System ram utilization in Win XP.

[Spongebob]

Whats a good way to utilize 3GB of system ram using WinXP?

[Yawgm0th]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

Notepad.... Open up lots of instances of Notepad...

Seriously, what kind of a question is that?

[Spongebob]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

Notepad.... Open up lots of instances of Notepad...

Seriously, what kind of a question is that?

No, I didn't mean how much garbage you can run before you choke your system. Here's an example..... I'm hoping there are more.....
I'm not sure what guide on Tweaktown that it was that I seen it on but I do beleive that there were certain settings that should be adjusted to optimize your virtual memory in Win XP performance options. I remember the amount of system ram that you have made a difference at what this should be set at. Ofcoarse this was/is an old artical and at the time 512MB of system ram was used as an example. I'm hoping this is just one of more ways to utilize system ram in Win XP, I'm not sure so thats why I posted this, just to ask, I don't know it all.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

I suppose you could set it way up there, anywhere from four to six GB. Why do you have 3GBs of RAM anyway? That's pretty excessive.

[Spongebob]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

I suppose you could set it way up there, anywhere from four to six GB. Why do you have 3GBs of RAM anyway? That's pretty excessive.

It's most likely temporary. 2GB's of it will be for my new system that I'm planning on building but it might still be a while in the near future before I do it, since I haven't quite decided what I want for a mainboard, watercooling, case, and O.S., as of yet. I might actually decide to add more ram if I choose a 64 bit O.S. since I've read that it can access up to and maybe more than 16GB for 32 bit application versus the 2 gb bottleneck in Win XP, where the rest can only be used by the OS itself. Anyway for now I'm just trying to make the best of what I have laying around.

[Amd_Lover2004]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

I find converting video files uses a lot of memory, try doing 3-4 files at once, plus maybe some folding and firefox uses a lot of memory if you play with it for a bit, Ive seen it up to 260MB, thats a start at least. Of coarse the encoding will bog down your CPU(s) aswell.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: System ram utilization in Win XP.

It's most likely temporary. 2GB's of it will be for my new system that I'm planning on building but it might still be a while in the near future before I do it, since I haven't quite decided what I want for a mainboard, watercooling, case, and O.S., as of yet. I might actually decide to add more ram if I choose a 64 bit O.S. since I've read that it can access up to and maybe more than 16GB for 32 bit application versus the 2 gb bottleneck in Win XP, where the rest can only be used by the OS itself. Anyway for now I'm just trying to make the best of what I have laying around.

The 2GB limitation is on processes. You'd really have to try to get a desktop running a 2GB process. The 32-bit limitation is for 4GB of addressable RAM. Anyway, what you should be thinking about for your next system is either an Intel Core system or an AMD AM2 system. Intel's next-gen for desktop will be out Q3 or Q4 IIRC and AM2 will be out soon.

I find converting video files uses a lot of memory, try doing 3-4 files at once, plus maybe some folding and firefox uses a lot of memory if you play with it for a bit, Ive seen it up to 260MB, thats a start at least. Of coarse the encoding will bog down your CPU(s) aswell.

Do you mean you convert the separate files as part of separate videos simultaneously? Unless you've got a hyperthreaded Pentium D (and I know you don't) or a multiprocessor (not just dual-core; that's only good for two threads), that's just asking for a huge slowdown that won't be bottlenecked by any reasonable amount of RAM. Firefox can get up there with memory usage, but I've got 2GBs in the laptop and I can run Azureus (which is less of a CPU waster than you'd think), five to ten tabs of Firefox, Folding with some big old unit, and some high-memory non-FPS game (e.g. Civ4 or GalCiv2) and not get any RAM issues. Hell, I only noticed minor Civ4 improvement when I switched from 1 to 2GB. BF2 may perform about as well as the much-more-powerful A64 system I have, but BF2 is, well, special.

But video encoding is a good example of what you can do to eat up that memory. Here's a ridiculous, yet practical (take at all the crap and I've been there) scenario:
You load up a game of BF2 and start playing on a local server with no team damage. You're making a stunt video and recording it with FRAPS. You're also acting as a listen server for the game. You record the video, and then go play it. You notice it's got some ridiculous file size because you recorded in a quality higher (and more space-wasting) than mpeg4. So you open up Windows Movie Maker, or Adobe Premier, or TMPGenc, or whatever the hell you want and you convert the files to a more practical mpeg1. Meanwhile, the six or seven buddies making the video with you started playing an actual game of BF2. So let's look at what you're running:
BF2 client with highest settings, which takes up a huge amount of RAM and virtual memory
BF2 listen server with a 16-player map and six players; indistinguishable from your client in taskman but it'll use more RAM since you're the server
A video encoding program working on over an hour of footage that's several GB in size
Folding@Home with some multi-hundred MB unit, unless of course you like Cancer... join the Beefysworld Folding team[/shameless plug]
Some firewall program because you (and I don't mean you, I mean anyone) are a dick and won't turn off your firewall even though it hampers gaming and accomplishes nothing in this setting
Several firefox tabs in a version with a leak because you didn't close it after you DLed FRAPS.

There you have it. You will certainly be utilizing (even if you haven't filled it up) all 3GBs, and you better have a dual-core processor (or two) while you're at it.