Vista & Memory

bravo580 · 11 Mar 2007 at 01:52

Been using Vista for the past week & I’ve only put on the bare essentials software wise, Oooo it looks pretty but the amount of memory this thing chews up is abysmal.

Spec of the PC I’ve got it on is a P4 Northwood with 1GB RAM & nVidia 7800GS+ 512MB, with it just sitting there minding its own business it leaves less than 64MB of physical RAM free.

Well 256MB of RAM has been reserved for graphics apparently on top of the cards 512MB which should leave me with 768MB free & clear, were the hell did that go & what on earth is being stored in the 400MB+ that’s currently written to the swapfile.

BTW the only other software installed at this point are the Creative drivers, nVidia driver & AVG Anti Virus.

NokkonWud · 11 Mar 2007 at 01:54

It really does recommend 1gb RAM, 512mb will get you nowhere these days.

1337z0r · 11 Mar 2007 at 01:56

1GB ram for normal stuff email, web browsing ect. 2GB for games to run smooth.

Craig321 · 11 Mar 2007 at 02:11

I'm not sure I understand...

Spec of the PC I’ve got it on is a P4 Northwood with 1GB RAM & nVidia 7800GS+ 512MB

1GB RAM & 512MB on the graphic card right?

If so, that's fine.

You'd be better off running Vista on 2GB, but 1GB should be alright if you don't run too much at once.

csmager · 11 Mar 2007 at 02:23

It's not a problem.

I have 1.5Gb of RAM, and Vista reports 4Mb free.

Have a read about Superfetch.

an4rew · 11 Mar 2007 at 03:54

I was surfing the web listening to music and running less than 5 apps. Total Memory used 880mb :rolleyes:

masslac · 11 Mar 2007 at 04:39

Vista does not need 2GB RAM. You just need to learn about how it handles memory and realise that it's NOT hogging your system resources.

Rebelius · 11 Mar 2007 at 11:00

What's the use in empty RAM? seriously? Why buy 1GB or 2GB of RAM if you want to run your computer with 128MB used all the time? Empty RAM is useless, RAM which has things cached in it which can be overwritten instantly is much more useful.

bravo580 · 11 Mar 2007 at 13:42

Rebelius said:
What's the use in empty RAM? seriously? Why buy 1GB or 2GB of RAM if you want to run your computer with 128MB used all the time? Empty RAM is useless, RAM which has things cached in it which can be overwritten instantly is much more useful.

The man does have a very good point there

TheVoice · 11 Mar 2007 at 14:08

bravo580 said:
Been using Vista for the past week & I’ve only put on the bare essentials software wise, Oooo it looks pretty but the amount of memory this thing chews up is abysmal./QUOTE]

Are you noticing any performance issues? If not, I wouldn't have thought it matters.

BoomAM · 17 Jun 2007 at 00:07

masslac said:
Vista does not need 2GB RAM. You just need to learn about how it handles memory and realise that it's NOT hogging your system resources.

I agree there.

The amount of people who complain about things using RAM, its there to be used!
We have systems today with gigabytes of RAM, why not use it!? Who cares if a program or operating system eats up hundreds of megs, gigabytes at a time, as long as the system remains smooth to use!

##EDIT##
Doh, dopy search function, never told me how old the thread was!

.

Final8y · 17 Jun 2007 at 00:26

BoomAM said:
I agree there.

The amount of people who complain about things using RAM, its there to be used!
We have systems today with gigabytes of RAM, why not use it!? Who cares if a program or operating system eats up hundreds of megs, gigabytes at a time, as long as the system remains smooth to use!

##EDIT##
Doh, dopy search function, never told me how old the thread was! .

LOLOLOLL
Edit: BwaaahahaaaLololol

snowdog · 17 Jun 2007 at 00:29

Ram usage is a positive thing, I couldn't be happier that vista now actually uses my 4gb RAM and I've even added a 1gb SD as readyboost to completly minimize the slow hdd seeks.
Unless games are not smooth why complain at all?

BoomAM · 17 Jun 2007 at 00:32

You know what i find funny? Just realised this:
No-one ever complains about OSX using memory.
OSX is a memory hog, more so than Vista imo, eats every Mb you throw at it.
But all people comment on is that 'its good that it takes advantage of the extra memory to make things smoother'.

.

jbloggs · 17 Jun 2007 at 00:45

Hey, if you have it (Ram)...use it!

gareth170 · 17 Jun 2007 at 12:27

i have 4gb of ram, its using 38% of it...

vista isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. it uses the ram to get your most used programs ready, unlike xp...

ShakenNstirred · 17 Jun 2007 at 12:58

no point in having lots of ram just sitting there(like in XP)
so vista uses more of it to speed things up

snowdog · 17 Jun 2007 at 13:11

gareth170 said:
i have 4gb of ram, its using 38% of it...

vista isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. it uses the ram to get your most used programs ready, unlike xp...

It actually uses all 4 gigs

, see ''free'' , 34 mb free, and cached, 2819 mb, wich means that's also ram ussage.
Would wounder if vista 'd use 8 gigs of ram

.

Energize · 17 Jun 2007 at 13:15

As said vista doesn't need loads of ram, but I've heard of peoples hard drives thrashing constantly while vista caches the data into the ram.

snowdog · 17 Jun 2007 at 13:23

Energize said:
As said vista doesn't need loads of ram, but I've heard of peoples hard drives thrashing constantly while vista caches the data into the ram.

Repeatedly posted this on forums, if you have a normall hdd, this only is an issue for the 1st 1 or 2 boots, after that, once it knows what to chache, next time it'll only do it 1st 5 minutes (tops) after booting, once that's done, the hdd gets a lot, really a lot less usage as in xp, my hdd light would flash in xp once per 3 seconds for me, here its idle most of the time due to vista doing more with ram, instead of cacheing ( browser cache for example) on hdd...
I prefer my hdd being used heavily 5 mins a day tbh, above letting it be trashed 15 hrs a day like in xp.