Lower Memory Usage in Windows Vista?

Hi, I think I found the main culprit for why my games are running slow in Vista compared to XP.

In XP the memory usage stated by the task manager is about 400-500mb idle. I use Kaspersky Antivirus and Mozilla Firefox. On Vista it idles with 900mb-1.5GB or so.

Is there anyway to reduce Vista's memery usage to a number like XP's? I heard disabling some services might help, but won't those affect how I use my computer? Maybe there's no way.

 

Reducing memory usage as a such is possible, by getting rid of some processes i.e. services/autostart objects.
However:
You will not reach XP levels.

 

First you need to understand Vista's Memory Mangement is different from XP's

Here is detailed look into it , I Think you may be a bit confused by the way that Vista manages memory. The memory management system in Vista is completely new it is actually designed to fill almost all memory on any system all the time. It does this by caching data from the hard drive that you use frequently (Superfetch). This can speed up drive access because it is cached in RAM (especially if you have a lot of RAM).

You can’t use the free ram displayed in the task manager as a metric to the amount of RAM that is free for use. When more memory is requested windows pages off the cache to virtual memory (or a readyboost flash drive) to free physical memory.

The best way to judge subjective performance is to use the machine for about week to see how it works. I have used Vista on a Intel p4 3GHZ with 1GB of RAM and found it very responsive.

I am not saying Vista is not more resource intensive than XP (because it obviously is). Just that the metric you are useing to measure RAM useage does not mean anything. Even on systems with 4GB+ the memory usage will be constantly 90%+.

So whats the use of having huge amounts of ram yet used by none

 

Vista consumes a lot of RAM no matter what you tweak or zap. Vista was designed with the saying "unused RAM is wasted RAM" phrase in mind; if you run any applications, Vista will free it's cache memory for your use. That said, if you have 2GB of RAM (or more), lack of RAM is not the problem. You might want to make sure that your video drivers are fully updated.

 

Thanks for the info. It does seem that Vista handles memory much better. But strangely enough the game I sometimes play, Drift City, is slow on Vista but not on XP. Maybe my hardware isn't good enough to handle this. I usually install Vista x64 from now on, but I used to try x32.

@Bog: Yeah the video drivers might be a problem. I'm not sure, I've tried almost everything. I think one time I got it to work before, but that was *mixing drivers (then BSOD), I didn't know much about installing NVIDIA drivers back then. I could go out and try every driver that might work, but then the extra step of changing PowerMizer will take a while. Any recommendations for my 7150M card?

 

How about cleaning out your video card drivers and then reinstalling them?

Sounds like you never cleaned out your previous drivers before you installed new ones.

 

I did, I uninstalled my drivers, used Driver Sweeper, and then installed the new ones as always.

Also I think from what you all said, Vista "reserves" some memory on the RAM for superfetch and opens them up for other applications later and that Vista uses about 40-50% for that?

 

The 7150M is a fairly weak, integrated card. It's also non-upgradeable, like all IGPs. I'm not sure what you can do to improve performance other than the usual system maintenance plus up-to-date drivers.

 

My cousin has the Intel Integrated 945GM chipset, and a 2.0GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and the Aero interface seems to work fine for him (not mcuh, but it seems better than mine). But doesn't the 945GM chipset have 256mb of shared memory? Also Bog, what nVidia driver do you recommend I should try?

 

There was a user around here called Pulp who did a lot of testing on the 7150M. In fact, he even wrote a review specifically for the 7150M that had detailed benchmarks, and he mentioned that it had poor Aero performance. I would recommend searching for that thread and maybe PMing him if you have any questions about his review.

That said, I used to use Forceware drivers from www.laptopvideo2go.com; they are basically tweaked Nvidia drivers that are modified so that they can install on mobile cards. Alternatively, www.guru3D.com also has modified Forceware drivers.

 

I've read Pulp's review several times, but he said he wasn't able to install newer nVidia drivers, as I was able to. Some games work fine in Vista, and some games don't strangely. Like Portal works fine, it's just this one game for example that won't work perfectly, but it works in XP.