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Hello!
The problem is with windows Xp. I have 256MB RAM right now and xp runs pathetically slow. Is it due to avast! antivirus im using or due to small RAM ? avast checks every running process and new processes when they start. I think that makes my PC slow.
In case you suggest me to get more RAM, please tell me how much should i get, how much will it cost and what do i need to know before purchasing-- like good brands or something.;)
Thanks!
Last time I bought RAM I think I paid ~$70 for 1 gig. 256mb ram is REALLY small for getting anything done. I wouldn't even begin to tweak any other settings until you upgrade RAM.
I do fine with a an upgrade I did a 3 years ago to put my laptop at 512Mb RAM. That should be good enough for XP.
I'd however replace avast with AVG.
Just so you can compare with your own system, I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro SP6000, 512Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive and a PIII-M at 1GHz. I run Visual Studio 2005 Professional on it without complaining much about speed. I just close services I don't need and avoid falling prey to the useless... like themes, background screens and such. In fact I prefer a lot more windows 2000 interface than that of XP so I run in classic mode.
1GB of DDR2 533/667/800 goes for ~$30, these days and are continuing to get cheaper. One gigabyte will suit you just fine under XP, but Vista will need at least 2GB. However, if your motherboard supports DDR, then you might be out of luck as it's generally pretty expensive considering it's not produced anymore.
1 GB is minimum for nowadays. If you play on gaming, 2 GB is minimum.
1Gb is not minimum, really. I'd say 500Mb. 1GB is instead ideal for windows xp.
If you define absolute minimum for running a XP computer then yes, 256 MB is fine, but hardly ideal. Things will crawl.
512 MB is better. But only recommended for budget computers. Likely, after you've installed some programs, drivers, etc, Windows will be using around 512 MB at startup.
Therefore I define 1 GB as minimum for today's computers and 2 GB ideal.
Let me see... I have right now running in my computer Skype, BitTorrent, Kerio Personal Firewall, Visual Studio 2005 Professional, Mozilla Firefox, Notepad++ and TuneUp Memory Optimizer. I have 500Mb of RAM and TuneUp reports 128Mb free. I swap nicely between applications and can start new ones quite fast.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Granted is not fast. But its not slow. So... If I were to double my current memory to 1GB you think I would have just increased my memory to the minimum?
EDIT: oh, and AVG anti-virus
Have you looked at the page file size in task manger? It "faulty" reports how much virtual memory is currently in use.
Free physical memory means nothing. Windows will swap stuff in memory, so it's not accurate.
2GB is unnessasary in XP unless you're using extremely memory intensive applications and are multi-tasking a lot with them. Modern games, CAD software, maybe heavy databasing might push you towards 2GB in Windows XP, but for the day-to-day stuff, 1GB is more than satisfactory. I suggest it these days because it's so cheap and you will always notice a difference between 1GB and 512MB. Even if I were to build budget PCs for people, I'd throw 1GB in there because the price of the extra memory is less than what people would pay for it when they see it on a spec list.
I said TuneUp Memory Optimizer reports 128Mb free. Not task manager.
Don't go there. 500Mb is not even the minimum. 256 is. But I'm ready to concede that Windows XP doesn't run today's applications very well under 256Mb ram. Just don't push that to 1GB. It's not true.
EDIT: following on Sly's reply, 1GB is indeed a very good option. Just dopn't say it's the minimum Elysia. Not under windows XP.
You might need 2 GB if you never disable startup programs, too :p
Lots of things these days always add themselves to startup which is completely unnecessary. I did a cleanup and went from 1.5 GB to 0.5 GB (!!).
1 GB of ram does fine in most cases.
I said you should look in task manager to see how much virtual memory is in use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario F.
I have no idea what TuneUp Memory Optimizer reports. I assume it reports free physical memory? That's not a good way to measure, as you know.
If the virtual memory use is 1 GB of a 512 mb system, then you're going to get swapping a lot.
That's cause you go click-click-clicking through the installation. For the most part, the programs I install ask you whether or not you want to start it when Windows starts. Either that or you're just downloading a lot of bad software.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Tune up reports the same amount of memory use as task manager, at least the demo version does on my computer.
If you have sluggish performance make sure you run some anti spyware stuff also, it can clean things up and get you running better also. Baring that, look into RAM, if you have DDR2 then go for the 1 or 2GB stick, if you have DDR1, go for another 256, since that is getting faded out as we speak. Check on newegg for the highest reviews for parts, typically they have the best customer feed back.
Naturally I experience swapping more often than someone with more memory. One of the most annoying things is the Start Menu. However we sometimes tend to raise the bar without giving it some thought; That is to say, I can still use my computer productively and satisfactorily. I program in it, I play games, I watch encoded movies, I burn CDs, I make long distance phone calls,...Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
However, the time for an upgrade is closing in. I agree. I usually only upgrade a machine after 5 years. This one has almost that.
I disagree. If you want to continue using the computer without upgrading, get more memory. That means a total of 1 GB or 2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
Otherwise just do a full upgrade and get DDR2.
256mb is plenty for XP. Just maybe not for the programs that you want to run in it. If you havent done one recently, then I'd first do a defrag and clean out the registry. If your computers still running slow, and using the page file all the time then get some more RAM. 512mb should be plenty as long as you dont play new games or use demanding graphics software.
Are you saying that Windows will start swapping while there's still 128 MB of physical memory free? What kind of stupid memory management is that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
I agree. XP itself could probably be run with just 64mb of RAM if you wanted to, but just sitting here @ cboard, firefox uses 95mb memory, and Open Office uses 58mb, that's quite alot if you only have 256mb total. Either get more memory or do a complete system upgrade imo..Quote:
Originally Posted by mike_g
I do not know the right answer - but it is what we have.Quote:
Originally Posted by CornedBee
On my notebook right now the used memory size is 249M, total Physical memory - 256M and free physical memory 90M - so it means that about 83M are in swap...
(and due to the physical memory size I prefer to run on this comp only Remote Desktop - so all programs I need are running on the main comp. The result is better than I try to start the simple IceBookReader directly on my comp for example (And I do not talk about some VC++ application or Photoshop)
If you start swapping out when you hit a soft ceiling, then you can still maintain performance as the old pages get dropped from RAM. If you wait until you're against the wall, everything takes a hit as stuff swaps out.Quote:
Originally Posted by CornedBee
Elysia: a total of 512 (if 256 has been enough so far) will be plenty until the OP is ready to move up to a new system. It would be wasteful to buy more than that especially since the cost of DDR1 is still high.
Here's what task manager says for my system. I currently have 392 MB of RAM (3x128 MB of PC-133), which is less than i would like to. I though about replacing one of those memory module for a 512 MB one but hey, i'm cheap, and can't find one for less than 10$. Note that my computer is 8 years old :).
Anyway. Here's the number. It says "122 MB of available memory, 178 MB swapped on the HD" (if i understand well), and there's really nothing much running on background. So i would say, 512 MB would be great, but 768 MB would be greater, etc.
No, the pagefile in task manager isn't what's in the pagefile on your disk, but how much memory is used in the entire system, RAM and on disk.
--
Mats
Really ? That's interesting.
You mean, by swapping out long-unused stuff, you can avoid a delay when swapping is finally necessary?Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
Pretty much, stuff that is the oldest and most unused in memory gets swapped out, allowing you to keep launching more and more applications, but you take a huge hit on load time when you click on a completely paged program that takes up more than the memory left. Since it has to page something then unpage as much of the once completely paged program.
Get a Solid State Drive. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
Me want one of those Memorights.
I want one of those so bad, but the price keeps me out of that market =(
Yeah, unfortunately, Windows is a complex beast and I certainly don't understand fully how it works.Quote:
Originally Posted by CornedBee
However, I'm assuming that with such little memory footprint, Windows actually wants to keep some RAM free so applications that demands more memory can actually receive it directly instead of having to page out something to make room before granting the request.
Instead Windows might page out most unused pages to disk so as to keep some free. Makes sense, since it optimizes the speed of active applications.
Indeed... $3,500 is a nice down payment on a pretty good car... which, by the way, I could also use. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
Yes, the delay you are avoiding is the delay in acquiring page frames for some process which suddenly needs more memory. It doesn't mean that 128 megabytes must always remain free, just that old stuff starts swapping out before you hit a point where you might actually have to wait for a page frame.Quote:
Originally Posted by CornedBee
Really, think of RAM like your desk and your harddrive like your desk drawers and you as the processor. When your desk is, say, 80% full of clutter... it would be more efficient to put the older items that you know you haven't used a long while into the drawers, now in anticipation of more clutter, than it would be to put the stuff away when you actually need to clean up the clutter to add more items to the desk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Same, I have a system similar to yours, but no car =( Tax return is going to be a downpayment on a nice car.
Yeah, I understand the reasoning behind why Windows does what it does. I don't understand everything, that's all. But then again, who does, save for the devs of Windows itself?
Windows will also page when an app hasn't been used in a long time but there is still memory free, I know I have witnessed that on this computer, with 3GB of RAM I shouldn't be paging unless I am gaming or doing other resource intensive task.
Paging strategies are well known and well solved problems. I doubt Windows does anything truly unexpected as far as swapping.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Yes, but I do believe they have a ratio of Free RAM to Application Idle Time that the consult with when deciding whether to swap out an idle application. For instance, if you have 2GB of free RAM at any given time, it may not swap out a file until it has been idle, for say, 24 hours or so. I dunno... the calibration of the system might suck, but I'm sure they're considering all of the elements.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
Well, unfortunately, this is one paging situation I don't understand:Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
Having 3 GB of ram and never using it all, it shouldn't swap anything out at all!Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
Why not? Just because a page gets paged out doesn't mean it is removed from RAM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Imagine some program A has allocated 16 megabytes, and has gone to sleep, and it has been asleep for a while. The OS can swap all its pages to disk but keep them in RAM as well (so it's not really swapping, but making a copy). Now imagine that extreme memory pressure is suddenly placed on the system. It can immediately throw the pages out of program A's memory without paging them to disk, because they already got paged out a long time ago.
On the other hand, if program A suddenly wakes up again, its pages are all still in RAM and no swapping needs to happen. The OS just clears the swap pages from the swap cache and goes about its business.
Either way, the net effect is a win.
If there is available swap space, and no IO pressure, the system should ALWAYS be swapping out. Why wait until things start slowing down?
It will still always feel a little random though. I didn't know Windows did this. I've seen it happen before too. But didn't give up much thought until just now.Quote:
Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom
yup. windows does this all the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
The point is that it tosses stuff out of RAM even though there's no pressure. Typically running a game can force such a situation, even though the game might not use all RAM available.Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
Paging is fine, but when it start to drop stuff out of ram for no reason, then things are starting to go wrong.
He just explained you why they aren't.
They are at times for no apparent reason.
Why else would be so sluggish and slow at times?
I guess we would have to analyze each case individually. There are numerous reasons for things to go slow. Paging is just one of them. Regardless, "unrequested" paging (what's the name of this feature anyway?) can and is interrupted all the time. So I seriously doubt that could be a reason.
You don't want your game to be responsive? When it suddenly asks for 64 megabytes you'd rather wait as 64 megs get paged to disk?Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Among other names, swap backing store.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario F.
As I explained, they don't hog all the memory. Windows could just page some pages into the swap file, but never remove from the from ram. The memory is enough to go around for everyone, so there's no need for Windows to swap out anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck
You have to understand that Windows is incapable of knowing what the expected memory requirements of the applications running on it are at any given time... that is to say, just because 2GB or so RAM is free, doesn't mean that there isn't an application running that could at any given time request all 2GB. If it were to make such an assumption, then it would be a flaw. Think about when XP first came out... the top games on the market would maybe use 256-512mb of RAM. These days it can be significantly more. As an operating system, you must develop not only for the current market but for the future market and as such, they decided to build in a process that frees up as much RAM as it possibly can when there are applications running that have not been accessed in X amount of time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
It still doesn't make much sense.
Since the pages are already paged, it should be able to toss them out and give them to the game or active application directly. But it shouldn't toss out pages when the demand isn't there. When there's 1 GB+ of free memory, there's no need to toss out pages from memory. It could just page them in the page file.
If free memory goes under 256 MB or so, then it would clear memory by removing the pages from ram.
This is obviously what I don't understand. I'm thinking it's a design limitation. If it's that it simply can't be done, if it's a bug, or if the developers simply didn't expect these scenarios, I don't know.
I remember having 64mb memory and running XP. It wasn't so bad. Just an extra note: I didn't have any firewalls, antiviruses. All possible XP services were turned off, using classic theme, all possible graphics stuff was turned off.
I still have the same conf with the new computer. :D
I think this is what brewbuck described in post 40.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
I'm running 3GB with XP and still have slowdowns. The swap mechanism will still 'swap' even with plenty of memory unless you deliberately turn it off.
The problem with swapping is when XP has to swap every time it attempts a memory access. That will slow things down a lot which is what is happening in your case. With 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, and even 3GB Windows will still swap but it will be more infrequent.
Microsoft does not recommend turning off the swapping even with plenty of memory. I did and suffered big time. Something about the Windows kernel probably relies on the swapping or something internal to Windows does. Without swapping it runs worse. With memory being extremely cheap and easy to come by I would max out the system. Pile on as much as you can. Windows XP will run up to 4GB of RAM provided you have SP2 and provided you use the /3GB switch in boot.ini. 3GB will be reserved for apps and 1GB for the kernel. I don't know if Windows swaps when it has been allocated a full GB for the OS since my board does not support 4GB.
I have had games that refused to start because of no pagefile.
If possible I try to always run XP or 2K with 512MB of ram it has been my experience that it is way more responsive. Now, I still have an old Pent III 500MHz running Win 2K that isn't to bad with 3 x 128MB of ram (max). This is my VPN that I use to remotely listen to my music while at work. ;)
What's wrong with an iPod now :P?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bajanine
No, it's not.Quote:
Originally Posted by robwhit
Brewbuck explained that Windows can put pages in the swap file and keep them in memory and immediately toss out the pages from memory if it turns out more memory is needed. But that's not the case here.
Windows tosses out pages even when memory demand isn't high. So if I run a game and still have 1 GB free memory for the whole period of running the game, it still tosses out stuff out of memory instead of leaving it in the pagefile and memory.
Which is equal to waste since there's enough memory for everything.
If there was a spike in memory, Windows could easily throw everything out of RAM to make room for more since it had already saved it in the page file.
iPods... overpriced :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Neo1
Actually, the new ones are quite cheap. And alot more handy than connecting to a box at home through a VPN to play music, christ! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
>No, it's not.
Oh ok, it sounded like it was.
Neo1, depends, I have about 30GB of music that is my own, then another 10-15 of my girlfriend's music which is a lot more relaxing than mine so I listen to it at times, considering I don't make that much, it is a lot more cost effective to go over the net for my music than to try and anticipate what I want o listen to, since the only mp3 player I have is a little 4GB iPod.
I was not trying to imply that Windows does this. I really don't know whether it does or not. But plenty of operating systems do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
I am never surprised at reports of crappy Windows performance though.
I don't get this... how do you listen to 45gb of music? What kind of quality are these songs ripped? At the standard sampling rate of 128kbps, one megabyte is about one minute of audio. That would mean you have a little over 46,000 minutes of audio which means if you listened to music on average of 5 hours a day, it would still take you 154 days or so to listen to all of it. Hell, 45gb is about 13,000 songs... I don't think I've heard that many songs in my life. I would have had to have heard 1.5 new songs every day of my life to have heard that many songs...Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraithan
I dunno... I'm not calling you a liar... I'm just suggesting maybe you should clean up your hard drive a bit. I have about 4GB of music on me at any given time, and after about 3GB of adding to my mp3 player, I was struggling to find songs that I would actually listen to.
Well, I can make a list of what bands I have complete discographies or close to of, which is a a lot. In just metal I have 20 gigs of music, all of which I have heard many times, I listen to music the whole time I am at my computer, 8+hours a day, then when I am in the car (iPod), most of my music is ripped at 192kbps which is about 1.4mb per min, iTunes calculates my music as 24.9 days of music, which given my rate of listening (lets say 10 hours a day) would take 60 days to listen to my collection, which is a long time and I guess I don't listen to it all as often as I think I do, but still, every song in my list has been played at least twice (sometimes I order it by that and then listen while I game/read/program/what ever)
Some of the songs I don't care for as much, but I would rather keep full albums on here than to slice and dice.
I have 1.25 gig of ram in mine, the original 256 meg + a 1 gig stick I bought when I had a
rush of blood to the head once (also bought my 19" flatscreen monitor :) ),
I typically have about 550 - 600 meg completely unused, but knowing the history of PC
development no doubt that will be gobbled up someday.
You will probably be fine with 256meg, unless you want to run a lot of stuff simulaneously. I
imagine most of my 670meg system cache is laying idle at the moment.
I mean, it's not that long ago my computer had a 2gig hard drive and I almost have as much
as that in RAM now!!
That 1 gig cost me about £80 when I bought it but I could get it from the same place for £40
now and even cheaper on ebay, but then at least I can go back and threaten the staff if it does
not work :D - well worth the extra £15 in todays money.
It is however sensible to buy the largest stick of memory a slot in your PC can hold because if
you ever need to upgrade again the sticks you take out will be pretty much worthless, however
it obviously depends on how deep your pockets are.
If you like more than 1,000 songs you probably have a pretty bad taste in music!!Quote:
Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom
Oh, shut up.
Oh, so i guess your music taste sets the standard for crappy and good music then? Sorry but that is just stupid...Quote:
Originally Posted by esbo
Nah, my taste in music is just varied. Sometimes I want some screaming speed metal, other times some chill R&B, I have a fair amount of Hawaiian music. Actually the only genre that I don't have a lot of is Pop, never been a big fan of it.
Quite right. Classical music alone is responsible for 6GB on my desktop. I'm also interested in such varied things as world music, gothic rock, punk, alternative, trip hop, disco, african rhythms, traditional songs all over the world, et cetera ad nausea.
I don't reach the 45GB. But I do own 27GB, of which - I am proud to say - only about 5% are illegal.
1000 songs is rather a lot of music to listen to at one time, I mean I just tend to listen to theQuote:
Originally Posted by Neo1
few songs I like at a particular time over and over again and then move onto something else.
I mean would you have a 1,000 pairs of shoes?
Probably not, well not unless you are a millipeed that is, in which case it would take you a
month to lace them all up :D
Contrary to (semi-) popular belief, millipedes do not have a thousand legs. :) http://www.google.ca/search?q=millipede+1000
Yes but they probably have more than one pair of shoes :p
Eh, even I have more than one pair of shoes. ;)