Who use more than 4GB of RAM?
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Bodaggit23
Active Member
I have 6Gigs and 5Gigs of that is being used right now. 
tlarkin
VIP Member
I have 4gig of RAM and have never seen it use more than 3 to 3.5 gigs unless there is a major memory leak. When I use 3.5 gigs of RAM I have CS4, MS Office, and a few other apps running at the same time (like music player, web browser, and so forth). Even with Vista's crappy memory management it is fine.
It does run slow and I think I am going to upgrade to Windows 7 soon.
It does run slow and I think I am going to upgrade to Windows 7 soon.
Bodaggit23
Active Member
tlarkin
VIP Member
What are the specs of this machine?
You think XP manages memory better?
Specs:
Intel Q9560 w/ 12MB of cache
4Gigs Corsair DDR2 RAM
2 TB of HD space
GTX 260 EVGA 896MB of VRAM
Asus P5N motherboard (I could have the model of this wrong not at home)
Antec True 900W Pro PSU
HAF 932 Coolermaster Case
Aftermarket heat piped heat sink (cooler master, mid level)
Yes, XP handles memory management a lot better because MS had used the same memory management for many years. Vista takes a whole new approach and is their first OS which uses their memory management. That is why it is horrible. It idles at 25% of your RAM because it caches everything out to it, which theoretically should make it more efficient (Linux and Unix (( and all the variations)) tend to already do this).
I am sure instead of fixing it, they just released Windows 7 instead, which is common with software companies these days.
Bodaggit23
Active Member
Why is it bad to cache the RAM? XP doesn't use the RAM until it's needed,
that's why programs open slower in XP than Vista.
What's the point of having all that RAM if you don't want to put it to good use?
My i7 rig idles with 17% of my 6Gigs of RAM. That's about 1Gig.
The 64bit XP rig I'm on right now is using 800MB idle...
tlarkin
VIP Member
That is what I am saying, but on the fly access and on the fly demand of the RAM in a Windows OS is horrid. My Linux boxes idle at 10% RAM and still cache everything out.
I am not saying the caching part is wrong or bad, I am saying in Windows it is horrible.
Bodaggit23
Active Member
10% of how much?
tlarkin
VIP Member
That is just a blanketed statement of general rule of thumb. You see, once it caches it to RAM it also caches it to virtual memory, leaving a smaller finger print in ram which would alias it to the virtual memory.
Windows does do this, as it should because it makes sense, they just are not efficient enough at it. I know my VM of Ubuntu runs faster than my actual Windows OS. I only give my Linux VM 1 gig of RAM too from my PC.
I don't have any hard numbers to give you off the top of my head at the moment.
Aastii
VIP Member
but surely you would expect a Linux based system to run at much lower idle RAM usage because it is a more compact, lightweight, less demanding OS than Windows, so obviously there will be less resources used
tlarkin
VIP Member
Linux and Unix is just as complex as Windows, the approach is just different. Also Unix has been around for a lot longer, so it has time on it's side. Over the years it has gotten more overhauls and improvements than any other OS. Also, Linux and Unix (and OS X for that matter) run the same eye candy and graphics and effects as Windows does with less resources.
I think that instead of fixing Vista, MS just scrubbed all the excess fat out of Vista and re-branded it as Windows 7.
Aastii
VIP Member
When you compare opening a fresh install of say ubuntu with a fresh install of Win vista or 7, there is so much more clutter and crap going on in Windows than Ubuntu.
I agree that MS should have sorted out 7 AND put it on a diet, if they had have done that then it would have been great to use and it would hav ebeen as fast as OSX or Linux, but hey, what can you do, they left it fat and full of rubbish to leech those resources away
tlarkin
VIP Member
That is what I was getting at. Both Windows and a *nix box can do the same functions at the same level but the non Windows OSes seem to do it with less, and it has to do with approach.
That is why Windows Vista and Windows 7 are starting to add more security layers, like making a user choose to run an application as an administrator.
Bodaggit23
Active Member
Wow. BS. You said your Linux box run idle with 10% RAM used, and I asked how much total RAM, now you say it's just a VM?
Oh, that's right. You're the same person that said Windows 7 wasn't that great, when you only tried it in VM...
Do you not have enough resources to dedicate a computer to testing various OS's so you can back up your "claims"?
tlarkin
VIP Member
Wow. BS. You said your Linux box run idle with 10% RAM used, and I asked how much total RAM, now you say it's just a VM?
Oh, that's right. You're the same person that said Windows 7 wasn't that great, when you only tried it in VM...
Do you not have enough resources to dedicate a computer to testing various OS's so you can back up your "claims"?
No, no, no, no, you aren't reading what I say right or maybe I didn't explain it fully. I said I have no current data off the top of my head because my current Linux install is a VM. However, I do have older Linux boxes on say 4 year old hardware that run at least 10 times better than Windows XP does on it.
Every modern OS should run fine at a basic level in a VM, period. I have VMs of XP, 2000, Linux, 98, DOS, and so forth and all of them work fine. I am not gaming in them. Hell, windows 2003 server works fine in a VM, as I have used it many times to do demos. If you go to a Microsoft road show, they run all the OSes off laptops and VMs, and they are doing live demos. To say that a VM is not a valid test of an OS is an understatement. I saw a WDS demo at a MS roadshow that was running in a VM deploying 3 VM images to two laptops. It was actually quite impressive how it ran, and it was pretty responsive and these were laptops.
The fact that Windows takes up so much HD space, and takes the most minimum resources to run is that it is the most bloated OS out there. Do you need 4gigs of RAM? On a Windows box, sure most likely you do.
If you do anything CPU intensive on your machine you probably need around 4gigs, anything above 4gigs is probably overkill, even for hardcore gamers. If you are just using your Windows box for web surfing and basic office type applications then 2gigs should get you by fine. Then again, now we look at how Windows 7 and Vista really only runs well on basic usage with 2gigs of RAM, where every other OS out there can do the same with 1gig of RAM.
This is why I don't like benchmarks because they don't reflect real world performance. There is no control benchmark or control system to compare the benchmarks too and even if you score 4,000 higher 3Dmarks than say your neighbor, your neighbor can possibly run the same game at max settings with their computer as long as the specs are similar.
So, how do you really justify using 4gigs of RAM? Well, you would need to qualify yourself as a user, and assess what you do and see if you really need 4gigs, or more than 4gigs. Your hardware configuration and your OS are factors in making this decision. More RAM is not always better RAM either.
Aastii
VIP Member
I have 2 reasons for having 8GB of RAM
1. I got it dirt cheap when i got it
2. I play gmod, which, like every other sandbox game, is a bitch for memory. You need atleast 2GB just to spawn about 40 props, and as with most stuff you need alot more than that, you can end up using maybe 3GB+ just on gmod, that isn't taking into account the stuff going on behind it, so 3GB for that, 2GB for windows and sometimes I would play with music up too and the internet, which don't use much, but on a normal system with maybe 2GB of memory, that would make it grind to a halt
1. I got it dirt cheap when i got it
2. I play gmod, which, like every other sandbox game, is a bitch for memory. You need atleast 2GB just to spawn about 40 props, and as with most stuff you need alot more than that, you can end up using maybe 3GB+ just on gmod, that isn't taking into account the stuff going on behind it, so 3GB for that, 2GB for windows and sometimes I would play with music up too and the internet, which don't use much, but on a normal system with maybe 2GB of memory, that would make it grind to a halt