Another thread about RAM, only this time --> RAM usage under Win 7, pagefile, utilization, etc.

Gracy, wow... you shocked me with this one. I was all confused reading your initial post and then the first 2 pages of the thread. I saw people were already getting at what seems to be the main issue but i just wanted to throw in a bit here.

From your subsequent answers this is what i gathered:

- You are copying large files
- You are copying from one partion/location of the drive to another.


Ok so in this case RAM would have nothing to do with it and even if you had a 50,000RPM drive it still wouldn't make multitasking any better. It would certainly make copying files faster, so would an SSD but that wouldn't make anything run any smoother. You mentioned XP didn't have this problem but i don't get how that even makes sense.

When you are copying files the HDD does it as fast as possible. So trying to access any other data on the HDD will of-course be slow as the heads are busy trying to copy data from one location to another. They are back and forth from location to location. Add in your request for whatever (either to store temporary files from the browser or pull up stuff from the pagefile - apps still use the pagefile even if they got tons of RAM because that's how the app was designed) then it will have to wait for the HDD to get that information inbetween still copying data from one sector to another.

The fact that you said XP doesn't do this makes no sense as it's a limitation of HDD throughput rather than a OS thing. Then again the Windows 7 with it's agressive RAM usage for APPs should allieviate this problem rather than making it worse. The idea is it should already have all your programs stored in RAM rather than needing to load it from the HDD. Did you disable superfetch or anything like that? I can copy large files while browsing just fine in IE and i'm on a 5400RPM 1.8" laptop drive. Here, gonna test it right now......

... ok just tried copying a 1.5GB file from desktop (C drive) to Downloads (D Drive - another partition). The browsing was fine and i could run already open apps just fine (Microsoft Office - Word, Excell apps and Adobe Reader). The size of the file shouldn't really matter but i'll try to find a 10GB MKV i got and test that.....

.... Ok did that test too and samething. Of-course copying files from HDD to HDD would cause it to show 100% usage in Resource Monitor because that's the idea. If there was such a thing as "QoS" on HDDs so you can limit copy speeds to 50% of maximum then you'd be able to do all this stuff still. That would defeat the purpose of faster HDDs though as they are just designed to move information as fast as possible which therefore takes up ALL of the available bandwidth till the task is complete.

 

You can get away with a fair amount of multitasking without issue while not have a pagefile enabled. Just not massive amounts of multitasking. At the most, I run about 4 or 5 programs at a time. Haven't encountered a situation where I needed to do more than that. Though, I do have several computers available to me. So when one is doing something intensive, I might just go on another to do something else. That would account for me not having to do enormous amounts of multitasking on one computer.

 

That's not entirely true Watch the video I attached to see how copying a file affects RAM usage dramatically!! My guess is - Ram is used as a buffer! That's why it is very different whether you copy a 1GB file (which can entirely fit into the RAM without forcing applications to be cached on the HDD to free up more RAM space) or you copy 15 GB which force the OS to start using th pagefile for all "pending" processes, such as all minimized windows! You can even see that on the video - I am maximizing a firefox window which you will first see to appear blank and then fills up with the content! I hate that! I hate it! Now this is gone!

A small correction as well - this used to happen even when I copy large data from/to external drive... where the speed is limited to 20-25 MB/sec anyway (due to USB 2.0).

Of course loading the HDD will result in certain system slow down, but never did I experience such a drop in responsiveness!! And I've been using computers since shortly before Windows 3.1 was the great new OS everyone was talking about...!

As you can see disabling the pagefile has enormous effect! I never had to do that on Win XP, although I have been using XP with 256MB to 1,5 GB RAM!

I guess I am a heavier multitasker than even the average advanced user, but this shouldn't happen anyway!

 

So wait, this was a problem with Firefox then rather than Windows? As i said i was copying a 10GB MKV Blu-Ray rip (i only have 4GB of RAM in My Thinkpad T410s and using 32bit Version of Windows 7 as well so only 3GB usable) and i didn't see any of those issues.

My pagefile is set to 256 - 512MB however. My apps are all responsive as i said because they don't use the pagefile or need one. Some apps do as others have pointed out and wont even work without one (which is why i have mine set to 256-512 instead of disabled). I don't use photoshop anymore but it was one of those apps i know of that needs a pagefile. I don't know if it still does with it's newest versions. Maybe that's why they went 64bit only for apps to get rid of the 2GB ceiling 32bit apps have irregardless of the OS.

Glad you figured out something though. I still didn't read through the whole thing but i'm really curious if you tried IE while copying files and browsing and all that.

 

I don't think it is a firefox issue but the way firefox code expose a problem of Windows 7's VMM policy shortfall when page file is enabled. Given what gracy123 has tested.

 

Good point about QoS and different HDD vendor does choose different policy. All the review/benchmark I have seen seem to show that WD Black is geared more towards the QoS vs simply move information as fast as possible(throughput). I think I read in one of the forums that Barracuda 7200.11 was also one with a very different firmware that is good at handling this kind of pattern. The test mentioned was to do a same drive big file copy(say 10G+ video) then start WMP on the video file and try to skip to the middle of the movie.

 

No, it is not a fireforx problem - same behavior can be observed (different extend, depending on how "heavy" to program is) by IE, Opera, Skype, etc. - all already running applications that are forced to use the HDD for caching because of lack of available RAM, which at the same time is used for buffer! Funnily, it could be an issue with the x64 version of win 7, as I tried that on a 32 bit windows 7 netbook with 1GB ram and it was much better. Don't really know. I doubt it is my hardware, as everything looks the way it should be - HDD benchmarks, diagnostics, drivers update - I have tried so many things while looking for the reason - it was driving me crazy!! I took out my HDD so many times to run diagnostics on it or to put my old 5400 drive to see if it makes a difference. I didn't think the RAM could be the problem, as Win 7 was showing only 50% utilization of my 4GB ram... now I know it is exactly the lack of RAM that causes all of that indirectly. Fact is - adding more RAM AND limiting OR better disabling the pagefile has great effect!

Photoshop no longer requires a pagefile - as long as you have enough ram to feed it - it won't complain. I will report as soon as I run into any troubles because of the disabled pagefile, but I certainly hope I won't So far no issues at all.

 

Ah so they changed it. I remember older versions of Photoshop used to to complain incessantly if you didn't have a pagefile.

 

To complicate the matter, Microsoft is so smart that it thinks it can save you some energy and running around the house to dim the light(swap to page file) and whenever you go near it, it turns it back up. Making your house like a disco. That is what gracy123 was experiencing, constant thrushing the HDD due to this contineous switching.

 

Sounds about right

I'm surprised though I am the only one complaining (among those who haven't disabled or limited the pagefile)! It is so obvious and disturbing...
However, it might be more noticeable on certain hardware, I have experiments on another PC running Win 7 (32 Bit), 5400RPM HDD and only 1GB ram - it wasn't that bad indeed... no idea if the difference comes from the 64Bit.

 

Gracy123,

Is this a clean install of Win7x64U on your Sony? With only the bare minimum needed drivers for the hardware to function properly?

If you have some of the Sony 'junk' programs that VAIO's are delivered with, that could be a reason you're seeing such a massive difference between 32bit and 6bit Win7 systems.

Also, what A/V are you using and are the H/W drivers all updated too?

 

No, I am suing a "cleaned up" Win7. Too many things don't function properly on a clean installed Windows. I have removed all unnecessary Sony junk. Actually, the only Sony apps I still have and use are Vaio Gate, Vaio updater and Vaio Control Center. I have inspected all 3 and they take up very limited resources and are inactive unless used.

All my hardware drivers are up to date as far as I know, my Video even has much newer modified drivers than those Sony offer. What do you mean by "what A/V are you using"?

 

A/V is Anti-Virus, sorry.

MSE gives me no problems, btw.

Microsoft Security Essentials = MSE

 

Using my XX years experience with computers as an Anti-Virus I hate Anti-virus softwares - haven't seen any that would not decrease productivity noticeably! Haven't been using one for at least 7-8 years now Windows defender and anti-malware app are also off.

 

Your test case warrant a support ticket to microsoft as this is definitely a case that makes Windows 7 temperarily unusable when you are not short of resources .

 

In last year, I have kept PageFile off, I did not notice any slowdowns since. But before upgrading to 8GB RAM, I've always got the 'close some programs' popup while I was playing games as all my RAM got (3GB of 4GB) TurboCached'ed...

Disabling PageFile, System Restore point and Windows Search service is the first 3 things I do after a clean install, on first boot.

 

Well I don't play any games I find System Restore a very useful feature, wouldn't disable it. Indexing is also disabled from the first boot

 

I'm moving a 83GB folder now, RAM ussage is somewhere between 1,33-1,37GB. Not stable and jumps up and down every second! This is one of my other laptops with T7500, 2GB RAM, 320GB WD SB. It is a bit late to open folders etc., CPU ussage is somewhere between 14 - 100% ( !) PageFile is off.

 

It's been a few days, just wanted to report back that so far not a single issue with disabled pagefile! I've been using photoshop quite often, as well as other programs - everything works great and much better than with enabled pagefile! Finally a non-bottlenecked computer YEY!

But in the name of the truth - it is the additional 2GB ram that make most of the difference, disabling the pagefile helps mainly to stop windows from caching often used stuff to the HDD instead of leaving them in the RAM where they belong. I would say 80% of the big difference come from the 6 vs 4 GB RAM, 20% - disabled pagefile.

 

Gracy123,

Are you still using a USB stick for ReadyBoost?

I finally had some time to do a direct comparison and the conclusion that I came to in my systems was that ReadyBoost was actually slowing down my computers.

I now have a few 8GB USB sticks as 'spares' now!

If you're still using RB, then you should try disabling it (just cold boot without the USB inserted) and see if you still have the same issues.

Glad to see your machine/usage doesn't require a pagefile and its faster for you.

 

No, I used to use a 4GB SD-card as readyboost while I was back to 4GB RAM. Hard to say if I felt a difference. Sometimes I think I did feel positive one, but it is all subjective. Besides that I used a Class 2 SD card which is quite slow... Really can't say. Wouldn't say it slowed it down either (apart from when starting the PC and everything had to be copied to the SD because of the HDD activity).

I'm now only using 6GB RAM + Pagefile disabled

 

Ah, okay.

Talking about subjective, if you want full speed from your machine while plugged in (or, when you don't care about battery life) you may want to try TS 2.99.5 from unclewebb here:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7125515-post236.html


When you run it, enable the 'MAX' or 'C1' setting for C-States and see if your typical user experience is further enhanced.

Btw, if you set 'Max', you should be able to exit from TS and it will still keep that setting enabled (until you shutdown).

Curious what you may experience...

On my U30Jc, with TS and Max enabled, the computer responds at the level it did when I had my SSD inside (currently running a Scorpio Black) with none of the downsides (SPACE/CAPACITY! ).

It doesn't increase the total amount of work the system can do - but it certainly makes if feel like a more powerful system than what it is.

Actually, the 'feel' is faster than a quadcore desktop with 4x vRaptors inside (but the quad can still stomp the little i3 for actual work produced per minute ).

 

And they are related.

Don't use the slowest device in your system as supplement of RAM unless you have no other choice.

That reminds me the day when I used floppy based lotus 1-2-3 which kind of has its own memory manager and would prompt me to switch diskette for it to load its stuff.

 

Thanks for the advise I will give it a try some day, but currently not willing to play with the CPU I think it is the least thing that bottlenecks my PC

But will give it a try some time out of curiosity

 

No problem Gracy123!

But just like with your previous (recent) belief that 2GB extra RAM wouldn't make that much of a difference, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Especially if you notebook is running an HM55 chipset.


chimpanzee, that is a pretty bad example with Lotus 123. That is simply a matter of not being able to fit the executables onto one floppy (and have room for data too on the same floppy).

With Lotus 123, WordPerfect 5.1 and a few others I can't recall right now, I had made a custom floppy for each where the whole program would run from one floppy and the second floppy (in a two floppy setup, of course) would hold my data. No shuffling floppies around.

Also, if your (continuing) theory is true about pagefiles - and my systems wouldn't crash without them - then why don't I see a massive speed/responsiveness reduction with my just under 32GB pagefiles spread out on different partitions (4) of the same, notebook drive?

The only speed up worth noting on my systems with pagefile disabled was booting up and shutting down (around 10 second difference) - everything else was 'meh' - speedwise.

 

It is not about shuffling floppy, it is about the amplified result(and inconvenience) of having to load things from floppy.

Believe what you want to believe and do whatever you think is the best for you.

 

Yes it is (HM55). Could you explain which part/feature of the app do you particularly mean? I haven't had the time to read the whole thread and from what I had a look at I didn't understand much....? If I'm not mistaken, a value of 100 for CMod and Chip should mean there is no throttling...? What do I need to do ) So many options, so much theory - I'm kind of lost here...

Where are those? Looking at it right now (ver. 2.99) but not sure where to find them...

 

Gracy123,

You want to download 2.99.5 from here:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7125515-post236.html


Then you'll see the 'Max', C1, C3, C6 and C7 settings. They are all on a single button and with each click you toggle the next setting.

If you do want to try it, you need to hit 'Turn On' too (I also hit Save at this point also, before I exit the program).


Yeah, and just cause the values are 100 for Cmod and chip, doesn't mean they are.

Hope this helps you.

 

Ah ok. Thanks. So where do you feel difference exactly? What exactly does it change? I just switched to Max and turned it on.

 

see my original post #72.

 

Have been using both options for the past ~ 12 hours - feel absolutely no difference...

 

Thanks for the update Gracy123.

I guess my specific setups benefit much more with those settings.

(On the TS thread, even with an SSD another user did not notice any differences either).

Thanks for trying it out though!

 

No problem I terminated the experiment a few hours ago as I really couldn't determine any difference.

Small update on the RAM usage:

I keep my Resource Monitor running and keep an eye on it all the time to evaluate RAM usage - looks like 6GB is just right for me - most of the time I have between 500MB and 1500MB FREE memory (not Available, but actually free, hence unused) and that with disabled pagefile even when I use Photoshop it rarely goes to 0. Only when I copy large files - the process eats all of the free ram.

At the moment:

In Use: 2448 MB
Modified: 596 MB
Standby: 2096 MB
Free: 871 MB

and I have 7 Firefox windows opened with 28 tabs in total, Skype, a PDF file, Picasa, Resource Monitor and a few small stuff that are always on.

 

That is the problem of the Windows 7 VMM(or at least the copy operation). It doesn't distinguish memory(whether it is real or pseudo) so when you are copying very large file(way larger than any RAM you have), the VMM just keep expanding the page file(as you ask it to manage it).

By disabling the page file, the copy operation can only use a limited amount of memory(at most dip into the cache). Obviously, the operation itself can handle 'no more memory available' nicely so it doesn't boom(no matter how little memory you have, it just buffer less) but not in the case of having an unlimited page file size and under that case, it would keep on grabbing more and more(possibly buffer the whole 80G if that is the size).

edit:
BTW, I begin to understand why it is not a problem in 32 bit(why you didn't see it in XP which I assume you were running the 32 bit version). Under 32 bit, the max address space of any process is 4G(with 2G reserved for kernel) so the copy operation can at most buffer 2G stuff, unlike 64 bit which if they don't put a limit on the buffering ceiling, it can expand to full 64 bit. I am interested to see some doing a copy of 1TB and see how large the page file will be.

 

Hmmmmm, that sounds very interesting. Yes, the XP was also 32bit. However I only have 1GB RAM (well now 2GB) in the machine with Win7 (32 bit), so it should still be taking all available RAM and bottlenecking the system, but somehow it wasn't that offensively lagged as my Win 7 x64 was/is.

 

Yes, but under 32 bit W7, the copy process can at most grab 2GB so your page file size is automatically limited to that amount(may be larger due to other process but not unlimited growth).

So it will still be slow but not the uncontrolled behaviour. In other words, if you don't allow W7 64 to manage the page file but set to say hard 2GB/4GB, you won't be seeing the kind of behaviour you saw. It is still a bad case for this particular scenario(using page file as buffer for copying) but at least it is limiting the damage.

 

Limiting the pagefile definitely helped! Of course not as much as disabling it but it did make an obvious difference!

 

chimpanzee,

while on the surface it seems like you have 'solved' the puzzle, I have to disagree with your conclusion.

I have transferred 0.5, .75 and 1.25 TB of data between computers and have not seen this issue that Gracy123 is seeing (although, I admit I wasn't looking for RAM usage while copying either).

I can see some portion of RAM (and maybe 6GB is not enough to see what the actual 'hard' limit is in Windows 7 64bit) being used for that purpose.

What I can't see is the MS Win7 designers to make it cache the files it will copy and then do the actual copying. This is where your 'logic' fails in my eyes.

I can understand it will use/cache all available physical RAM (and that may be beneficial overall as long as it is doing so on a different thread than the actual 'copying' operation), but there is no way it will use the pagefile (and grow/shrink it as you think) for that same copying command.

Does not compute!

 

If you want, you can try to copy a very big file say 200G and see what happens to your page file.

As I said, I put out my explanation, you can agree or disagree. I am not going to argue with you nor going to test it either as I am not going to enable my page file. In fact this reminds me in my very early days when I have deliberately limited my page file size(min/max) under NT for the exact same reason because any program can allocate memory up to 2GB which in the day of NT when 64/128MB was the norm, I experienced the exact same behaviour. The task will eventually finish, just that during that time, the system is unusable, but not crashing.

edit:
that was when I wrote a simple C program to just test this behaviour.

 

thank you for confirming that. Personally, if I must enable page file(which I don't), I would limit the size to 1/4 of the RAM size. This would serve a sudden spike purpose without having an unpredicatable system.

I know there are people who said letting windows manage is the best way(or else better disable it) so no need to re-open that argument again as I fully understand your argument.

 

Okay, here are the tests I did:

1) Copy 10GB (picked that because I wanted it bigger than the 8GB RAM I have) between two partitions. All pagefiles (4x8GB each) did not budge from their 'system managed' sizes - Actual pagefile sizes 31,921MB.

The system responded normally including browsing IE (12 Tabs), 8GB Outlook file open and navigating the Start/Program menu.

2) Copy a 56GB folder with many smaller files of ~30MB each - same results; no change in pagefile sizes.

3) Copy a single file of ~46GB size (chosen because this is bigger than all my pagefiles plus the RAM added together) and... - same results.

I also opened PS CS5 x64 while the copy was happening (slower, but still within 45 seconds), responded to a few Outlook emails and generally used the system as I normally would.

Sure, the system is slower (it's only an i3 350M with a Scorpio Black working overtime with this unrealistic (for me) usage scenario, but it is rock solid and not 'eating' up the RAM nor the pagefile (hard drive space) in any detrimental way.

I think you are mistakenly assuming that today's O/S's with many multiples of physical RAM and HDD space will perform the same as 'ancient' NT technology back in 1993 did.

See:
The Microsoft Timeline

 

RAM and HDD speed changed, the fundamental is still the same. Just image the simple case I mentioned, run a python 64 bit program and allocate a say 128GB array and initialize it. What do you think Windows 7 can do ? It must satisfy the request because you said 'unlimited page file size'(may be Windows 7 has an artificial limit depending on version).

I don't know about your system as there are lots of things(I would say it is not the base line I would test) that I need to do in order to prove whether I am right or wrong. However, I am not being paid to solve someone's problem. So the only time I would spend is reading others result and offer my explanation. gracy123's result seems to match every step I have mentioned so far. I have recommended her to up her RAM and disable page file in her original thread about the 7k500. This thread so far also match my explanation(her machine).

I am not here to win any bragging right(too old for that), just trying to her.

 

I'm not taking anyone's side... just establishing the facts. However, I find the discussion very interesting and would love to find out whether really Win 7 x64 is more affected than x86 and WHY or it is a certain hardware configuration that is experiencing this strange behavior... - Fact is, you don't see that many people complaining about it...

I must say thoug that the computer did not experience TOTAL lag! I was still able to browse the start menu, My Computer, My documents... even run Word or Excel (with small but perfectly natural delay)... The programs which were affected the most were actually those which were already started in advance and running in the background - such as minimized Browser webpages, minimized Skype, etc.

Not that I move around such huge amounts of data on daily basis, but whenever I had to (or even was installing bigger software) I was literally unable to continue working! I had to stop and wait until copying/installing is done, than I had be patient and click on each minimized window and wait for up to a few seconds per window/tab until it loads the content and than continue working. It was SHOCKING to experience this on a XXXX bucks state of the art machine, whereas I have never experienced such a huge lag before - and remember my first Windows was 3.11 on a 386 computer...

 

Gracy123 and chimpanzee,

I too am not out for any bragging rights - but this does interest me immensely (If I'm proven wrong, I'll change my ways in a heartbeat).

Too bad chimpanzee does not want to try anything on his/her system.

Thinking about a couple of comments you said in the past (Gracy123), I thought this might be helpful for you:

See:
Sony eSupport - Electronics - Support Information

And, although it is not specifically for your Vaio S, this may prove useful too:

See
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/429745-windows-7-clean-install-guide-vaio-fz.html

I think the major difference between our computers is that you're running a possible sub-optimal 'cleaned-up' Win7 installation vs. my clean install that does not contain anything I don't want it to have installed and using resources.

One of my requirements for a new system is that a solid, fully working clean install is possible - otherwise, the notebook to me is just a paper-weight.

Hope those links help (maybe in the future)?

 

not a native English speaker but I think it should be 'its system'

 

Not native english speaker either, but 'its system' would make you a 'thing' not a person.

 

do we treat chimpanzee as a person or a thing

 

ah!

A talking chimpanzee is a person to me.

 

It doesn't talk, it types.

 

indeed. punching the right combination and there are treats or else zapped, I thought that was how the train the ones going to space.