Is Vista's Superfetch fetching.....?

[pdhcentral]

Went and got another 512MB RAM up to 1.2GB now, its sweet, makes lots of difference to Half Life!

Anyway, what happens when I install something new?? Vista is so keen on gobbling up my RAM that when I launch a new program, there is plenty of disk thrashing and its annoying. When I close Battlefield or half life, same again, disk thrashing for ages. When I close these, there is 300MB free RAM, but that drops to 10MB!!!! What a waste. I use many different programs and I ain't buying a 2GB of RAM so that Vista can use it all at once.

By the way, for the muppet that said free ram is bad ram, well thats stupid. How can you tell an OS to spontanaously load an 512MB virtual PC without you asking it for example? Impossible.... so that 512MB that Vista has to move to the disk before you can use it for a different app that it can't cache, pathetic. Then disk thrashing when you close that one down!

Any one know a resolution to stop Vista taking my RAM? For anyone thats about to tell me to learn, I've been using Windows for years and never seen so much nonsense! Granted that Vista is great when I come back from lunch, but if it takes a min to sort itself when I want to use it, can't be done. XP will joyfully load and play happily on 1.2GB, so if Vista is better why doesn't it realise how much RAM there is to play with and optimise it differently :?:

Don't get me started on folder views either..... :roll:

Thanks in advance.

 

[lrivard]

Vista is murder on a 1gig or less. My friend had to go back to XP because he couldn't run games well enough on 1 gig of RAM.
Though when you hit 1.5 to 2 gigs of RAM Vista is a dream and should only chew about 50% ofyour ram, which is normal with superfetch. Also 64bit Vista takes more ram for some odd reason. Vista is RAm lover.
For those who want to use Vista I recomend at ;east to gigs of RAM to get agood over all impression of Vista.

 

[pdhcentral]

Thanks for that. I turned the superfetch off and it went slower, more thrashing. Turned it back on and its been a lot better since for some reason.

Normally, with IE, messenger, dreamscene, etc, it sits at 53%, which aint too bad. Thanks for comments.

I reccomend Vista for anyone that's getting a new PC. If you don't need the ultimate version, don't get it, the features are debatable at best. As LRivard says, a gig is a minimum and I'd deffinatly suggest more if you're playing games, as it does make huge differences! I decent graphics card helps also...

 

[darkguset]

That is what happens when you want too much too soon! Same thing happened back when XP first came out... Why is everyone in a hurry to get Vista and then start complaining for one thing or the other i don't understand... Wheren't you happy with your XP? It is a nice, mature system that works fine (after 5 years, LOL)... wait 4-6 months for Vista to start maturing and get a service pack as well and then put it on. If it still does not work, then you can start complaining...

 

[leexgx]

understanding what superfetch is and what it is doing the Free ram your saying is not free is not true

what superfetch does is uses spare ram to Fill the cache up but the way vista works on reporting it says all your ram is been used whare as on XP it does not take the cache into account but for vista thay desided to add the cache as used ram in turn confseing users

cache is free'd up when somthing needs ram that the cache has been loaded by superfetch

superfetch uses performace data that is been monitored all the time so if you open an game more then 1-2 times it preload that into ram so it loads faster basicly so it not need to load it off the hard disk as much

2gb is realy needed to make games work well 1gb of ram is realy Min amount you should run vista with before you even consider running games or loading boltware norton then you realy need 2gb (3gb is the sweet spot for vista now as it uses 700-800 after desktop has finshed loading compeared to XP 100-200 max)

useing vista + battlefield 2142 with 2gb ram i found it to be to disk loady and game stutters to much 4gb ram i got in now the game Fits in the cache maps load in 5-10 secs

any DX9 based games your better sticking with XP as you need to fork out more to make the games perform the same,

 

[pdhcentral]

I think I'll be getting that extra 2gb then.. I'll decied after that is Vista is worth it. So far I do like it and usually it runs with 50 -65% usage normally.

Know XP will love the extra RAM if I move back

 

[SkullFox]

how do I activate/deactivate that superfetching thingy??

 

[XrayMan]

how do I activate/deactivate that superfetching thingy??

It's not possible to configure Windows SuperFetch in any way. It just sits in the background ensuring that your system is always running optimally.

 

[Wonderwill]

Same with me when I had a gig. Even on XP battlefield thrashed the disks for a good 5 minutes on opening and closing. 2 gigs is really a must for modern gaming on any operating system. XP and Vista are now both perfect since I got my second gig 1 week ago!

If you want cheap RAM, go with this. I have it and it is freakin' awesome:

WINTEC AMPO 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory - Retail

You can even read my review its the first one on there lol!
Anyway, there really isn't a way to get what you're looking for without spending a little $$$. BTW, does anyone on here know how to completely stop Page File on XP or Vista?

 

[pkellmey]

how do I activate/deactivate that superfetching thingy??

Superfetch is a service that can be disabled under Administrative Tools-Services.

 

[XrayMan]

I got my info from a website. I guess he was wrong. This is the link to that URL that I got my Superfetch info from:
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_05c.asp

 

[pdhcentral]

I like that statement in that 'Win...' site......"running optimumly"..... I find that very hard to believe.

A friend of mine also just bought a new machine, I didn't know he was getting Vista otherwise would have advised him to get another gig of RAM. Well, its twice as powerful than mine and it also sits there just chug chug chug...... Its a waste of time and XP doesn't do it.

Vista in my eyes is still wasteful and I think there should be options to say how much memory you want Vista to use for its so called cache, at least that way, when I launch a new program, it wont sit there for 10 seconds while Vista unloads all the current stuff to disk, even when I have the RAM.

Come on MS, give me fix! Where's DX10 too...... Vista's supposed to be for gaming...... I don't think so....... I'd like to meet someone who gets better fps in Vista to XP........ No, I'm not spending £300 on a card I'll upgrade in 6 months.

 

[pkellmey]

Have you used Tweak yet? You can adjust how your cache and pre-fetch works. Also, if you have a new ATI card you will see higher fps than XP - its around 10% for most of the cards, but they seem to improve as their drivers are updated for Vista. NVidia has just gotten to the point where their fps are the same as they were in XP. Makes you want to have a few more GPU chip competitors, doesn't it?

 

[pdhcentral]

Have you used Tweak yet? You can adjust how your cache and pre-fetch works. Also, if you have a new ATI card you will see higher fps than XP - its around 10% for most of the cards, but they seem to improve as their drivers are updated for Vista. NVidia has just gotten to the point where their fps are the same as they were in XP. Makes you want to have a few more GPU chip competitors, doesn't it?

I didnt know that Nvidia had gotton there drivers sorted for Vista. I haven't had it installed since April so, what would I know :0 . I think I'll maybe give it another go. I have overclocked my poor 6600 since trying Vista, so will see what the difference it makes with new drivers too.

Thanks :lol:

 

[pdhcentral]

:?: What is Tweak and where do I get it....?!?

 

[pkellmey]

There are a few different versions out there and Microsoft may bounce you to any one of them if you search their site, but this is the most common one that has a lot of the better features:

http://www.totalidea.com/content/tweakvi/tweakvi-index.html