4 GB May Be Vista's RAM Sweet Spot 767
jcatcw writes "David Short, an IBM consultant who works in the Global Services Division and has been beta testing Vista for two years, says users should consider 4GB of RAM if they really want optimum Vista performance. With Vista's minimum requirement of 512MB of RAM, Vista will deliver performance that's 'sub-XP,' he says. (Dell and others recommend 2GB.) One reason: SuperFetch, which fetches applications and data, and feeds them into RAM to make them accessible more quickly. More RAM means more caching."
Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Funny)
Well, Duh...
Remember the $40/Meg RAM days?
More RAM (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More RAM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More RAM (Score:5, Funny)
Dell: "What?"
Microsoft: "Want some of this?"
*Microsoft waves a bunch of cash in dells face*
Dell: "Yes please
You can Imagine the rest...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think there was a cigar involved.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More RAM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There another anti-Mac-troll bashed with truth.
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Duh...
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Funny)
Vista: RAM is very important to your system. Are you sure you want to look at your RAM?
You: OK
Vista: Are you sure? Anything you do might cause your computer to perform poorly. Are you sure?
You: OK
Vista: Really? Cause I don't think you'd even know what to look for. Are you sure?
You: OK
Vista: Really?
You: OK
etc. . .
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Funny)
Vista: O rly?
You: Ya rly!
Dealing with Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Corridor, Aft End
This is one end of a short corridor that continues fore along the main deck of the Heart of Gold. Doorways lead to aft and port. In addition, a gangway leads downward.
>go south
That entrance leads to the Infinite Improbability Drive chamber. It's supposed to be a terribly dangerous area of the ship. Are you sure you want to go in there?
>go south
Absolutely sure?
>go south
I can tell you don't want to really. You stride away with a spring in your step, wisely leaving the Drive Chamber safely behind you. Telegrams arrive from well-wishers in all corners of the Galaxy congratulating you on your prudence and wisdom, cheering you up immensely.
>go south
What? You're joking, of course. Can I ask you to reconsider?
>go south
Engine Room
You're in the Infinite Improbability Drive chamber. Nothing happens; there is nothing to see.
>look
I mean it! There's nothing to see here!
>look
Okay, okay, there are a FEW things to see here...
(the above with all due respect to Douglas Adams, Steve Meretzky, and Infocom)
Vista as Martin the depressive robot (Score:5, Funny)
Eg, as Martin the depressive robot :
OS : You are about to visit a web page. It sounds like fun, but I'm just stuck being a boring OS assistant. Do you really want to go there?
You : Yes
OS : Figures, I'll never have even a fraction of the fun you're having using this computer. That page wants to run a flash application. Are you sure you want to go to that web page?
You : yes, dammit
OS : You are annoyed at me, I'm just a dumb lowly Operating System security warning system. You probably don't even care about me at all. Do you want me to stop nagging you?
You : YES, PLEASE shut the hell up
OS : Oh, that's great, I've been programmed with state of the art security warning information, and you just don't want to appreciate my pathetic self. Are you sure you really want to turn me off?
You : YES, go away and never come back.
OS : Fine, I'll just sit here in my own misery, and hope that you turn me back on one day, which you probably won't.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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That sounds so much like what people have been saying about *nix systems for years. What's interesting is that, on my system, the available RAM has outgrown my ability to use it:
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Which is exactly what I was thinking... and I can't help but think in response: Is this really the first Microsoft OS to have built-in file caching? I mean, really? I guess I just assumed that around the same time Windows got big-boy OS features like memory protection that they also got file caching. I'm still assuming I'm not understanding, because it seems ridiculous.
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:4, Insightful)
If I need 4Gig as the OS's sweet spot and I also need 4 gig for my editor app sweet spot, I start looking at different platforms.
Problem is that these finding that "sweet spot" are not telling the full story. What apps are they running? if they are simply using low impact apps like office and IE/firefox and a few games then it's hands down the OS is being a ram pig and is incredibly unacceptable to those of us that use ram intensive applications.
Reinforces my decision that the next upgrade I take is to the Mac.. Until then I need to find a NLE that will be happy in XP for a few years.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Then they could cache all that RAM into a new system file and call it pagefile2.sys
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Insightful)
OS/2 reccomended 4MB
Vista? 4GB
Too bad we aren't doing exponetially better things with these boxes...
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Funny)
$100,000 for 16K? Teehee, and you had to build a new wing for it.
speed, speed and more speed - but where is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The system had two colour graphic displays, a printer or two, and 4 operator terminals. It ran a real time, multi tasking operating system (called RSX11).
The main system had 128kb of memory. Yes, 128kb.
Today my dev machine has 2Gb of memory and the 3Ghz processor must - surely - be some thousands of times as fast.
So I have 15,000 times as much memory, a processor perhaps 3,000 times as fast (I'm guessing, as figures are hard to pin down). That sounds like 445 million times as much power to me.
And what do we do with all this grunt? Well damn, solitare looks good these days.
So, were the old programmers really, really good? [We were, we were
Are the new ones really, really bad? [hang on, I'm still at it
Have we stopped caring about size and performance of programs?
I think all of these things are slightly true - we used to care deeply about program speed and footprint. Now we don't.
I suspect it has gone much too far - programs are far slower to load than they were even 5 years ago - they are large and bloated, and don't share things well. Anybody remember Sidekick - it was wonderful - and it was available at the touch of key (ok, 2 keys). Remember how FAST it was? I know it didn't do much, but it was dashed useful.
And I still can't beleive I still write "for" loops.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In apps like codecs and statistical analysis (both of which commonly use FFTW), we haven't. Though, a lot of the time, we just throw it up to good 'ole SSE.
Though, I feel our dependance on interpreted languages is getting to be a bit much. Same for XML. Same for all the UI sparkliness. All that extra processing power is going to parsing human-readable data and pretty, and I'm not exactly for it.
Yeah. I'll stick to XFCE. I just wich there
Re:speed, speed and more speed - but where is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The average consumer has seen mass improvement. Today I can simultaneously rip a DVD, listen to MP3s, browse the internet, and play a game with a core 2 duo. I was lucky to get 1 of these working at a time back in win95 days. It takes less than a second to load most apps (well, pretty much anything but adobe).
I agree that we have stopped caring about size/performance because in most cases it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Sometime back" (you geezer), computers were expensive, and so people did important things with them. Now most computers, people use them to jerk off (in all the glorious senses of the phrase). Rest of the paragraph is left for all yous to make up your owns.
Better look into NASA systems and embedded medical systems for fairer comparisons with the "good ol' days."
But take a look at *cost* (Score:5, Insightful)
No. But our limits of acceptability have changed. As processing power has gotten cheaper, developers (myself included) have focused more on getting features out to market faster, rather than application performance.
I think all of these things are slightly true - we used to care deeply about program speed and footprint. Now we don't.
That's always been correct. We care more about how many features are available at what cost, so long as performance isn't noticably bad on commodity hardware.
Do you remember when c was considered a "high level language"? What about the debates on how slow programs written in c were? I do. Times have changed....
I suspect it has gone much too far - programs are far slower to load than they were even 5 years ago - they are large and bloated, and don't share things well.
I don't know about that. Perhaps you don't remember loading DOS programs like PC-Write on an 8086 processer with 512K RAM? That was my word processor of choice, and it got slower the longer your document was. By the time you passed 100k, it was a dog.
Anybody remember Sidekick - it was wonderful - and it was available at the touch of key (ok, 2 keys). Remember how FAST it was? I know it didn't do much, but it was dashed useful.
I sure do. I also remember the care with with I never hit the two space bars together in a graphics program. (That would universally crash my computer). It shared TEXT ok, but anything graphical was another mess entirely.
And I still can't beleive I still write "for" loops.
If you don't mind me asking, what would you RATHER be writing?
Re:speed, speed and more speed - but where is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
In industry almost everybody uses loops instead of recursion unless there's a really good reason to use recursion (e.g. tree traversal). More because of readability than efficiency; in principle your optimizer should be able to convert tail recursion to iteration anyway (though whether this will actually happen or not does depend on the specific language and implementation). Academics just love recursion because it maps neatly to mathematical induction and hence makes algorithm correctness more easily provable.
The reason "bloat" happens is more because programming teams have deadlines and if there's a choice between a new feature, a bugfix or some not-strictly-necessary optimization (and there's always a choice), the optimization's never going to get done. It's just good business sense; sure everybody complains about slowness, but if application A is mean-and-lean and application B is bloated but has a feature you need to do your job, you'll whine and cavil and buy B anyway.
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And we have had GUIs for a while now, each iteration of Windows* takes
more hardware, and the things that GUI is capable of doing have not
gotten any better, really. I have not seen aero yet, so I dont know
if there is something offered aside from eye candy there or not, but
I am betting on eye candy, thus far.
*I am mostly thinking NT 4 to Vista, as that is a mostly level playing field.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Try again.
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The latter is, the former isn't.
320 x 200 x 4 bpp (bits per pixel) is 32 kB. However, the C64 had 16 colors only in low-res (160x200) - so it's 16 kB. At least afair. I was too young to care about the exact specs back then.
Expanding both X and Y-resolution and even colour, makes the
Re:Turn SuperFetch off (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be picky, but OS/2 (even assuming 2.0, since it was the first 16/32bit release) REQUIRED 4MB of RAM, but didn't run well unless you 12MB of RAM, although I do know some people that got by with 8MB of RAM, I also even know peeps that ran NT 3.1 with 8MB of RAM as well, even though it was just as painful to watch.
So bascially people are here making fun of Vista for wanting 512MB, and running 'much' faster than XP when configured with > 512MB...
Last I checked OSX even wants 512MB and 1GB of RAM for acceptable performance if you run a lot of concurrent apps since the windows are double buffered in system RAM for the composer.
Also any *nix distribution with XWindows and a Windows Manager like KDE running, easly scale to where 512MB and 1GB are a sweet spot as well.
Since this is the year 2007, I don't see Vista being far out of the ballpark, except for the fact it has some really smart caching technology that allows it to better use > 1GB of RAM via its Superfetch caching technology in ways other OSes don't unless they have the application load demanding it.
Which is the point most everyone seems to keep missing in this post. They are in a fuss because Vista continues to get faster and faster as more RAM is added.
Most OSes 'desktop performance' top out at 1-2GB of RAM and don't use the extra RAM for anything but dumb/lazy caching.
So instead of making fun of Vista for actually taking advantage of this extra 'free' RAM and scaling it in a way that 'continues' to add performance even when applications don't need it, maybe we should focus our efforts in the OSS community to work on caching technology so all OSS OSes will scale RAM as well as Vista.
(PS, Even though I'm responding to your OS/2 numbers, this post is meant more of a general response to everyone in here, so nothing personal to you, the OS/2 numbers were just a fun place to jump in
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Since there are a very large number of desktops and laptops still being (successfully) used that won't even hold more than 1GB of RAM, I'd say the fact that 1GB of RAM will not provide good performance is beyond out of the ballpark. It's stupid.
As far as I know, Vista is the only OS in existence that won't run that great with 1GB of RAM. So is Vista so much more advanced that it needs that much RAM? Since all the new play pretty fe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was thinking the same thing, how much more than eye candy has every release been since 95. Obviously the switch to the NT kernel was big but really the biggest difference in each release has been eye candy.
No, it hasn't. Typically the eye candy has been the _least_ significant part of OS updates (albeit the most user-visible).
Can you imagine how fast win 95 would run on an AMD Athlon 64 6000+ with a gig of ram.
Nowhere near as well as XP. Windows 95 was optimised for slow machines with very little R
Re:THis is obscene! (Score:5, Interesting)
MS knows shineys sell software to Joe Sixpack, so they don't mind the extra memory it takes to run them all the time. However, I'd don't think vista needs 4 gigs of memory to run snappy with all the goodies turned off.
Re:THis is obscene! (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you turn off Aero and all that stuff, why bother upgrading in the first place?
So that you can see the Black Screen of Are You Sure You Want To Run That Program?
Re:THis is obscene! (Score:5, Interesting)
Even with 1GB you are good with AERO, as Vista only uses a fraction of system RAM for the AERO effects, since it intelligently co-shares system and video RAM.
For example, Aero is consuming only 12Mb of system RAM on the computer I am typing this on at the moment. I also have an animated wallpaper (video) and this window is partially transparent so I can see my applications behind it.
Vista does NOT double buffer like OSX, so there is not this massive overhead for RAM by using the AERO interface like there is in OSX to get tear free applicaiton drawing.
People forget that turning off Aero and effectively the DWM, reduces ALL application performance on Vista.
This is because it disables the acceleration drawing in hardware at the GDI/WPF level, and also pushes application redrawing back to the applications like WindowsXP.
So you not only get a worse 'visual' experience with it off, as you get tearing and extra redrawing with the composer turned off, you also get a massive performance reduction as this tearing and redrawing forces the application to consume CPU cycles to redraw when you do anything, just as Windows XP did.
When you turn off Aero you lose the composer and some of the 3D GPU acceleration of Vector and Bitmap drawing functions of the core graphics subsystem that assist the appliation in drawing the interface before it even gets to the composer.
And even though Vista gets the 'effect' of double buffering Window textures, it doesn't technically double buffer them, so the RAM overhead to do all this is quite minimal as the GPU RAM is used instead of both System and GPU RAM being used as in OSX.
See Vista's driver model gives it some cool tricks, and this is just one side effect. And since the driver model allows Vista to draw directly to the screen from GPU or System RAM without having to shove the System RAM image into the GPU before drawing like OSX does, you don't have to double store images in the composer.
So Vista can use system or GPU RAM intelligently and draw directly to the screen from either memory pool. Which is also why AGP and PCI/e are needed for the Aero interface in Vista.
So even with 1GB of RAM, don't be so quick to turn off Aero.
In fact several 3D games run faster with Aero enabled,(even on 1GB systems) because if you only have 128MB of Video RAM, and the game wants more for textures, Vista will intelligently use free System RAM to hold the less performance intensive textures. And since the application via the Vista WDDM sees the GPU and Vista allocated System RAM for textures as the same it can draw or use them directly as if your Video card had 512mb of GPU RAM instead of 128MB.
So if your video card lacks the GPU RAM for the 'high quality' textures in your game, leave Aero on and you can shove the texture quality in the game up beyond what your card would normally be capable of handling.
Also with respect to how the OpenGL driver is made by ATI or NVidia, Vista can even do this for OpenGL applications as well.
Good luck and don't be so quick to turn off Aero, you might be surprised how much performance it adds to the system, even with 1GB of RAM.
(Our techs even leave it enabld on 512mb systems as it still gives more of a performance boost than the 8-20mb of RAM it consumes on average.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
First off, LDDM was the code name from back in 2005, (Longhorn Device Driver Model); however, since Vista is NOT called Longhorn, the name is now referred to as WDDM (Windows Device Driver Model). Ever hear of Wikipedia or Google? This is easy stuff to look up, even for causal SlashDot readers.
As for my understanding of Vista's driver model and handling of GPU textures I won't repeat
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Except of course that this is impossible with any GPU using dedicated on-board RAM. The whole point of on-board RAM is that its bandwidth is much, much wider then that of even the PCI/e bu
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It's not actually. Vista is much more aggressive in memory usage, it will claim as much as it can for caching and release when needed. Once superfetch (and readyboost) auto-optimize themselves (it takes a little while for it to learn what you're doing and adapt itself), you'll understand why the extra memory gives a nice boost.
2GB is great, which is what I used in XP. (I'm running developer tools and VMs, so 4GB would b
Re:THis is obscene! (Score:5, Informative)
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If you've got XGB of RAM, you may as well *use* it to cache commonly used data etc. and speed up your system, rather than just have it sit there like a lemon. Please tell me how doing this "shows poor design"?
And to reinforce that point a bit... Vista is faster when it's cached those programs. I have a dual boot XP/Vista box... ~60 seconds to load up my currently most common .sln file in XP... from click to type... in Vista, 4 seconds. Makes a big difference in my daily life since I have a bad habit of closing and reopening Visual Studio a lot during the day.
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What sense does it make? It helps you out substantially when you're operating the computer in your typical fashion. You deviate from the norm, you get a cache miss. Nothing new here.
What's new is the flurry of crazy-eyed weird fuckers like yourself who keep missing the point: It's faster this way, and it costs absolutely nothing in performance. Who gi
heh heh (Score:4, Funny)
But I'm guessing it's going to be a sticking point for most consumers. At least, the ones without a sugar daddy.
Re:heh heh (Score:4, Funny)
Great idea Microsoft! (Score:5, Funny)
1) Cache contents of entire hard disk to RAM
2) Claim performance boost in Vista
3) Profit!
Re:Great idea Microsoft! (Score:4, Informative)
All modern OS's load huge executables compared with the good 3M workstation days (1 Megabyte, 1 Megapixel, 1 MIP). Microsoft is doing the right thing by aggressively caching commonly run items. And I note, they're late to the party: 'NIX does this too.
And I say once again (as a NIX professional) that Vista's pretty damn good. Gone are the days when Windows was a toy. No longer. It has plenty of bullshit legacy cruft, but Vista is a BIG improvement.
I disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
All I know is beyond whatever the benchmarks show Explorer is even slower in Vista than it was before. Go out on the network and wait in agony while the little green bar at the top of Explorer chugs along taking forever to finally display files. I'm sure this just the fault of the switches and Windows 2003 R3 servers I've been using though *rolls eyes*. I'm just really disappointed with Vista after all of this wait and at this point the only time I boot into it anymore is to check app compatibility.
Hint - Set VLC to GDI mode so you don't have to see the f'ing jarring screen transition anymore.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. And Apple's "super slick" interface runs just fine on my three year old iBook (800Mhz G4, 640mb RAM) and I typically have >15 applications open at a time.
I know this is not a reasonable comparison, as Windows can't open 15 apps at a time
(joke)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
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Sadly, Apple's not immune to RAM creep either.
My experience is that Intel Macs want much more than PowerPC Macs. My PowerMac G5 has 3 GB of RAM and I *never* swap, not even when running the big stuff, and rarely go below 1GB free. My MacBook Pro has 2 GB and I swap regularly -- it's really irritating I can't upgrade further. Rosetta is a *huge* memory hog, and Intel-native apps also seem to take more room than their PPC equivalents.
My school has several Intel iMacs with 512 MB. They start swapping befor
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Bad news for intel here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If vista scales all the way to 4, then we're looking at a windows market that will be very similar to the mac market, where upgrading the video card and ram will get you more bang for your buck than replacing the processor.
this will mean a slowdown in intel sales (and amd)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a good reason: people remain employed.
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Twenty years ago I remember the "media" I "collected". Amazing 256-color graphic files. Mostly of stupid things like bowls of fruit (porn really wasn't all it was cracked up to be at the time). No pictures of family and friends in high detail. No means of easily storing said photos for extended periods of time.
Twenty years ago I remember when a "state of the art" game was one that wasn't entirely text-based. When an adventure game's inventory had a max of 16 items and enemies were scripted (and therefore dumb as bricks). No photorealistic visuals to draw you in. No fairly natural AI to breathe life to the world. And certainly no way to play with thousands of others at the same time.
My point?
All of these changes have been the result of higher memory, faster processors, etc. Yes, we use a bigger memory footprint nowadays. So what? Isn't broadening the appeal of the PC (families storing photos and grandmothers that can actually work the email program) worth it? Yes, the fundamental operations haven't changed (write email, send email, etc). Big deal. Call that a testament to stellar original design than a foible of modern design.
Fact of the matter is I *can* do more, much more, than I could with my PC from 20 years ago. And I can do it in an easier way (blame Vista/OS X all you want -- they're still better UIs than what we used in '87). That's called "progress", regardless if the memory footprint grows or not (and the fundamental tenants of computing stay largely the same).
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There are editors with that functionality on DOS. And there is GEOS for DOS, which is a multitasking OS/shell with scalable fonts. (GEOS supposedly uses DOS only for filesystem access.)
A1200 still suffers from inherent limitations of the Amiga archi
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's just the mythical "average user". Operating systems have to support more than the average user -- they have to support the guy writing apps for the average user (development and debugging have gotten significantly easier); the office of the average user (managing a large userbase); the folks writing content for the average user (both professionals and YouTube).
Many of these things are transparent. And, yeah, I could go back to using pine, bash, rxvt, and WindowMaker (although that's only 10 years ago, not 15), grep through my emails when I needed to find something and use IRC to talk to my friends.
But you know what? This is better. A lot better.
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, you can watch video with a 800 Mhz, 256 MB, Windows 2000 box. But you can't do all the real-time encryption / decryption operations required for modern DRM systems. So we're SO MUCH better off with today's faster machines and Vista.
People don't use the PC as 10 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
That is true inclusively but not exclusively. 15 (or 20) years ago people used PCs for mostly office applications and home computers for games and light word processing. Geeks and tech-types used computers for programming: either work-enhancing or hobbyist programming (often both).
Interfacing with other computer users in real time thro
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You have expressed the reason for the assertion. PC gaming is no longer about gaming. Gaming could be described as a system of rules around a logic puzzle. PC gaming is now about social networking and appeal (mostly visual).
Computers are the realm of intellectuals. PC games, the really good ones, were intense intellectual puzzles. A good transition to recognize is the shift in RPG style: from symbolic display to
The True cost of Vista.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Pre-emptive strike! (Score:2)
Re:Pre-emptive strike! (Score:5, Funny)
Article in a nutshell... (Score:5, Funny)
This message brought to you by: Article in a Nutshell (TM)
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Another issue is that the tag and MMU caches are of a finite size on some CPUs.
He must still be running (Score:3, Funny)
RAM costs more than a computer? (Score:5, Informative)
Before Vista came out you could easily get a low to mid-end XP desktop computer for $500.
completely not true (Score:4, Interesting)
Increased bloat + static OS expectations = (Score:4, Insightful)
This much bloat simply isn't necessary. Caching is one thing, but the RAM requirements of Vista simply for code space are massive compared to XP for roughly the same functionality. That's a center that cannot hold.
What we expect from an OS is pretty well-known and well-defined now. This means the innovation will slow and there will be increasing reluctance to upgrade simply for the sake of upgrading, especially when the upgrade is a worse performer than the software being upgraded!
This is fertile ground for optimization.
An example:
Compare the executable size and memory utilisation of uTorrent and Azureus. Azureus represents the old guard of BT clients, you might say. A large, bloated code base in Java, implementing features that you wouldn't think would require that much code. And boy it's a dog, and crawls on any sub-1.5Ghz laptop. Enter uTorrent. I would say Azureus is the Vista to uTorrent's microLinux. For the uninitiated, in terms of program size (exe + libs) and memory utilization, we're talking about 170kB/4MB to 7.6MB/16.3MB, respectively. uTorrent was able to bring just about all the features present in Azureus and compact it into a 170kB
I think this will be the end of Microsoft. The API expected for a Windows box is known. It's publicized. The time is ripe for a competitor to come in and reimplement it, using less RAM and resources while conforming to the same standards, and for a fraction of the price. If this were to happen, and if the software companies were to realize they didn't have to sit beholden to *Microsoft's* "Windows" anymore, then we'd really see some fur fly in the marketplace.
Vista just makes good use of.. (Score:5, Informative)
The sweet spot for memory will be vista requirements(512mb or so) + space for whatever apps you usualy concurrently run, IE/FF, photoshop, iTunes, whatever, it'll dump those into system ram before you even click their icons, reduce real world loading times significantly.
Despite the MS jokes, an OS that leaves ram unused isnt doing its job properly, it can always free memory , quickly, if needed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever turn off swap in a modern Windows? All things considered, I'd like to disable executable caching, and just keep swapping for file reads and writes within programs. Not swapping out the programs you're actually using is a pretty damned good first step towards a zippy system, in my experience.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure. Which is why every other operating system has done it for years. Some have done it for decades. I think even fricking *minix* does it.
Yet again, Windows is so far behind that it's just not funny. Seriously, is this the best they've got?
May I have your attention please (Score:4, Insightful)
Note to Mac users: You want to run OS X? Then shut up and pay for the pretty hardware.
Note to Windows users: You want to run Vista? Then shut up and buy the extra memory.
Windows Vista Capable according to Dell (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought you were joking, but,... (Score:5, Insightful)
Brett
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To think I let 5 mod points expire this morning...
From a guy who needs 2GB for XP (Score:3, Insightful)
Guy says you need 4GB for sweet spot.
Same Guy says you need 2GB for XP sweet spot.
I'll give you that nowadays you might want 1GB for XP, but 2GB is excessive for most. I know plenty who are happy with 512MB running OS + AV + Word + Browser. (Although 768MB is better.)
Take Minimum Spec, Multiply by 4. That's more likely to be the minimum usable. (See minimum specs for previous MS operating systems for comparison purposes.)
More ram = More caching = More speed?! OMG! (Score:3, Insightful)
You should always cache as much as possible.
The problem is, if consumers saw their memory usage at 100% all the time, they would freak out.
I've had 4gb for a while, as I use Photoshop heavily. I'm going to make the vista jump just so that I can run more/all of that 4gb, plus get some 64 bit action.
-- Dave
4 Gig is recommended.... (Score:3, Funny)
Besides, this will just accelerate the "faster and cheaper every month" rule for hardware. It's a good thing(tm)
XPonential (Score:4, Interesting)
Only for 64 bit versions (Score:3, Informative)
If you are using Vista x32, do *not* buy more than 3 GB of memory or you will be just throwing your money away.
Re:x64 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x64 (Score:5, Informative)
Since most environments run more than one process, they can take advantage of the extra ram assuming their total amount of allocated space is above 4GB. For that matter, I used to run a 32bit version of BSD 5 years ago that ran on a Dual PIII system with 8GB RAM. Basically we ran 2 caching processes of 4GB each, and some smaller processes that added up to a memory load of 8GB.
What you get with a 64bit operating system is a theoretical 64bit address space for each and every process. In reality different processor architectures offer somewhere between 40 and 48 bits worth of physical address space (Good for almost a Petabyte of RAM). 64bit is really only useful for a few VERY large applications such as Database, a few imaging processing apps, and some massive number crunching... Your average desktop OS application has no need for more than 32 bits, and in fact most of us would actually have slower machines with a 32bit user space
Re:x64 (Score:5, Informative)
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With PAE or 64-bit long mode you can see more but that requires the OS to know about it and your BIOS to perform a memory remap.
Tom
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PAE on Windows [microsoft.com]
While I know you were talking specifically to the desktop oriented versions of Windows 32-bit, there is obviously code there somewhere to do it.
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The apps don't use that memory, the os does. The application programs are stored in ram (you know, like a "ram disk"), so that when the program is actually called upon, the rogram is already in ram and doesn't need to be read from the hard drive (you know, cause the hard drive is slower than the ram).`
Well, yeah. Just like the summary says. Hence my "didn't you even read the summary". If you really felt my quote was taken out of context and somehow implied that the memory use was due to running applications, the summary was only a scroll away.
This is a "feature" of the operating system.
Well, yes. IMHO, it's a damn good feature. If I have XGB of RAM, I may as well be using it to speed up my system, rather than have it sitting there like a lemon. Where's the harm? It frees it up when anything requests it.
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The memory used for the "SuperFetch" function is not part of the os?
The superfectch function is part of the OS. The things it is caching are not (usually*). The actually Superfetch code will take up some memory, but it will be negligibly small compared to the amount taken up by the documents and data that it is caching.
(* I say 'usually' because if someone often uses, say, WMP, then it may well happen that Superfetch will cache WMP into memory, and if you count WMP as 'part of the OS' (thhough the EU would disagree with you), then indeed, Superfetch will find itself c
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
The satisfaction in knowing that you are no longer using an operating system that directly contributes to the decline of Microsoft's profits?
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
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My home machine is a 18 month old P4 3.2GHZ with an upgraded (for games, $125) video card, 1gb ram, and Vista runs with full effects.
Even under the Macbook Pro (C2D, stock ram) it runs fine under paralells. You will never get Aero under virtual machines, but the OS works fine.
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Then you'll be fine. Honestly, people, it's not that much different than XP. I have to assume that most of the people who are repeating these claims about RAM usage simply haven't booted Vista yet. I have 2GB on my Vista machine but that's mainly for VMWare and Photoshop work. It ran fine with 1GB (though there was a slight "Windows Experience Index" improvement when I added the second gig, probably because of the aforementioned caching).
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Translation (Score:3, Funny)
It's FUD that you need more RAM.
I always need more RAM.
(Yeah, another logical
Re:4GB? 64bit here we come! Lets just hope *nix wi (Score:5, Funny)