Got an Windows Tablet or Netbook with non-upgradable ram memory, try this memory optimizer

I have an Win8.1 Tablet with an removable keyboard it`s an Asus T100, it only has 2GB of non-upgradable ram memory, with approx 1.9GB after the graphics have taken their bite.

Ok i found this app called "Mem Reduct" it just defrags/frees your memory when it hits a certain level, i have it set to 50%, and so far it seems to be working great, just set it to boot with Windows.

It runs on the task-bar, a little icon where you can change the settings.

I have checked the app with the Virus Total website and it is totally clean.

So give it a go, you have nothing to loose

I have posted a few of these apps over the years, the last one was called mini-mem.

John.

Mem Reduct | Henry++

 

Huh, that's a rather interesting program. My first thought was, "How can computers still be sold with 2 GB RAM?" But this could be rather useful on my work laptop, which despite having 8 GB of RAM, is continually running out of adequate supplies of memory. I was hoping that there would be some decent documentation on the program, but it seems that is not so, and it appears that the author isn't a native English speaker, which may be why (although given the sparse code and commit comments, my suspicion is it's just his style to not include very many comments).

So I did a bit of investigating including taking a quick look at the code, as well as some of the functions it was calling. It looks like the main functions it is calling reduce the working set, which in layman's terms means moving what it can of the RAM copy of a program's memory to the pagefile, so that the amount of memory effectively in use decreases. It apparently does the same thing that Process Hacker can do in this regard, but not so manually. I tested out Process Hacker's version of it as a more limited experiment, and sure enough, the physical RAM usage decreases. Trying it with Opera, for example, it went down significantly, and although it quickly shot back up, even several minutes later, and with a few fresh tabs open, I'm still at about 33% less physical RAM usage than before. Not bad. The page file usage (which includes virtual memory) remains the same, however. It doesn't actually do anything about how much memory a program thinks it has, just how much of that is actually in physical RAM at any given time.

Mini-mem appears to do essentially the same thing, but gives you more fine-grained control over which programs it applies this to. I think that would actually probably be better. As I understand it, Mem Reduct applies these optimizations broadly. However, if it tells the program that you're working with, and actually want to be using the RAM, to quit using RAM and just use the page file instead, it might actually slow you down. Whereas with Mini-Mem, you could just have it target certain programs whose performance isn't critical (web browsers being its example, and likely a fairly good one), and let your heavy lifter programs (in my case, IDEs) continue using as much RAM as they need.

In all three cases (Mini-Mem, Mem Reduct, and Process Hacker), they appear to use Native API functions instead of, say, Win32 ones. This is somewhat curious, as it appears that there's a Win32 function that can do much of the same thing, and would be more stably supported. But it looks like the first two copied how they do it from Process Hacker, which used the native version, perhaps because it also supports POSIX applications on Windows NT, which aren't Win32. And perhaps there's some advantage to the native version that isn't apparent until you start working with them. Perhaps that advantage is the Native API having been around longer - Mem Reduct indicates that reducing the working set only works on Vista and later, as does the Win32 documentation for it, but it's definitely working for me on XP x64 when using Process Hacker.

I haven't looked into Modified Pagelists yet, and what exactly that does.

This does remind me that I seem to recall having read something about a system where programs could flag certain memory as reclaimable by the OS, so that if the OS received requests from other programs for more memory, the old ones that had it would voluntarily reduce their footprint. Initially I thought the memory optimizer would be doing something with that. I know Java has something like this, in that you can have weak references to objects that will be deleted if there is insufficient memory - typically used for software caches, where having the data in RAM is great if there's enough RAM, but if not it can be retrieved from storage/network or re-generated. And I may have read about something like this in an article on OS X Maverick's memory enhancements. But I'm not sure that any version of Windows has this, which if true, would explain why that technique isn't being used. If such a mechanism were supported, it might be used to reduce not only the active memory in use, but also the page file use by each program.

The memory optimization technique that I know Mavericks does have is memory compression, whereby it compresses data in memory, and decompresses it as needed by the process. This can save quite a lot of RAM space, as a lot of programs store quite a bit of non-dense data in RAM. However, as far as I know no recent version of Windows has such a feature. I recall reading that there were programs that did essentially the same thing in DOS and other '80s-era operating systems, where RAM space was much more at a premium, so it's possible that early Windows versions that were essentially DOS shells benefited from it. But I don't think modern Windows has it, and that's probably something that would have to be built in at the kernel level to really work.

Regardless, a rather fascinating program, and I'll have to take a look at this sort of thing and see if I can increase the responsiveness on my lethargic work computer with it or one of the similar programs.

 

Iobit Advanced System Care has an program called "Smart Ram 3.0" it is integrated but i manged extract it so it can be used on it`s own is the memory app i currently use on my 2gb memory tab/notebook , i use to use mini-mem on games/apps with memory leaks, i have 8gb on my main notebook and some older games give a low memory waring pop-up.

If your notebook has at least 4gb you dont really need any memory mangers.

John.

 

Hi John,


I just got the T100TA and and some games runs out of memory (which says 2GB is enough) - you mentioned Mem Reduct, but how does CleanMem work in comparison ?

 

Hi. notebear, i did not know CleanMem existed, i will give it a go.

EDIT: what games run ok on the T100 we should make a list.

John.

 

I tried CleanMem and i dont like it, I prefer Mem Reduct it has it`s bugs but it seems to recover the most memory.

John.

 

Phones are getting 4G these days, and somehow 2G notebooks/tablets are still not extinct.