Minimizing Ram usage in Vista

Hi all

I've noticed Vista chugs quite a bit of ram even when just idling i clocked my idle ram at around 1.2Gb and after i preformed the vista tips and tweaks guide i got it down to around 950-1000Mb Is this just what vista needs for Aero etc. or can it be reduced even further?

Ow and why not post your idle Ram usage up so we can compare results.

 

It's kind of interesting to me whenever someone mentions Vista using a lot of RAM even when idle. I have 4GBs of RAM installed and, when idle, my computer barely uses more that 800MB of RAM. Now, I keep my system to the bare minimum as far as programs are concerned - I've only installed programs that I actually need. I have no saved games or songs or anything like that. However, does that really make that big of a difference?

Oh, no offense to the OP. I'm not trying to criticize or get at you for any reason. Nor am I trying to hijack your thread. I'm merely making an observation.

 

Na i see your point

i have 4GB also and i just want to know why vista would use 1GB even when idling. if you get my point

 

From what I hear Vista uses your memory so it runs smoother and gives it back if apps need it. That's not hard truth, though... I would have to confirm with facts.

 

Well that would explain when Vista is so dam smooth.

 

Ive read that as well; that vista "tries" to use the ram because unused ram is essentially wasted ram.

 

Heh yes... reminds me of a performance setting on ObjectDock... something about "I paid for this RAM, now use it!" :laugh:

 

Ok kool that raps that up for me and yay i made 50 posts (lol not many compared to you guys 234,704 nice!!)

 

It can be tremendously down.

My setup uses when started just 29% of 2048 MB of RAM. That's approxemately 541 MB of real needed usage and this value is really low.
Superfetch is turned off here and I follow Tweakhound's tweakguide. After Tweakhound I make a discission not to use a virus resident schield for anti-virus and even use defender.

Spybot&Destroy's TEAtimer and SDhelper even in combination with FireFox or Opera is even as save as with a full resource loading anti-virus shield. TEAtimer is a paradox on UAC and you are the only one who can give a permission to allow or deny it.

Oké, Tweakhoudn saves you 32 MB of RAM and that's not much.

Disabling Aero saves you 71 MB RAM
Disabling Sidebar saves you 37 MB RAM
Disabling the active virusshield saves you 60 MB average and regains speed
Disabling Defender saves you 30 MB an enabling TEAtimer costs you 31 MB.

I don't use an virusscanner and there's still one om my notebook of course, but is is not resident and I can scan files on command when downloading something
Spybot Search&Destroy is at our office marked as the best sollution against any change in your PC and a virus or spyware MUST change a value in the registry and TEAtimer asks permission on start-up entry or whatever. It is not nasty and you don't have mass of pop-ups and only in the beginning it must learn your rules, yes, indeed, YOUR rules

Then go to taskschedular and change any trigger to your needs

Since 2001 I'm free of any kind of spyware and virusses.

This is a screenshot of my taskmanager in a heavy tweaked and smooth running Vista.
CPU is almost zero and I have no pagefile and without any problem.

 

wow +Rep for all your info thanks mate

 

Its nice that you have it that low, but again, unused ram is wasted ram; do you break 1.5GBs of ram usage?

 

If your system is at such a low spec that you disable the one thing to really like about Vista, you probably do not need Vista.

I find it interesting that you have tweaked your system considerably, yet I'm running with 12 less processes than you are, and I've hardly tweaked mine at all. What kinds of processes are running there?

 

With 2 gb installed, my Vista idles around 950-1000mb, but even with a lot of apps open I've never seen it use more than about 1.3 mb. So... who really cares? Unless you're running it with 1 gb or less, I don't see the point of optimizing RAM. You may as well utilize the extra features like Aero, search, Defender, etc.

Before doing any RAM-saving tweaks, check out this article showing just how hard it is to make use of even 1.5 gb of RAM:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=282

So, yeah, Vista uses a lot of RAM when idle... but then when you run some apps, the RAM usage goes up very slowly from there.

 

I have tweaked the hell out of Vista, am running Avira, Aero, and WD on startup. At idle Vista premium is sitting at 525MB/4GB and 36 processes. With apps running it will consume the rest. It will eventually give back any unused ram over a period of time.

All of this is achieved with Superfetch "OFF".

 

36 processes
how'd you manage that? i thought i did well with 56, coming from 83

 

I don't really care about it because it turns itself down to try to stay under 80~90%. If you play a memory intensive game for like 3 hours and then turn it off, you will see that Vista is only using 450~600MB of your RAM.

I don't see what's the obsession with having the minimum RAM being used.

 

@rogresalor: Yes, thanks, now that you are defenseless we can attack your computer

 

I turned off everything I didn't need. I'm not running in a network environment so I turned off processes that had no bearing on my computing.

Processes that have been turned off:

Computer Browser
Readyboost
Superfetch
TabletPC
Print Spooler (Don't have a Printer, just a web based PC)
Server
WebClient
Windows Image Acquisition (don't have a scanner installed)
Windows Search (yuck)
Windows Time (no thanks i'll use my BIOS or i'll adjust the time myself)
XAudioService (don't use a modem so I don't need a service to enable the modem spkr)

Turned off WD scheduling
Turned off Disk Defrag scheduling

Installed CCLeaner ( http://www.ccleaner.com ), went to Tools -> Startup and found 6 entries I didn't need. I unchecked the entries (don't delete the registry entry in case you decide you want it later. It works much like MSConfig, just uncheck the box and reboot.

So I went from 47 processes down to 36 and if the system is idle long enough it'll drop down to 35 at times. I forgot to mention i'm also running O&O defrag so that generates a process.

 

I opened about 50-60 FF, my media player, all of my folders and documents (a lot), my calendar, movie maker, solitaire, and on and on. Even with all that open, my system peaked at about 1.4GB RAM usage. That's nuts.

 

You got point.


Vista is mentioned to load in as much is possible for smooth operation. Once up and superfetched is it ready te serve you for many days.
I work with servers and I compaire it with these. It took a sweet time to start up, but once started up it runs wel rather than the Windows 98 flying boot, but rebooting every 2 hours...

I have no worries with 2048 MB of RAM installed. I decrapified the laptop fit to my needs and Vista uses at startup only 648 MB of RAM and al other room is for superfetcher, cache and games. So tweaking is usefull and more RAM is always usefull

If I'm ready with the notebook; I close the lid and it goes in sleep. Should work flawless, especially for notebooks, designed for this.

 

Its a classic dialogue on NBR:

Its just timeless


btw.. 1.2 GB RAM usage is for untweaked Vista...with NBR Tweak guide..u can bring it down to 700-800 MB.

I dont have Aero and
i use 3rd party softwares for Aero effects which are much cooler literally on the GPU & CPU.

 

When idle my vista ram usage is at around 29-31%. Which is less than 1gb ram. At startup my processes is around 30.

 

Why would you want to decrease memory footprints if you have enough RAM? Would this make it run faster? And would you see a significant difference? I don't think so. To me it's useless to tweak memory settings because Vista does it's memory management well without help.

 

ditto to this question; does tweaking relieve processor stress?

 

"Cached" RAM, ie. RAM being held by Superfetch, is one thing. It's a thing with a separate counter and a separate value in Task Manager (under Physical Memory). I don't have too much issue with this, tho I would like to know what it's caching.

The part that people confuse with caching, which isn't caching, is the "Memory" bar in Task Manager. That is how much memory Vista is actually *using* for something. Services are here, processes are here, things Vista needs to function are here. My problem is that Vista is *using* (**NOT CACHING**) over 1GB of RAM. I do not know what Vista x64 needs over 5x the amount of RAM of XP64 for. It can't be UAC. It can't be Aero. It can't be Superfetch itself.

I like Vista but this is one of those things I think MS could improve on.

 

I don't know if anyone cares, but this has been the design philosophy of Linux memory management. The idea, only recently implemented by Microsoft into Windows Vista under the super marketing term "SuperFetch," is to design the OS to use all the RAM for itself when the user doesn't need it (for the purposes of performance), then reallocate it for user processes when they are started. This is why you see Vista leaving so little unused RAM; and why the amount of cached RAM immediately decreases when the user begins opening programs. So its a good thing when an operating system utilizes your hardware to its fullest extent (even if it is idling).

As for the minimum footprint that the OS always needs, it is obvious that less is better in order to reduce overhead. The problem is that most users don't understand that when you *add* functionality to an OS, you can expect it to take up more disk space and RAM. It is unreasonable from a developer's standpoint to expect Windows to get "better" while consuming less.

 

An unused resource without future purpose or intrinsic value is wasted

 

Yup... the title of this thread should be "How do I maximize my RAM usage?"

...Or maybe "I bought gobs of RAM, but some of it's going unused... how do I put it all to work?"

 

But there should be a reasonable amount of Performance to Resource usage ratio.

Vista uses much much more resources for Aero effects than using them for performance based tasks.

For example, i use Transbar for Transparent taskbar and sometimes True Transparency for glass windows....

these 3rd party programs hardly use resources and dont depend on GPU.

The result? The Window drags without lag.. and feels lighter.
You might have noticed that Aero effect causes Windows to feel heavier when dragging.

For this beautification ..lot of resources like GPU clock are allocated for unnecessary usage.

Btw RAM is the cheapest component of a Laptop ...so RAM usage hardly matters.

The more important concern is the CPU & GPU.

 

I usually idle in the 1.5 RAM range. But then again I have at any one time 5 - 9 programs open and perfmon logging away.

 

Unfortunately, MS actually engineered _Vista intentionally so that more resources go to the visual eye-candy and less to performance; the concept being that, unless the visuals keep moving around like they're "supposed to," the average user is likely to get frustrated and think that the system's locked up when, in point of fact, updating the screen got deferred because the system gave priority to a non-visual performance-maximizing feature, such as throughput on I/O.

 

More like, Vista got re engineered so I/O tasks were properly scheduled and prioritized. This allowed you to move the mouse and type, even as the harddrive is cranking away at full speed. Sounds like a properly written scheduler to me.

 

The general rule in systems tuning, regardless of operating system, hardware platform, or workload, is first to identify the workload to be favored, second to establish measurable criteria for that workload (e.g.: 92.3% of all transactions of type "A" complete within .075ms as measured by internal response time using tool "B"), third to identify bottlenecks or impediments to achieving that workload, then to either free up or add new resources to eliminate or minimize those bottlenecks or impediments. Then the process is repeated until all workloads are within specifications or until diminishing returns are achieved.

If there are no measurable bottlenecks or impediments to accomplishing the tasks associated with the favored workload, then there is nothing wrong to be corrected.

Although, I would make a strong argument that, in that case, there could be an over-allocation of resources and that by reducing those resources the funds and efforts associated with acquiring and maintaining those resources would be freed up and could be better utilized elsewhere.

The classic "big" tuning knobs are: CPU; Memory; DASD; Network.

 

In layman's terms, find an acceptable baseline performance level, then configure to that level.

 

Except that approach has no end point since there are no measurables.

In any case, the layman's approach is to simply throw money at it.