Forgot to add this:
All that I’ve said above done on a computer w/ multithreading capability(Hyperthreading or better yet multi-core CPU’s)will further enhance this by the CPU’s ability to process more than 1 thread at a time.
Sorry this will leave out most laptops at this time.
The other thing I didn’t state is that the HDD’s can not only be read/written to concurrently but INDEPENDENTLY as well meaning virtually no interruptions when processes are occurring.
I, too, have been having trouble with Vista slowing down my computer -and I’m no gamer. I do some intensive online work and frequent page changes with multiple browser windows open - and my system reaches a point where even with only one browser window open, I can’t refresh or open a new window. It’s like a cascade crash, except the system seldom goes completely down - just refuses to move on in the program I’m using.
I’m starting to hate my new computer although is has more RAM than I’ve ever had in a computer as well as hard drive memory. I say, If Windows is going to turn my entire memory into cache, then give me a way to dump the cache easily!!!
Hey,
About harddrives:
Harddrives are slower, they have slower seek times. Get a ramdisk instead that will load all temporary files into the ram space and that data will be available alot faster due to less seek time (apparently its zero seek time)
Some photoshop people use a harddrive as a scratchdisk, dont do that, use memory instead. As scratchdisks are only used for temporary files.
So Get a ramdisk, get the maximum amount of ram the ramdisk can handle and use that.
if you want to store information into the ramdisk such as applications and so on, get one that allows you to save the ramdisk as a image file that can be reloaded on boot. That way it appears as a normal harddrive.
Vista is a memory hog, it doesnt allow you to selectively choose on how you want vista to manage your memory. There isn’t alot of flexibilty. I guess thats what happens when you get attached to microsoft ease of use functionality and trust microsofts knowledge.
Shouldn’t the end user choose what and how he wants vista to manage the memory side of things. Microsoft needs to work on vista memory management alot more cos as far as im concerned vista is useless unless it can perform better with memory.
Ben
I tried Vista Home Premium for a few days on my laptop. Eventually the near-constant hard drive activity drove me crazy, so I turned off SuperFetch, indexed search, etc. That solved the hard drive access issue, but Vista still took up almost 500mb of memory after a fresh boot. I’m back to XP, and it uses closer to 100mb. And things are snappier even without any fancy statistical algorithm predicting what I’m going to use.
i didnt read all the comments but i think before running your game try running a free ram program it will get rid of all the ram you dont need and put it into free ram so when your gaming it wont be lagging etc…
I had upgraded to a maxed out PC for gaming. It smoked. I could run BF2 on all maxes and get full frames. After a couple weeks, my games started stuttering for the first few minutes of play and they would crash with memory dll erros. After reading this, I stopped Superfetch. No change. I then turned it to manual and restarted. Wow! The stuttering and errors were gone! I haven’t noticed any difference in application performance. Anyone gaming should set SuperFetch to manual in my opinion!
Well I’m sold. I just upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate x64. I too had heard the horror stories about Vista and memory usage, I was so wary about it in fact that I was debating on dumping the WinNT platform altogether and going to Linspire if I had to dump Win2K (Win2K’s light footprint on a fast modern box properly optimized runs like greased lightning). I always found XP to be a pig on both resources and speed.
I’ve heard some horror stories about the 32-bit versions of Vista; I’m not sure if it would be worth the upgrade to Vista from XP if you’re not going to jump into the x64 platform; memory addressing is much quicker, dual channel DDR2 configurations it can make proper use of. If you’re going to upgrade from what I’ve seen I’d certainly say wait for a x64 box then go straight to the x64 version.
Re: the aggressive caching. Yes I was very worried after first install. I thought my 2Gb of memory would carry me through for a while (was nice seeing 1700Mb free on my W2K load), and seeing that Vista was using over 50% of my memory just on bootup. I was looking around poking around the system to figure out what’s going on but found out it was SuperFetch.
Performance wise, I have to admit I was wrong in my pre-Vista judgements. I expected Vista to be like XP with lead legs (whereas I considered XP to be like W2K with lead shoes). I’ve never had a computer that’s more responsive than this one with Vista. Opening windows is instantaneous for most tasks. Dreamweaver and Office 2003 are two culprits for not being as zippy as I’d like, same with Vegas. They obviously werent written with Vista in mind I’m sure the newer versions will be a bit snappier.
The 32-bit apps run fine, I’m just on the hunt for the x64 versions of everythingnow. I can totally tell the difference; (IE 32 vs IE z64 for example). Its not so much that they have faster throughput in x64, it’s just that FEELING of it working faster because it’s so much snappier.
Once you get a taste of a 64bit OS and some 64bit apps you get addicted fast. I was actually only going to do a trial install of Vista Ultimate… I was backed up and ready to go back to W2K. I’m sticking with it, much to my own surprise.
My Vista does that too! is there a way to stop that?
The last paragraph sums it up perfectly, “The less free memory I have, the better; every byte of memory should be actively working on my behalf at all times. However, I do wish there was a way to tell SuperFetch to ixnay on the oadinglay when I’m gaming.”
For being so smart, Vista as an OS fails in my honest opinion. Full Screen means, STOP DOING OTHER SHIT, and LET ME PLAY!
Hello All,
Some of the posts on here are fantastic and helpful but alot of you are coming on here whining why Vista isn’t working while running less then 2gb.(shaking head) BUY MORE RAM. If you still have problems then start complaining. Leave the forum open for people with real problems instead of causing someone to read for an hour not getting anywhere fast. If you would read around the web you would see that Vista needs more ram. It is cheap so go buy some. If you can’t afford then watch t.v. Man some of the builds you guys are talking about here with vista installed is rediculous.
Now onto the problem.
System spec:
mobo: ASUS p5k deluxe
cpu: q6600 GO stepping
Ram: 2X2 Gb Patriot Extreme pc6400
video: 8800 GForce Ultra
Now I am far from an expert. I built this computer for one perpose only and that is to game with. I have only 3 games installed. Now, When I play my game Dungeons and Dragons Online, I have about 2.1gb of ram being used. While running around the world my frame rates drop down to a stutter everyonce in a while which seems to be linked to the hard drive. The hdd light is flashing non stop and seems to realy flash fast when I get the slow down. Trying to troubleshoot I went into performance monitoring and found some meters that monitor cpu, hdd, memory etc. I can see which programs are running underneath these meters and beside the game that I am playing it has a hard fault per second column. I was getting like 0 to 140 hard faults per second. At the same time my Hdd is thrashing like crazy. ( It would go from 0 up to around ~ 140 and back to 0). I believe this is the cause of my poor gaming performance.
Now I have read that Hard faults isn’t realy a fault but is just the computer working with the hdd for paging files. what I don’t understand is why vista is paging files under this game? Why isn’t it using the ram first then the virtual memory? If this is superfetch working then it should show up under different apps shouldn’t it? If I have 4gb of ram shouldn’t the game run completely off the ram once the game is loaded into it? Can someone explain to me why I am seeing hard faults per second from this game and how to correct it? I am going to test tonight to disable Superfetch and indexing but don’t see how superfetch can be the cause as it is listed under the game I am running.
Ayways, waiting on you’re replies
thanks.
So what about memory optimizers in Vista (Free RAM XP Pro etc.)?
It brokes cache idea. I do not use these softs in Vista. I thing it is right.
Are you stupid or something? Ram needs room to breath if you run 100% ram usage your system will slow way down. Its not at all like cache where the data is constantly being flushed are refilled, ram loads data that is used for long periods of time and is all ways searched from bit 1(1Mb is the beginning of extended memory) up so if your running a lot of small files in extended memory with a 3 gig system and your ram is full whatever is in the 3000000-3145728 bit addresses could take a while to be found and the cpu ends up calling for it from the hard drive instead. Superfetch needs scraped its flawed and one of the biggest reasons hardcore gamers are holing back from getting vista. It needs to drop data that has not been accessed in a few minutes not find data that i accessed a few hours ago just in case I need it again. MORE FREE RAM = LESS HARD DRIVE DELAYED READS, WHICH MEANS HIGHER FRAME RATES AND LESS “OUT OF MEMORY” LOCKUPS/FREEZING.
Bottom Line People
Vista looks preety but is one big pain in the balls for gaming
Microsoft fix this now!
Just a quick shoutout: I can see you’re still using the task manager to check your system’s performance.
There is, however, an alternative (by Sysinternals cum Microsoft, no less). It’s called Process Explorer. Check it out! (www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/)
I agree. Vista is less gaming friendly. Thanks for the Vista memory explanations. I was wondering about this.
Hey! thank you for this! You really cleared up a lot of confusion for me!
Keep it up!
P.S. Vista is better than XP. seirously.
"okay dumb moment
Ok guys, quit whining. Just get 128 gigs of ram up on Vista 64 and have fun.
7 years ago, I bought a new laptop with a Pentium 1 100 processor. At the time, it was considered blazing. I paid almost $4000 for it and felt like I was was getting a deal.
Yesterday, I bought a new desktop with an AMD X2 6000+ Processor, 3 Gigs or DDR2 Ram, a 500 Gig HD, a 19 inch flat panel monitor, a color printer and an NVidia 8800 GTS 320 MB video card.
Total cost. $1000. I paid 1/4 the price for a system 100’s of time faster.
Buy some ram people. Either stop being so cheap or stop complaining. Don’t expect the drive a Porsche when you’ll only pay for a Pinto.
I bought a Compaq laptop recently with Vista Home Premium, and I noticed a big difference in battery life with SuperFetch turned off. All that caching is apparently pretty power-hungry.
I am boosting my Gateway 507GR up to 2GB (reputedly its max, though some say it’ll take four) because it takes 2 minutes to load Firefox(!) and at least 40 seconds for the Control Panel folder to open and populate with icons! It’s a new installation on a 7200 rpm SATA drive. You’d think it would be fast. You’d be wrong. My Radio Shack M100 was faster. Ditto my DEC Rainbow, and my Mac Plus (ok, the 128K Mac was slower) and hacked up Dell 586 (that’s a long story).
The disk churns and churns and nothing happens for a looooong time. I still do useful work on my G4 tower (Circa Feb, 2001, CPU upgrade in 2003) and OS X doesn’t go off and churn for minutes at a time.
I’ve never had this problem with XP or XP pro (I even LIKE some things about XP Pro) but Vista’s good qualities have yet to show up as far as I’m concerned. I hope they exist because I need this to work,
Oh, by the way, it’s ugly. Really ugly. XP looked better. And XP wasn’t exactly a looker,