clear: I'm not *recommending* you do anything I mention in the security section - I'm just telling you how to do it if you so desire.
This is a guide about performance, not security, if you're looking for more info about security, see Schadenfroh's guide here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2004933&enterthread=y
- UAC ? I can?t stand it. It?s far too overbearing, asking you for permission for tasks that absolutely shouldnt require admin access. It has also been the source of the majority of my compatibility issues. If you'd rather take your chances than be constantly bugged by it all the time ? you can turn it off here.
If maximum security is your ultimate goal (ie, your little bro uses your PC), you should definitely leave UAC on, and log in as a standard user.
- Automatic updating ? It has a really annoying tendency to reboot your computer overnight without warning you, which can be a serious problem if you have unsaved data open. Therefore I *highly* suggest setting it to download but not automatically install updates.
- DEP - By default, windows only turns on Data Execution Prevention for "essential" windows programs and services. You can set it to all programs, and blacklist incompatible apps. I've read about a rare app that can have issues with it, however I don't believe there is any significant performance hit. Being that its under "performance options" in the system applet, I might be wrong.
- System Restore ? I?ve never been a big fan of it, since I?ve always felt it?s a drain on disk space and performance, and a poor substitute for a backup. The Vista version is much improved ? it creates restore points much faster, and it is the underlying system behind the ?previous versions? feature.
Yet I still don't like it. Unlike the indexer, which runs only while idle, system restore is far more intrusive. It will make a new system restore point every time you install an app or driver. If you put your PC to sleep overnight, it will create one first thing in the morning. The actual effect on performance is pretty light (compared to the sounds it makes) due to low priority I/O, but it can grind away from minutes at a time. It also uses up to 15% disk space of your OS partition as well.
Unfortunately, you can't modify it's behavior and tell it to just run at night or when idle. So if you want to do away with the overprotection, you can disable system restore entirely under ?system protection? in the system applet. This will also disable the previous versions feature, BTW.
- UAC ? I can?t stand it. It?s far too overbearing, asking you for permission for tasks that absolutely shouldnt require admin access. It has also been the source of the majority of my compatibility issues. If you'd rather take your chances than be constantly bugged by it all the time ? you can turn it off here.
- <<<<<Audio
Rather than taking up half the space here about audio, I separated it into another post found here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2096621&enterthread=y
It primarily goes into 3D Gaming Audio and Home Theater applications in Vista, and includes general recommendations on what to use for what scenario, why you should use it, and the inherent problems with each route.
- Indexing ? The first day running vista, it will need to create the initial index. It may be crunching away at it for a while, and this might give you the impression that it?s a resource hog that will always be active in the background, and therefore needs to be disabled ASAP. But once the initial run is completely, you will barely ever notice it again, so give it the benefit of the doubt for a day or two.
Files are actively indexed generally only while you are idle, at a low priority I/O thread. Unless you ALWAYS turn off your PC immediately when you're done using it, you should rarely see it actively indexing.
Indexing frequency - It's completely out of place, but under power options, there is you can configure how often you wish the index to be updated. Setting it to use less power *rarely* updates the index - I set it to low power, rebuilt the index, and it didnt start indexing for days, no matter how idle it was. So I'd stay away from that. And setting it to update more often made it entirely ignore the idle state, and just constantly index whenever it felt like it, even during a game. So set it to balanced, and it won't get in your way when you're using the PC, and will update enough while idle to be useful.
By default, windows indexes *everything* in your user folder. That?s a bit over the top for me, so you can modify the exact folders which it indexes in the index properties ? since I cant imagine ever needing to quick search for anything else, I?ve limited it to documents, music, pictures and email folders. Whatever you do, don't get overzealous and index *everything* on your system - too much of a good thing is a bad thing. You can still search your entire system without an index. Since it may have previously indexed many unnecessary files, you should consider entirely rebuilding the index, so it will thereafter contain only those files you specify.
So turning the indexer off completely may free up some memory, depending on the size of your index. But it won't impact general system performance if it's set up correctly.
This is just a quick rundown - I posted another guide that goes into far more detail about Readyboost and Superfetch, that would be far too long to put here.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2000877&enterthread=y
- Superfetch ? Superfetch is IMO the reason to get Vista. It is the most obvious example of Vista being proactive towards utilizing your entire PC for make benefit of glorious user. Rather than mindlessly caching in RAM the last accessed data like XP, it analyzes the programs you actually use, when you use them, and preloads them into RAM. It also prevents I/O that shouldn?t be cached from being cached ? virus scanners etc. I find that with Vista I rarely if ever end up loading an app from the hard drive anymore.
As far as tweaking, the only option you have is to turn it off by disabling the service. But I *highly* recommend against it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The cached data is viewed by the OS as available memory, so if a program actually needs more RAM, it?ll dump the cache for the time being.
If you?re wondering why after you boot, there is random disk I/O for a minute or two, it?s the superfetch precaching everything, not some inexplicable windows bloat that just won?t go away. Free memory = wasted memory!
What does this actually mean to you from a performance perspective? For desktop apps that you use with any frequency, they will likely start up MUCH faster, directly out of ram. For a game which you play frequently, level loads will be MUCH faster. Vista doesnt care who or where the files it caches come from - it just makes sure the ones you use, whether its desktop apps or game files, are ready and waiting for you, especially if you do certain tasks at certain times. If you code during the day, and game during the night or weekend, you can expect those particular files to be ready for you when its time.
But this does not comprise the entirety of the cache - much of it is still left for the most recently used I/O, trying to strike a good balance.
Theres no way that I know of to view whats in the cache, but if you want to peek at whats being loaded as its being loaded, you can use process monitor.
http://www.microsoft.com/techn...es/processmonitor.mspx
- Readyboost ? Readyboost is by far the most misunderstood new feature. It?s a disk cache, it?s a substitute for RAM, its good and it?s bad. For a very good FAQ on it, read here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarche...2006/06/02/615199.aspx
I?ve found that it does indeed help when you are strapped for memory, even with a slow stick. If you have a slow stick and you?re rarely strapped for memory, I?d leave it out for now.
The thing to realize about readyboost is that in it's current USBkey-centric incarnation, it's pretty much a hack. It is not a replacement for memory, and if you have the choice between more RAM and more readyboost, ALWAYS go with more RAM. Its primarily of use to those who cant or do not know how to upgrade their memory.
THG did a few *valid* benchmarks of it, as most I have seen to this point have completely missed the point and did not test it under a scenario where it will actually benefit. It generally shows an across the board improvement, even with 2gb. The difference is quite minimal at 2gb, since most important data is easily cached in main memory, but it's still something.
http://www.tomshardware.com/20...nd-readyboostanalyzed/
It will work with some CF/SD cards in USB 2.0 media readers, but in order to do so, you usually must first change the policy of the device to ?optimize for performance?. Either choose the device in device mananger or right click drive, properties, choose the device in question, properties again, policies tab.
Microsoft has a readyboost kit with some documentation/tweaks available, which I would love to link to, but it refuses to link properly. Google "Readyboostkit".
In case you want to find out the actual performance of your USB stick by which readyboost capability is being judged, in a command line type in
winsat disk ?read ?ran ?ransize 4096 ?drive U (?U? being the actual drive letter of your stick)
winsat disk ?write ?ran ?ransize 524288 ?drive U (?U? being the actual drive letter of your stick)
And before you go out and buy the ?fastest? stick you can find, keep in mind that sequential I/O speed is not equivalent to random I/O speed, in fact, they are often inversely correlated. Two particular sticks that I know are excellent performers for readyboost is the ?Apacer Handy Steno? and the ?Corsair Turboflash?. If you want to know which stick to buy specifically for readyboost, buy exactly this one, it's the best, and it's damn cheap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?Item=N82E16820233043
You might have found a tweak on the net that allows you to force it enabled on slow drives that fail the test ? don?t bother. It?s disabled for a reason, and you?d be doing more harm than good.
Regarding capacity vs. speed - in general, faster is better. So is bigger.
Personally, I have 4gb of ram, and 1gb turboflash stick. It rarely sees use outside of gaming, but I don't need it to. But inside of gaming, on a really resource intensive game such as oblivion, the difference is VERY noticible.
And at the end of the day, flash is NOT a substitute for real memory.
- Defrag ? The included degfragger is stripped ? no progress bar, no block diagram etc. Fragmentation does not make as big a difference as many believe, and with superfetch, it's even less of an issue. By default, Vista will defrag in the background every three days when the PC is idle, so just forget defrag ever existed, and let vista do it?s thing.
- Swap file ? There is one, and only one, useful swap file tweak. Put it on a separate *physical* drive from your OS, apps, and/or games. Preferably in it?s own partition at the beginning of the disk, to keep it as fast as possible.
When the swap file is on another disk, a single hard drive head does not have to constantly swing back and forth between the swap file, the program it?s trying to load, writing pages out, reading in etc. The front of the drive is also the spot with the lowest access times. I dedicate the first 2gb of my secondary drive to it, and label it S:.
Putting it on a separate partition in the same physical drive is also a bad idea ? it lengthens the physical distance the head has to swing, between the files causing the swapping and the swapping itself, not to mention creates an I/O clogging nightmare.
Changing the size will not affect performance, more is not better, and less can be worse.
- Hard drive advanced performance ? Under the policies tab for your individual hard disks, there is a new option for ?advanced performance?. My understanding is that by enabling this, the data can be written to the hard drive?s cache, but the physical writing to disk can be delayed to prevent I/O backups. I have noticed a bit of a boost in general I/O performance.
If you lose power though, that data may never be written, and worst case scenario, a system file can get trashed and you can?t boot. So if you?re testing an overclock, or doing anything else that will invariably lead to crashing, I?d leave it off until your system is stable.
- Indexing ? The first day running vista, it will need to create the initial index. It may be crunching away at it for a while, and this might give you the impression that it?s a resource hog that will always be active in the background, and therefore needs to be disabled ASAP. But once the initial run is completely, you will barely ever notice it again, so give it the benefit of the doubt for a day or two.
- <<<<<Application Compatibility
Many programs have a bit of difficulty with Vista, but by right clicking the shortcut, you have a few options. First try running in ?XP SP2 Compatibility mode? ? this fixes many apps outright. If it has issue with the aero glass, you can check ?disable desktop composition?, but this will turn glass off for ALL apps while the incompatible app is running. I?ve found only one obscure app that needed this option to run.
- <<<<<Power Settings
Being that aero glass uses the 3d hardware, you?d naturally assume it would lead to increased battery drain, and I?d naturally agree, but those who have tested it have found otherwise:
http://www.tomshardware.com/20...p-vs-vista/page11.html
So don?t fret about that.
In the power options, you have a few new options, dealing with Hybrid hard drives, USB, PCI-E etc, min/max processor speeds and media sharing. I?d suggest going over them to make sure they?re all in right order for your system.
The new ?sleep? mode in vista is a hybrid standby/hibernate. It enters your standby state, while simultaneously writing to disk in case of a power failure. This is a good thing for those with laptops. Desktops don?t have the problem of a constantly draining battery, so you can disable hibernate. This will free up a chunk of hard drive space as big as the size of your system memory, and speed up the standby process.
- To turn off hibernate- type in ?powercfg ?H off? in a run dialog.
Regarding standby in general, there are two types S1(POS) and S3(STR). It is set in the bios. Sometimes, you will have problems booting into windows if you change it after an install, but it worked for me, so if you want to change it, give it a shot, changing it back will boot you fine.
S1(POS) is the old style standby, which leaves your fans running etc. It still saves a decent amount of power. Flicking your mouse will turn it back on.
S3(STR Suspend to RAM) is newer, and basically powers down everything but your RAM. It uses very, very little power, and is much recommended. I actually have to press the ?Sleep? button or power button to turn it back on, which I like.
- Windows won't stay asleep- Check the system event log. The "power-troubleshooter" source will tell you what woke it up out of sleep. If it says "Wake Source: Unknown" as mine did when I was having problems, go to the advanced properties of your network adapter, and set "wake up capabilites" to none. Even though I had disabled wake-on lan in the bios, and unchecked the box to allow the nic to bring wake windows up, it still insisted on waking itself up in 30 seconds until I changed this.
- To turn off hibernate- type in ?powercfg ?H off? in a run dialog.
- <<<<<Backup
Vista has a few new, much improved options for backup, but they?re not perfect.
First you have the standard incremental backup, which will work well for most. Much easier to use, and can browse files, it can be scheduled etc.
The complete PC, disk imaging, Ghost-style backup is also pretty good, but I?ve yet to find a way to selectively browse and restore particular files from the image, which limits it?s usefulness. It?s still a good idea to have a full image of your system in case of total catastrophe.
Although not exclusive to vista (there is an XP version), Microsoft released a utility called ?synctoy? which is fantastic.
http://www.microsoft.com/downl...AF06EB7&displaylang=en
Rather than creating obscure backup file formats, it can synchronize two folders in many different ways. I use it nightly to backup my documents, music and pictures to a file server. It copies the files directly without compression, but pictures and music are already compressed as much as they will ever be, and documents are generally small enough for me not to care. The advantage is being able to access the files directly rather than through an intermediary app. It?s a fantastic little utility, check it out.
[*]<<<<<Gaming/Drivers
The time has come that Vista drivers are relatively mature both in 32-bit and 64-bit. The performance difference between the vast majority of games between XP and any flavor of Vista is so small that you'll only notice a difference in benchmarks. Other than a few remaining issues with my X-Fi, I have ZERO gaming/driver related issues.
[*]<<<<<Task scheduler
The new task scheduler is vastly improved over XP's, and allows you to set up tasks much easier, as well as chain them in sequence. This can enable you to make a nightly maintenance task to take care of things while you sleep, without having to worry about the utility apps all conflicting, trying to run at the same time.
I just set the computer into standby, when 2AM strikes, it wakes up, runs the tasks, then goes back into standby. Due to superfetch, when I wake back up, I don?t have to worry about the system being sluggish in the morning either.
Being that such maintenance is now a set it and forget it option, even though it may seem excessive to do this nightly, there's no good reason *not* to.
[*]<<<<<Optimizing for low end machines
By low end, I mean 512mb, 1.5ghz Celeron type machines. To be perfectly honest, you shouldnt be running Vista on 512mb. It can be done, but RAM is so cheap nowadays that there is absolutely no reason to. If youre willing to spend $200 on Vista, you need to be willing to spend $30 on a stick of ram.
- Use a good readyboost stick (corsair turboflash 1gb - $20!)
- Drop down to Aero Basic, or classic if you're REALLY low end.
- Choose "adjust for best performance" in advanced system settings. (unchecks everything)
- Use classic view in explorer, disable thumbnails
- Turn off sidebar, gadgets, and all audio enhancements.
- Consider turning off indexing, system restore, and UAC.
- Use Opera instead of IE/FF, Media Player Classic instead of WMP11. (Everyone should do this anyway, regardless of spec. )
[*]<<<<<Bad Tweaks
I left this at the end since most of this is just as specific to XP as it is to Vista, but I'd like to take some time to elaborate on some common tweaks that are really, really bad idea. There is another guide on the net that has covered this quite well:
http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks11.htm
A few really need to be mentioned though.
Memory "optimizers" - Those programs that "clear memory" for you. They're stupid, and you're stupid if you use them. If a program needs memory, it will take it. Clearing memory beforehand isn't going to make the process more efficient, and will likely dump out of memory things that didn't need to be. Vista memory management is better than ever, don't screw with it.
LargeSystemCache - Also set in system options, by setting "Background services" as more important than "Applications". Unless you want your file cache to eat away at the memory of running programs, don't set this option. Superfetch will make the cache as large as it can and should be - this probably isn't going to help you unless your box is a total server that doesnt even have a display.
Any prefetch settings - You don't need to "clean it". It's kept current and updated...there is NOTHING you can do to make the prefetcher any more efficient than it is by default.
[/list]
edit: 2/1 Added a bit about DEP, a few new links, and edited for clarity.
edit: 2/2 Reorganized a bit, added info about current state of drivers, fleshed out audio support.
edit: 2/12 Reorganized/updated a bit again, added specifics about CPU, indexing, and bad tweaks.
edit: 2/28 Added a little more about readyboost.
edit: 4/4 Updated the drivers, a few other little things.
edit: 9/15 Removed some outdated information, updated a few sections, particularly the audio (in its own post).
edit: 12/29 Cut out outdated stuff, added a bit to the beginning.
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