Anyone know a real practical way for makin Vista use less RAM?

OK I have Vista Ultimate and 2GB of RAM, and I've heard you can steal back a bit of RAM from the OS. Does anyone know an actual practical method for doing this, cause I want my apps and games to have some RAM so's they can move and run acceptibly

Cheers Sam The Bam

Vista is great at memory manegment leave it as is. Do wou have any issues with 2 gb?artiedeadat40

Cheers

Vista was designed to use around %40 - %60 of your memory, regardless of the amount. I have 4 gigs of memory, and with just my browser open its using up 1.6 GB of memory. Even if you have 32 GB of memory, it'll use up roughly the same percentage.

This is a good thing.

Vista retains in memory your most commonly used applications so that they load up faster. Vista releases that used memory when requested by programms actually running. Vista really should be using more of your memory even when idle.

People claiming vista as a memory hog have a poor concept of how memory works.

Your claims of performance loss have nothing to do with Vista's aggressive memory usage. Vista is simply a bigger OS that requires more resources to use. I think its rather silly to expect Microsoft to add more and more feature to an OS yet retain the exact same performance as their previous generation.

Vista was designed to use around %40 - %60 of your memory, regardless of the amount. I have 4 gigs of memory, and with just my browser open its using up 1.6 GB of memory. Even if you have 32 GB of memory, it'll use up roughly the same percentage.

This is a good thing.

Vista retains in memory your most commonly used applications so that they load up faster. Vista releases that used memory when requested by programms actually running. Vista really should be using more of your memory even when idle.

People claiming vista as a memory hog have a poor concept of how memory works.

XaosII

Well in this instance it curtainly uses more ram then XP. Though XP uses more ram then Windows ME and 2000.

[QUOTE="XaosII"]

Vista was designed to use around %40 - %60 of your memory, regardless of the amount. I have 4 gigs of memory, and with just my browser open its using up 1.6 GB of memory. Even if you have 32 GB of memory, it'll use up roughly the same percentage.

This is a good thing.

Vista retains in memory your most commonly used applications so that they load up faster. Vista releases that used memory when requested by programms actually running. Vista really should be using more of your memory even when idle.

People claiming vista as a memory hog have a poor concept of how memory works.

threepac81

Well in this instance it curtainly uses more ram then XP. Though XP uses more ram then Windows ME and 2000.

Well, if your gaming, then extra RAM should be applied to the foreground task and background tasks should take a back seat, or unneccesary features should be disabled while this task is running, make sense?

Yeah, alright, you obviously expect higher system specs than Microsoft's previous OS, but OS's like Mac OS-X Leopard can chieve the same things as Vista albet with less RAM required, Iknow there is more to vista and there's alot of legacy code and bloat, but surely M$ havin done this for over 20 years has learnt a thing or 2 about OS optimisation. Even the recommended specs are rather pedestrian and generous to say the least, my rig far exceeds these and still my apps have little room to move about and run like they did in XP.

You'd expect a new OS to improve upon things from it's older brother, yet, it looks as if M$ got it the wrong way about this time around, you look for kinks first, THEN, from there try and sort the obvious things out first, i.e. actual functionality, and after that UI, M$ has done it backtofront.

Cheers

Sam The Bam

Let Vista do its thing. Add more RAM if you feel things are slow. Its like when a patient does their own thing with their health...the Doctor (who knows better) is left taking the blame when the guy dies.

Vista is a good Operating System and it just takes time to get it fine tuned...so did XP....that's why it was around so long...lots and lots of fine tuning.

Using more RAM to acomplish more from an OS is fine, but in the case of Vista, the amount by which this has increased is pretty ridiculous. I mean, OK, 2GB is pretty standard these days, and progress is progress, RAM's cheap and so on, but when your OS requires THAT amount just to run smoothly, how'd you think your Apps and games on top of that are gonna find some space to work if the OS is so resource heavy. There is such a thing in life called efficiency, and allocating the right protion of RAM to the specific task you are currently doing is key for an OS, right?sgac

Because Vista releases that memory when another program comes in. Vista's minimum memory footprint isn't much bigger than XP.

Well, if your gaming, then extra RAM should be applied to the foreground task and background tasks should take a back seat, or unnecessary features should be disabled while this task is running, make sense?sgac

Right. And thats what it does.

Yeah, alright, you obviously expect higher system specs than Microsoft's previous OS, but OS's like Mac OS-X Leopard can chieve the same things as Vista albet with less RAM required, Iknow there is more to vista and there's alot of legacy code and bloat, but surely M$ havin done this for over 20 years has learnt a thing or 2 about OS optimisation. Even the recommended specs are rather pedestrian and generous to say the least, my rig far exceeds these and still my apps have little room to move about and run like they did in XP.sgac

Both Vista and OS-X have the same minimum memory requirement. OS-X doesnt seem to have any recommended requirements. Since i just mentioned how Vista's aggressive memory works, i dont see how you can even repeat that claim. If you want a more in-depth answer instead of just taking my word for here, theres a nice, though fairly technical, article on the subject: Why Does Vista Use All My Memory?

You'd expect a new OS to improve upon things from it's older brother, yet, it looks as if M$ got it the wrong way about this time around, you look for kinks first, THEN, from there try and sort the obvious things out first, i.e. actual functionality, and after that UI, M$ has done it backtofront.

Cheers

Sam The Bam

sgac

It seems as though your only real problem with the OS has been its performance decrease in games. Yeah, it does stink, but i've only found about a 5% - 10% decrease in performance in all my games across the board. Rarely is that difference even perceptible in most of my games. It seems like an ok trade-off for everything you get, to me atleast. Besides, it not like there will be anyone complaning about loss of gaming performance on a Mac OS anyways; theres barely any high performance real-time applications, like games, for Mac.

Vista was designed to use around %40 - %60 of your memory, regardless of the amount. I have 4 gigs of memory, and with just my browser open its using up 1.6 GB of memory. Even if you have 32 GB of memory, it'll use up roughly the same percentage.

This is a good thing.

Vista retains in memory your most commonly used applications so that they load up faster. Vista releases that used memory when requested by programms actually running. Vista really should be using more of your memory even when idle.

People claiming vista as a memory hog have a poor concept of how memory works.

Your claims of performance loss have nothing to do with Vista's aggressive memory usage. Vista is simply a bigger OS that requires more resources to use. I think its rather silly to expect Microsoft to add more and more feature to an OS yet retain the exact same performance as their previous generation.

XaosII

Thank you. Finally someone who knows what they are talking about!