HyperMemory questions...

I have the 5672 with the 128MB x1600 and HyperMemory and 1 gig of RAM. Well I've been running BF2 with my destop resolution and I keep on noticing that after about a minute of play I have only 10-50 megs of RAM left. Pathetic huh? I know that HyperMemory used RAM to compensate for low video card memory, so I was wondering:

1) Can I turn off HyperMemory?
2) Can I limit how much of my RAM is allocated to HyperMemory?

THanks =)

 

That would actually be the game taking up your memory. BF2 is a very big RAM user. I noticed an immediate performance difference after I went to 2GB from 1GB.

 

Yep...BF2 will actually utilize up to just shy of 1.5GB of RAM. I saw some tests on a BF2 forum once that indicated it seemed to hover around a 1.2-1.35GB charge, if the memory was all available. Figuring Windows will utilize around 256MB while running that game(if you aren't running a slew of other stuff), then 1.5GB of RAM is just shy of what the game would like. So 2GB will provide you what it can use maximum, and a bit of headroom left over if you've got something like xfire or some other messenger running.

Oh...and before someone comes in and says "I checked task manager and WinXP is using 512MB just sitting here"...Windows will drop some services from memory as they aren't being used and the memory's allocated elsewhere...like in the game. So checking it at your desktop doesn't help. You need to have something recording the useages while you're running the app and view the data later.

 

So... running BF2 on 1 gig of RAM is just a bad idea? Cuz it's incredibly laggy. My friend runs it on an x800 (128) with 1 gig of RAM, higher resolution, and it plays waaay smoother.

 

It could be smoother because your friend might be on a different server with less people; the more people on the server, the more lag there will be.

 

well i was actually refering to single player, cuz i ran that to make sure it wasn't a network issue...

 

I have ASUS F3Jp with x1700 graphics card and I am also trying to limit the Hypermemory allocation from system RAM.

To date I've asked ASUS and ATI without success. I have 2(GB) of RAM but 763(MB) + 256 (MB) of dedicated VRAM is allocated. This video graphics allocation seems far too high and I can't find a way to alter it

Vista takes 1/2(GB) and on large applications the Hypermemory allocation seems to slow everything down. I'm not impressed and as yet haven't found a solution.

If you find a solution please let me know !

If you find a way please let me know.

 

This is actually very technical. I would like to learn a couple of things I do not know and I will be posting a similar question on my own but for this, here is my question.

Looks like BF2 always goes to RAM as 1.5GB GPU's do not exist but does larger GPU memory reduce the use of RAM, or is that RAM usage by design? Is using Hyper Memory better than not? Because it draws from the same well?

 

Im pretty sure theres a registy tweak with which you can turn of HM. Its been mentioned on the forum before, so just use search.

 

Windows' need for RAM is higher priority than the video card's. If Windows needs the RAM for something the video card will give it up. The video card won't take a chunk of your system memory and reserve it for itself. It will take it as it needs it. It can take up to a certain amount - that's the number you are seeing.

Are you sure that you're being slowed down by RAM usage? Check your hard drive activity light while gaming; if it's active a lot or constantly then that is an indication you are out of system RAM and Windows is using the page file. Alternatively you could open up the task manager and take a look.

 

I'm pretty sure I'm being slowed down by the excessive automatic allocation of 763(MB) system RAM of 2(GB) to Hypermemory on my ASUS F3JP. This allocation is in addition to 256(MB) of dedicated VRAM present on my
ATI X1700 card.

With a large (graphics intensive) application running the free memory was reduced to only a few (MB) and significant page files appeared for both the application and catalyst control centre with a significant increase in read/write activity to the application page file.

To my mind this was a clear indication of the application swapping-out and using virtual RAM due the system RAM being exhausted by the Hypermemory allocation. The only way I can be absolutely sure though is to find a way of limiting the Hypermemory allocation or disabling it then re-running my application and comparing the graphical response time.

Unfortunately, as yet, I haven't found a way of limiting the excessive shared memory allocation to Hypermemory. I asked ASUS, ATI and AMI (the BIOS developer) without any joy.

I thought "ATI tray tools" may be a option but the utilities author (Ray Adams) has said in a forum that ATT's shared memory was not the same as ATI's Hypermemory when asked about this issue by another user ?

I found a registry tweak to disable Hypermemory for Windows XP but no equivalent as yet for Vista

Any ideas to limit or temporarily disable Hypermemory and restore sysem memory to at least check out my application response time would be appreciated

 

the thing that makes me wonder...is whats the point of Hypermemory on midrange cards such as x1700/x1600 that already have 256MB of dedicated RAM? The GPU wont be using all that memory efficiently anyways, not to mention that system RAM is slower than GPU's dedicated RAM... this thing (hypermemory) is doing more harm than good in my opinion