Ram Question, Simply Complicated.

[Noriyuke]

My Brother in law likes to a showoff when it comes to all the money he makes, so he decided to make some kind of badass PC with all the newest stuff out nowadays. I find it funny, but its beneficial to me because i get all the old for free, which is still pretty decent for current generation gaming. Why did i explain all this? Because i'm expecting many question in the form of 'Why does he need all that fucking ram?' and things of that manner.

Anyway, my question is simple yet complicated. As (I Hope) many of us know, windows vista likes to eat up a lot of ram, currently out of his 8GB its eating 87% of it, exactly how much is that? I don't know nor do i care. He wants to know if there's a Windows XP that will support 8GB of Ram, because the baseline 32bit Windows XP does not support it. After digging around i found an article on Microsoft's main site regarding PAE, or Page File Something or another. it explains that certain kinds of Windows 2000, XP, etc can support up to 64GB of ram. My question is, if upgrading to one of the copies of windows xp that support 8GB of ram, will they still be useful for PC gaming? He mainly plays Silkroad Online, if anyone is curious, and a little bit of Call of Duty 4 with me.

So, any opinions? Suggestions? Flames? Be my guest.

Oh yea, when you answer with the yes or no, please identify to me specifically which copy of windows XP your referring to that will help me out the best in this situation.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Slasher]

Just so you know, Vista isn't "using" up 87% of his ram as in hogging it. Learn how vista prioritizes ram and maybe you'll understand why it's "using" up 87% of his ram.

Vista makes terrific use of a system's resources. It has a radically different approach to memory management. You have to stop thinking of system memory as a resource and start thinking of it as a a cache. Just like the level 1 and level 2 cache on your CPU, system memory is yet another type of high-speed cache that sits between your computer and the disk drive. And the most important rule of cache design is that empty cache memory is wasted cache memory. Vista is trying its hardest to pre-emptively populate every byte of system memory with what it thinks you might need next. It's running a low-priority background task that harvests previously accessed data from the disk and plops it into unused system memory.

Vista treats system memory like a cache much more aggressively and effectively than any other version of Windows. Windows XP has no qualms whatsoever about leaving upwards of a gigabyte of system memory empty. From a caching perspective, this is unfathomable. Vista tries its hardest to fill that empty system memory cache as soon as it can.

This process is called "SuperFetch".


The question shouldn't be "Why does Vista use all my memory?", but "Why the heck did previous versions of Windows use my memory so ineffectively?"

- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

 

[Seth]

Your better of Sticking with 64 bit vista....

And yes 64 bit Xp does support 8gb of ram,but beware it sucks like ME sucked, it real buggy and not worth it at all...

Vista can run just fine on a 1gb of ram....and as point above Vista does free up the ram once a program request it..

And if you like to get 64 bit xp you can buy it...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116378

 

[Noriyuke]

Wow, thanks for the knowledgeable heads up with all that info. I wasn't expecting that the 64-bit XP would be all that buggy to be honest, maybe that's why updated to vista.

But with all due respect, my brother in law as well as I, believe that Vista IS hogging all that ram, because both me and brother in law are trying to use a Multi-client system of Silkroad Online in which multiple instances of Silkroad must be on, in effect Vista alone tends to hog around 87% while the 4-8 instances of Silkroad online are only given the remaining 23%.

But then again, i don't know, i'm not a fan of Vista mainly because XP has been my friend since early on 1999. When betas were getting leaked. Maybe ive become attached.

Maybe your right, and its doing everything the right way, but why can i, on a 3GB or 3.5GB whatever floats your boat, can i run 8 instances of silkroad with around 25-29Fps, while vista manages 4 instances of silkroad at a measly 14-17Fps, with 8GB of ram.

Can we not say that SOMETHING is hogging the ram?

 

[ChurchedAtheist]

Can we not say that SOMETHING is hogging the ram?

could it be compatibility issues w/ silkroad?

 

[Seth]

Do a clean format... I trust is 64 bit vista sp1?

and see how many frames you get after that..

 

[FrozenIpaq]

Vista's memory footprint is about 700mb (meaning with services and all, out of the box, it will be using roughly 600-700mb of your RAM). If it's using more than that then he's got an issue

 

[Noriyuke]

Hes going to get pissed as fuck about the clean formatting, but ill get him to do that, i think he ordered the Windows XP off newegg though, he was that pissed off.

Mind you, i know nothing of Vista, XP is doing fine for me and the family i have. the most consuming game played on these computers is GTA San Andreas.

My Question is, aren't there any places to go for the hardcore XP lovers doing all they can to create custom driver packs for 64-bit? I mean, anything like that? Maybe Linux distro?

I'm not all to willing to do the research, simply put, just the fact that he can afford 8GB Ram and 64-bit processing makes me want to wring his neck.

but i do appreciate all of your support guys!

:tup:

 

[Greyone]

has he thought about just shrinking his vista partition and adding a new one? That way he can dual boot xp and vista, and not have to format.

 

[Noriyuke]

Thats smart actually, he wouldn't have thought of that. But what would dual booting help in terms of the ram issue?

 

[ChurchedAtheist]

Thats smart actually, he wouldn't have thought of that. But what would dual booting help in terms of the ram issue?

it would just mean he has both available, so if one is better suited for a task, use it. although, I'd suggest vista x64 and 32bit xp, as 64bit xp is absolute shit. those 4-5gb of ram aren't worth the hell of xp x64. I'd also add in ubuntu, but thats just me(and im unsure how 64bit ubuntu is atm)

 

[mohaas05]

I seriously doubt Vista is using 87% of 8GB of RAM. I'm running it just fine on 768MB of RAM. You should do a clean reinstall of Vista asap.

 

[Noriyuke]

I seriously doubt Vista is using 87% of 8GB of RAM. I'm running it just fine on 768MB of RAM. You should do a clean reinstall of Vista asap.

I'm sure you do doubt it! But i don't, because my brother in law is an absolute dipshit when it comes to computers. He's probably blaming the full 87% strictly on Vista when it could a whole slew of things. But ATM, i only have his word to go on simply because hes 376 Miles away from me at the moment.

 

[futuregator15]

I seriously doubt Vista is using 87% of 8GB of RAM. I'm running it just fine on 768MB of RAM. You should do a clean reinstall of Vista asap.

I agree 100%. There is no way that he is using 87% of 8gb. I'm currently using 1 gb of 2gb on 32 bit vista. I would just reinstall vista and make sure you have 64 bit so that it recognizes all 8gb. If the problem persists then post back here. As for the suggestion about duel booting, i wouldn't do that just because you would have to use 64 bit XP