Maximise available RAM for gaming

almoststew1990 · 22 Jan 2020 at 17:48

I have an old "gaming" laptop that I use occasionally, when I'm poorly or we have visitors so I can't get into my office and game on my main desktop. It's got an i7340HQ, a 2GB Nvidia 650m and 8GB of RAM. It's running Windows 7.

The GPU is usually the limiting factor (I've downclocked the CPU so that the GPU stops throttling - this is a custom laptop that I specced myself and I think the cooling was only really meant for cooler CPUs...) but my current casual gaming addiction is Transport Fever 2. MSI afterburner often reports 7800Mb of RAM usage and whilst it runs OK just about, I was wondering if there was any way I could free up some more RAM?

To get 16GB of RAM it would cost about £40 or so and considering it is just this one game and the laptop is pretty EOL as a gaming laptop I don't really want to.

I would just download some more but unfortunately my net is down at the moment

!

bJN · 22 Jan 2020 at 19:44

You could try using a memory cleaner that scans RAM and cleans out system files that aren't in use, will have limited success though depending on what is actually using it - how much is the game using itself?

Panos · 22 Jan 2020 at 23:29

almoststew1990 said:
I have an old "gaming" laptop that I use occasionally, when I'm poorly or we have visitors so I can't get into my office and game on my main desktop. It's got an i7340HQ, a 2GB Nvidia 650m and 8GB of RAM. It's running Windows 7.

The GPU is usually the limiting factor (I've downclocked the CPU so that the GPU stops throttling - this is a custom laptop that I specced myself and I think the cooling was only really meant for cooler CPUs...) but my current casual gaming addiction is Transport Fever 2. MSI afterburner often reports 7800Mb of RAM usage and whilst it runs OK just about, I was wondering if there was any way I could free up some more RAM?

To get 16GB of RAM it would cost about £40 or so and considering it is just this one game and the laptop is pretty EOL as a gaming laptop I don't really want to.

I would just download some more but unfortunately my net is down at the moment !

You system is at the edge of minimum spec for the game and 7800MB is normal and I do not see why you want to reduce it.
Lower graphics to the floor is the only way.

Angilion · 23 Jan 2020 at 00:18

This takes me back to the config.sys and autoexec.bat days, trying to free up the odd few kilobytes of memory when needed to fit a game into the crucial 640KB.

Eh, when I were a lad

bayo000 · 23 Jan 2020 at 12:41

Angilion said:
This takes me back to the config.sys and autoexec.bat days, trying to free up the odd few kilobytes of memory when needed to fit a game into the crucial 640KB.

Eh, when I were a lad

Haha. Wasn't there a setting in BIOS that you could change and it would "give you" few more kbs? Not sure what it disabled but it was a difference between being able to run some games or not.

wolfie138 · 23 Jan 2020 at 12:49

Angilion said:
This takes me back to the config.sys and autoexec.bat days, trying to free up the odd few kilobytes of memory when needed to fit a game into the crucial 640KB.

Eh, when I were a lad

I remember when Elite ran on a 32kb machine.

chroniclard · 23 Jan 2020 at 13:02

Shutdown/stop all services you dont use, close all programs not required/all startup programs, uninstall any guff/anti virus, turn off any windows features not required(visual effects etc)

Angilion · 23 Jan 2020 at 22:17

bayo000 said:
Haha. Wasn't there a setting in BIOS that you could change and it would "give you" few more kbs? Not sure what it disabled but it was a difference between being able to run some games or not.

There were a few. Some disabled some things. Some ordered some stuff to run in "higher" memory, i.e. above 640KB. It was that 640KB that was crucial in those days as the design was based around that 640KB. The rest of the 1MB was reserved for system use and 1MB was all you got.

I vaguely remember having a couple of different boot disks with different settings - one to have everything running normally and one minimalist one that had as much of the crucial 640KB free as possible.

"himem.sys" has popped into my head. Presumably that had something to do with ordering stuff to load into "high" memory, i.e. between 640KB and 1MB.