A8Js, Vista and RAM

Hi everyone,

I have a A8Js with 2gb RAM and a 512MB Go7700, still working with XP Pro. I've just received my Vista upgrade DVD and I'm considering installing it. However, i've been reading in other forums that Vista seems to do a crappy job on memory mangement, specifically in what concerns graphic cards by reserving the same ammount of the graphic card memory in RAM, and that this memory is only usable for the graphics cards, not anything else. Ie, if I understand this correctly from the 2gb my system have I would only be able to use a maximum of 1.5gb (we then must consider all the rest of the crap that is loaded into memory). Can anyone confirm this?

Best,

Nickie

 

I think thats correct, for the moment. However, 1.5GB dedicated to Vista should give you smooth operation of Vista, and probably some other tasks. I Dunno how well that will sit if you're playing a high-resource game, for example. So I guess it depends on what you're planning to do

 

Thanks gusto5! Well, I have the laptop for 3 months and never played a game with it! The problem is that I use some applications (statistical and mathematical) that sometimes need more than 1gb of RAM. This means that I'll only have 500mb of ram free when this happens (at most, as we must consider that Vista also loads some more junk), with another 512mb (a bit less) just sitting idle... This a completely stupid thing from Windows... I hope they correct it with in the next service pack (which I believe will be released by June/july), as this is just hogging resources for nothing. What is the purpose of such measure? If we can't use video memory for normal computation, why should Vista waist memory just because we have a vid card that has an enormous amount of memory? I understand that it might follow such measure when gamming or such, but when we aren't using it, why should we be penalized by this?

 

i hear ya.. I'm also using the A8JS but mine came with Vista, seeing how all this goes like what you've said.. I've deinstalled it to XP Pro SP2. I spent ages downloading all the essential drivers for XP at Asus' site, trying to exclude loads of bloatware (oh how i wish it came with an XP driver CD instead of just Vista). From my point of view, Vista is just wasting ram for nothing useful.. unless it would hog less (alot less) resource than this.. I see no reason for using Vista at this moment with all the bugs still running on and such. Can't imagine how badly it would struggle running games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on it.

 

i'm still with xp pro, if i want eye candy stuff i use ubuntu.