RAM Optimization Software - Windows XP

Hi, all.

I saw this over at ZDNet: FreeRAM XP Pro.

It's supposed to monitor and optimize your RAM on the fly (or manually). Noticed a couple of other programs out there like this.

Has anyone tried them? Never heard of them before, and not sure that RAM needs "optimized".

Any thoughts or feedback?

Thanks.

 

I used to use it on my old HP notebook when it had only 256 megs, but didn't need it after I put another stick of 512 in it.

 

I've never been much of a believer in "ram optimizing" unless you're on some super low RAM PC. Then the best way to go is to get more RAM.

A few years ago, I put together a 200mhz pentium PC with 64mb of ram just to see how win2k would run on it. It worked so long as you only did one and only one thing at a time. I added the ram software (i forget the name offhand) from analogx and that did seem to help some.

Then I bumped the ram to 128 or 192, which helped more than anything.

 

In short: Never a good idea. Windows knows better what to do with your RAM than any program does, and it doesn't optimize RAM, it just pushes stuff out to the pagefile, so it gets reloaded when a program is switched back to, etc. It's not really a solution to anything. The real solution is to get more memory.

See this thread for a more in-depth discussion: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=114490

 

Thanks to all of you. Just as I suspected - worthless apps. I liked Pitabread's comparison to the cellphone booster antennas. But I swear, my tinfoil hat keeps the spy rays out of my head!

I appreciate the link, Pitabread. Actually did a forum search and didn't come across that one.

 

Yeah, but that's different.

It doesn't even help then.
It's fairly simple, the application can't get the level of control that'd be needed to do what they claim to do. Even the OS itself can't do it.
When an application has allocated memory, it is literally impossible to determine when (if ever) it will be needed, and so, whether or not it can be "prematurely freed". That means, nothing the OS or any ram "optimizers" can do can possibly free any of the memory that is in use. And when they can't do that, just what are they good for?

As Pitabred said, all they do is push data to the pagefile. And yes, that makes task manager report more free memory for a minute or so, but it doesn't make a difference, because the first thing any application has to do is reload everything from the pagefile, which means 1) in the end, you're using the same amount of memory, and 2) you just wasted a lot of time writing your memory contents to the harddrive and then reading it again afterwards. Oh, and 3) if you didn't already have enough memory problems, you now also have the RAM "optimizer" hogging some of your valuable memory...

In short, don't bother. Ever. Not even on systems with little RAM installed. At least not if you're using an OS that is less than 10 years old.
(On ancient junk like Win95, it still won't be able to do the above, but it might help a bit with cleaning up (or at least, moving out of the way) leaked memory *after* an application has terminated. On every decent OS though, such memory is reclaimed perfectly well by the OS, and having an application try to "hide" it in the pagefile will only serve to slow you down

 

the only time I have ever found ram helper apps to be any good is when I have a buggy app I have to use, that has memory leaks. I will run a recover memory thing after I close the bad app. Thats it. Powerstrip does this well.

 

Except, as I said above, it doesn't free the memory. First, any decent OS will free *everything* an app allocated once the app is terminated.
And second, if the OS doesn't do that properly (XP is certainly capable of it) then the best such an app can do is to "hide" the leaked memory a bit, by pushing it to a pagefile (where it would end up *anyway* given a minute or two)
Net benefit: None.

 

So to what do you attribute the memory leaks in XP? Are we still talking malloc without freeing or is it an entirely new ballpark?

 

A memory leak is just an application that doesn't correctly relinquish memory it doesn't use any more (basically, it's like forgetting that it already has a piece of paper in front of it, so it just gets out a new piece of paper). If you close that application, all of it goes away, period. If the operating system itself has memory leaks, well... you're just SOL. Time to reboot. Malloc without freeing is typical of a memory leak, and is the only way to get one, really. You allocate memory through a myriad of ways, and then subsequently don't free it. It can happen differently in many languages, creating a ton of unused variables, reassigning a pointer more than once, lots of little things. Take a C/C++ programming course for more detail, and consider reading the wikipedia entry on memory leaks.

 

Great info Pitabread (rep to you when I can). I'd also recommend the article on memory management.

I've learned a lot from this. Thanks to all for the info and explanations.

 

I don't.
Well, as Pitabred said, memory leaks in the OS are pretty much impossible to deal with if they occur. (I don't know of any in XP though, but I do know MS's C++ compiler leaks memory like a sieve, simply *because* they know the OS will clean up after them anyway, and it runs for so short durations that it doesn't matter)

Memory leaks in applications (yes, caused by malloc or new) can still occur. All the OS can do is make sure the memory is freed when the application terminates. While it's running, the OS can do nothing.

 

Talk of the OS controlling memory leaks, in particular XP, has brought up a question for me.

My laptop (Asus A8Jp) is running XP MCE with 2GB RAM; my desktop (a Gateway about a year old) is running XP MCE with 1 GB RAM. Both have the same startups - everything disabled except antivirus/firewall. I've optimized the registry on both (using the same program), both are defragged (using the same program).

A cold startup on the laptop with 2GB is about twice as long as the desktop with 1GB (both plugged into AC). The desktop also has a lot more programs on it. So, I would think the desktop would actually have a slower startup time.

So, what contributes to startup time? Does more RAM = longer startup? Or is there some other hardware/software configuration that contributes to it?

Not really related related to memory "leaks", I don't think. But other than the hardware differences, the only thing different appears to be the amount of RAM.

Any thoughts or other reading suggestions? Thank you.

 

Laptops have a lot of penalties for speed due to the fact that they're mobile. Even if they're plugged in, a laptop has access to 90->125W (biggest laptop power supplies I've seen). A desktop has a minimum of 250W, if not much more any more. They ship kilowatt power supplies (1000W). Notebooks can't use as much power, and a ton of power is used during boot-up. Your desktop drives are probably 7200RPM, as well as having faster access times and so on, as compared to the laptop, probably a faster CPU and bus speed on the desktop, and many other things that contribute to a reduced boot time.

 

Great info! Thank you, Pitabread. That helps me understand what's going on and the differences between desktops and laptops and some other differences I've noticed.

 

I wouldn't expect more RAM to slow down startup, but who knows exactly what goes on in the depths of the Windows kernel? (It is possible that they decide to load more data into RAM at boot if more RAM is available), but as Pitabred said, the main factor is probably the harddrive speed and maybe CPU/bus speed too. (My money is on the harddrive though)

 

I thought that was what NBR was for?!

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that it's not the kernel leaking memory, it's the application. Supreme Commander actually has a persistent memory leak bug right now, so much so that my coworker with 2GB of RAM, Turion X2, and 7800GTX has to reboot after playing SupCom because his XP would bog down. I believe FireFox had the same issue with the original 2.0 release, where users---especially those with less RAM, say 256MB---noticed that their XP bogs down even after closing the browser.

 

The hdd has a huge impact on boot up times. Also for quicker start ups download "TuneXP 1.5" It reconfigures the hdd to put all the boot files at the edge of the hdd making for much faster boot up times. It also has other neat features that will help speed up your pc.

Leon

 

No, it might take some time for the OS to clean everything up (Especially if what is leaked isn't just memory, but OS resources like file handles or sockets). But XP still cleans everything up afterwards. If it doesn't, I imagine Microsoft would be *very* interested in knowing about the problem.
But it might not happen *exactly* when the window closes.