programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
Windows Vista has a radically different approach to memory management. Check out the "Physical Memory, Free" column in my Task Manager:
At the time this screenshot was taken, this machine had a few instances of IE7 running, plus one remote desktop. I'm hardly doing anything at all, yet I only have 6 megabytes of free physical memory.
Now compare with this screenshot of Windows XP's Task Manager under similar low-load conditions:
Under "Physical Memory, Available" I have approximately 1.5 gigabytes of free physical memory, as you'd expect.
So what's going on here? Why is Vista using so much memory when I'm doing so very little?
To answer that question, you have to consider what your computer's physical memory (RAM) is for. Just as a hypothetical, let's say you wanted to create a new text file:
So Notepad clearly needs a little memory for itself: enough to execute, and to store the contents of the text document it's displaying. But that's maybe a couple megabytes, at most. If even that. What about the other 2,046 megabytes of system memory?
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. Empty cache isn't doing you any good. It's expensive, high-speed memory sucking down power for zero benefit. The primary mission in the life of every cache is to populate itself as quickly as possible with the data that's most likely to be needed-- and to consistently deliver a high "hit rate" of needed data retrieved from the cache. Otherwise you're going straight to the hard drive, mister, and if you have to ask how much going to the hard drive will cost you in performance, you can't afford it.
Diomidis Spinellis published an excellent breakdown of the cache performance ratios in a typical PC circa January 2006:
| Nominal | Worst case | Sustained | Productivity | |||
| Component | size | latency | throughput | $1 buys | (Bytes read / s / $) | |
| (MB/s) | Worst case | Best case | ||||
| L1 D cache | 64 KB | 1.4ns | 19022 | 10.7 KB | 7.91·1012 | 2.19·1014 |
| L2 cache | 512 KB | 9.7ns | 5519 | 12.8 KB | 1.35·1012 | 7.61·1013 |
| DDR RAM | 256 MB | 28.5ns | 2541 | 9.48 MB | 3.48·1014 | 2.65·1016 |
| Hard drive | 250 GB | 25.6ms | 67 | 2.91 GB | 1.22·1011 | 2.17·1017 |
In summary, here's how much faster each cache memory type in your computer is than the hard drive:
| System memory | 37x faster |
| CPU Level 2 cache | 82x faster |
| CPU Level 1 cache | 283x faster |
Those figures explain why I only have 6 megabytes of "free" memory in Windows Vista. Vista is trying its darndest to pre-emptively populate every byte of system memory with what it thinks I 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. They even have a fancy marketing name for it-- SuperFetch:
In previous versions of Windows, system responsiveness could be uneven. You may have experienced sluggish behavior after booting your machine, after performing a fast user switch, or even after lunch. Although too many carbohydrates might slow you down after lunch, your computer slows down for different reasons. When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks -- including automatic backup and antivirus software scans -- take this opportunity to run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take space in system memory that your applications were using. After you start to use your PC again, it can take some time to reload your data into memory, slowing down performance.SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive. SuperFetch uses an intelligent prioritization scheme that understands which applications you use most often, and can even differentiate which applications you are likely to use at different times (for example, on the weekend versus during the week), so that your computer is ready to do what you want it to do. Windows Vista can also prioritize your applications over background tasks, so that when you return to your machine after leaving it idle, it's still responsive.
This isn't a new concept, of course. But Vista treats system memory like a cache much more aggressively and effectively than any other version of Windows. As alluded to in the above lunch anecdote-- and as you can see from the Task Manager screenshot above-- 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 damndest to fill that empty system memory cache as soon as it can.
Although I am a total believer in the system-memory-as-cache religion, SuperFetch can still have some undesirable side effects. I first noticed that something was up when I fired up Battlefield 2 under Vista and joined a multiplayer game. Battlefield 2 is something of a memory hog; the game regularly uses a gigabyte of memory on large 64-player multiplayer maps. During the first few minutes of gameplay, I noticed that the system was a little sluggish, and the drive was running constantly. This was very unusual and totally unlike the behavior under Windows XP. Once the map is loaded and you join the game, the entire game is in memory. What could possibly be loading from disk at that point? Well, SuperFetch saw a ton of memory freed to make room for the game, and dutifully went about filling the leftover free memory on a low-priority background disk thread. Normally, this would be no big deal, but even a low-priority background disk thread is pretty noticeable when you're playing a twitch shooter online with 63 other people at a resolution of 1600x1200.
I'm perfectly fine letting SuperFetch have its way with my system memory. 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?" I don't know. Maybe the rules were different before 2 gigabytes was a mainstream memory configuration.
The less free memory I have, the better; every byte of memory should be actively working on my behalf at all times. However, I do wish there was a way to tell SuperFetch to ixnay on the oadinglay when I'm gaming.
I bought a Compaq Presario laptop on Black Friday.
It comes with Vista Premium, a Dual-Core Intel Pentium CPU (clocked at 1.5GHz) and 1GB RAM.
It's incredibly slow.
I'm about to install AVG Pro instead of Defender (if I find out how to disable it), and do some Windows Updates.
I just disabled Superfetch, it's a little faster now. :)
Point is,
Why can't Microsoft do anything right?
Well, XP, on its time, was better than Vista. I think Vista is the largest disappointment after ME.
I will personally stay on XP, because Vista is just the shiny new look...
Until SP2, I think Vista's not needed.
Vista actually does not use all that ram. Vista uses Superfetch so that when you launch programs, it will release the memory it held to the program straightaway. This speeds up program lauching. Vista had superfetch problem which was slowing down vista but it was fixed on april and now with sp1 RC, it has used lesser ram and works faster and increased compatibility. Wait for sp1 because I think its a really good update.
sonicgo12345 on December 20, 2007 9:43 AMYou should only use Superfetch on systems with at least 1.5 GB of RAM or more.
sonicgo12345 on December 20, 2007 9:44 AMI think 4gb for SuperFetch is perfect. Its sluggish on 2GB...
maxim4o on December 23, 2007 10:44 AMGuys, really that was a very funny article, well written but funny from the first word to th end.
This explanation of Windows vista usage , even if its accurate its useless to the normal intermediate or on an advanced IT consultant that supports through windows vista and i will explain why .
A personal computer with a vista configuration, if the memory is sucking up the whole universe for the reasons that you say it does is only usable ad comfortable for a secretaries personal pc that is meant to run and execute procedures that are measured in the fingers of one hand. Like Microsoft office applications and STOP!!! nothing more nothing less,so in a pc configuration used by someone specific for specific procedures and applications yes YOU ARE CORRECT THAT VISTA IS THE BEST!!!!! Cause it will continue to suck up all cache memory showing in the task manager that the pc has only 1byte of free memory :P but the applications that are always used will of course be extremely fast. OK thats good, but i don't think that e people that came here in your blog and read this article is part of the users i mentioned above...
Good article but not with essence.
Thanks and goodbye .
**Have fun ,do good work and the money will come,or not**
netlawmaker, he isnt justifying how vista works and all, he is just trying to explain it, so that more people will understand how vista REALLY works.. many people has the absurd idea that vista is eating the memory, not keeping it ready, they think its a second game they have running in the background, so yes.. its with essence if you get it.
my vista ultimate works fluid(but only because i got a big gamning rig)
so i agree that vista isnt exactly for people like the ones that are just surfing the e to read blogs like this, they should stick to xp or something.
I think that Vista isn't exactly the problem with your game...I think it's the game creators...they need to tell vista what not to do while it's running to prevent SuperFetch from being annoying.
wizKid on January 15, 2008 8:34 AMNot only does it make noise, it also drains a laptop's battery.
Soaa on January 17, 2008 7:13 AMIt appears to me that this is a debate between quickly available memory and quickly available programs.
Like it has been mentioned many times here, SuperFetch is great for office applications, and it's certainly appreciated that your trusty Excel loads up in just a few seconds.
However, you must keep in mind that eating up all the memory means you need to unload stuff to fire up something that isn't cached, such as a game. That's double the work for the hard drive: putting fetched data into swap, and loading the game into memory.
Soaa on January 17, 2008 8:45 AMHEY HAS ANYONE NOTICED THAT ONE IS IN MB THE OTHER IS IN KB And that means he has about 1000 mb compared to 1500 mb
i'm now the hero but still vista is stil using alot but look at the feactures vista up holds and it is going to be the future if you can't update then you'll be left behind sry ^_^ hard truth anyway i will admit that vista need more fine tuning and that should of tested it first before releasing it ( they should of payed poeple form off the steet to muck around with it )but hey no one is perfect
Hero on January 17, 2008 10:51 AM"ps i was kidding about the hero stuff and next time please read what you post before posting i will admit i have mayde many stupid lil errors like that on forums myself"
Hero on January 17, 2008 10:54 AMVista is ALLWAYS accessing my Hard Drive, I have 4GiB of ram, I allways see the hard drive light blink, it never stops. There's no easy way, (if possible) to set it to passively fill the ram, index the hard drive, etc..., for those of us who hate hard drive noises.
hero... since when does 6MB = 1000MB ?.
by the way we use rendering software that can use 2Gb or more for one rendering task but the core of the program only uses about 100MB. If superfetch has these 2Gb cached with other crap, surely the time it takes to unload in order to perform the rendering task will be longer than in XP where the memory is free?. Would you say that in our case where we use the same software all the time and in the case of the 24/7 gamer who only uses the PC for one game that it would be better to disable superfetch?
It seems to be one of those features that caters for the average receptionist or home user who checks email, writes a letter and browses forums but isnt really going to help people who run memory intensive applications? Or do I have it the wrong way around?
idiot on January 22, 2008 3:19 AMYou have gotten it ALL WRONG.
The meaning of figures changed between XP and Vista.
Let's do some preschool math. The XP screen says you have 2G of memory total, 1.5G available (note, it doesn't say free as in Vista!), and 1.5G minus few megs disk cache. Would you think those 2 figures add up and still fit in your RAM? Of course NOT! The disk cache is available for immediate allocation. This is a pure read cache, which only needs to be unmapped to free up memory. To sum it up, XP genuinely uses just 0.5G RAM on your machine, with the rest being read cache.
(only a fraction of megabyte to few megabytes are normally used for write cache, and even then the data is usually written as soon as there is free time, and the data then goes from write cache into read cache so it needn't be reread immediately)
Now, loot at Vista. 2G - 1.3G (cache and genuinely free) means it genuinely uses just about 0.7G RAM. More than XP, but bearably so. And most significantly, the disk cache size is not drastically different from XP.
Next, let's look at the page file. XP has just over 300 MB, while Vista has way over 1.5G - the data which has been written AFTER on operating system has started. This has taken some time, and even if the transfers were initiated when the system had to do nothing anyway, they mean less responsiveness for a while. By the way, this makes it also obvious that one needs at least 4G RAM to be able to disable the swapfile on Vista and make a crash at least somewhat unlikely.
So besides Vista having grown in memory consumption (0.7G XP vs. 2.3G Vista from your screenshots), you should consider that agressive swap use and caching benefits manufacturers much more than users, because it optimizes the OS for high RAM configurations and faster drives, while conventional wisdom says one should rather optimize for a slower system, which is more likely to desperately need that extra performance.
What the marketing buzz describes by "superfetch" is probably just a change in the caching algorithm, which makes it less remembering already read data and more speculatively prereading, but we have seen traces of that even in XP. I am using such a speculative prereader (preload deamon) on Linux too.
Ilya Minkov on January 24, 2008 10:04 AMAnd now for de-confusing my post:
Available memory = disk read cache + free memory. If it weren't so (that is, disk read cache wouldn't count as available memory) that would mean you have more than 3G of RAM, which is obviously wrong.
Ilya Minkov on January 25, 2008 12:48 PMHaha, i didnt know vista uses superfetch. I just thought it was a virus because every day it seems like the ram keeps filling up, although a scan showed no viruses.
Glad you cleared that up.
Now if only we could disable superfetch from loading specific programs.
xGAx on February 1, 2008 2:34 AMFree RAM is wasted RAM. :)
brian on February 3, 2008 8:45 AMyour thing should be more memory in a person while on the computer
brenda on February 7, 2008 12:17 PMdo you think ms didn't test it or something i'm sure all options have been discussed and this is the best implementation.
Pacifika on February 13, 2008 3:38 AMWhy Does Vista Use All My Memory? Because it does use more its called bloat and bad coding! I see alot of these games run out of memory and crash. Did they do this in XP simple answer is no! Why? Because XP used less memory. When will people stop being sheep and get brains? Maybe never if they believe stuffing 3gb in vista is a cure all sorry its not. All 32bit system be it xp or vista have a 2gb user cap! No its ok dont listen to me keep getting drunk off of the fud kool-aid. Want proof? Put in 3gb play a newer game when you hit 2gb crash!!! hahah. Now install XP with 2gb wow the games plays with no crashing it gets no where near the 2gb limit.
There are plenty of reviews online about the 2gb limit with actual proof. Its easy to tell this sap was paid by microsoft or is a complete moron!
There is nothing special about vista's memory management its called garbage.
fuddy on February 13, 2008 4:21 AMFree RAM is wasted RAM. :) Oh your a real tool.
GOD on February 13, 2008 4:23 AMJeff,
While I agree that any RAM sitting empty is a waste, I don't think filling it up completely would be a good idea either. If as you say, SuperFetch has predicted your usage correctly and filled your RAM to the brim, there should be no problems. However, if it predicted wrong (a situation similar to a cache miss), then the overhead for swapping out existing memory would be too huge, with the result being the system would be non-responsive every time SuperFetch predicted wrong. No matter how perfect an algorithm may be, filling all your RAM all the time seems like a bad idea to me.
Microsoft has invented artificial intelligence? In their propaganda material they mention superfetch is smart all the time, but there is no real proof that it is so. So we should believe on their word?
Even if that is so, how do we know what is it using its 'brains' for? Doesn't it (now or in the future) start working against competitors' products (for example, other office suites)? Who does it work for? Us (the users) or Microsoft's shareholders?
The amount of power taken off user's hands is unacceptable.
Here's a solution for some users, but not all.
This might be the problem many people are running into: Vista automatically allocates 50% of all RAM to SYSTEM services. For example, if you have, say, 3GB of RAM and you tell your program that it can allocate 2GB, it will crash once it tries to go beyond 1.5GB.
You can get around this by directly editing, in the boot control file, the amount of RAM that Vista allocates for USER programs.
Here's how I set it for a 4GB system, to solve this problem that was crashing my video rendering:
1. Open the Command Prompt as the administrator. You'll find it in the Accessories folder in your programs menu. To open as the admin, you'll see the option "Run as Admin.." in the context menu (that thing that pops up when you right click an object).
2. Enter: bcdedit /set increaseuserva 3072
This configures Vista to allow USER processes to access 3GB of RAM instead of only 2GB.
3. Restart (Everyone running Vista has probably mastered doing this by now!)
Note: The internal variable "increaseuserva" can only be set between 2048 (2GB) and 3072 (3GB), so this isn't really helpful for anyone running less than or equal to 2GB. For those of you running 3-4GB I'd recommended always leaving Vista at least 1GB (though it doesn't give you much moving room to choose anyway).
Hope this helps some. I know it worked on my office's system I configured.
To anyone buying a new system (particularly a desktop), I'd say don't even bother with a 32-bit OS and go straight to a 64-bit OS. From my vantage point Vista is really Microsoft's final attempt at squeezing all the life (and money) out of the 32-bit architecture, since with a minimum requirement of 2GB of RAM and a maximum of capacity of 4GB, you're not going to last out the decade on anything running 32-bit.
Geoffrey_Crayon on February 15, 2008 9:12 AMFascinating discussion. I am, confessedly, a MS basher, because it is the OS for Dummies. That being said, I haven't jumped to Linux because it is the OS for people with enough time to tweak everything. I am neither, so, by default, I take the dummy's way out. However, I have run across this problem: trying to open a 300meg app, I keep getting the message that there is not enough memory to accomplish the task. Now, having read through the discussion, I understand why task manaager shows me I have no system memory. Problem is, if available memory is only in the cache, why doesn't the cache serve it up so I can open the app (actually, app installer)? Actually, I've been pretty happy with some of the improvements in Vistas dialog box choices, such as beinb able to move two a file with the same name to folder and have the option to have it auto-renamed, verus just overwrite or forget it, which is a nuisance in batch moves. And I don't like MS's games as much, but they've all been deleted anyway, so big deal. But now I've hit this snag, and it reinforces the problem with MS--every two years I have to waste a few weeks of my time being an IT guy. So, at roughly $1200 a week in lost revenue, MS costs me about $1200 a year to own. But maybe it would take 4 weeks to figure out Linux and this is indeed a bargain.
PB on February 16, 2008 11:01 AMPS -- Athlon 64 Dual Core, 2GB 5300 DDR2. No graphics card, so I'm probably losing a lot to shared graphics. Intent to fix that soon. Just got the thing.
PB on February 16, 2008 11:03 AMi just bought a laptop running vista with intel core 2 duo, 4MB cache, and 2 GB of RAM. Any late advice for managing my memory limitations with vista if i want to run games more than programs.
noob on February 20, 2008 5:50 AMIt's really anoying everytime I hear this stupid explanation about Vista memory usage. It's like telling about a car that can go 9000 miles on a tank of gas, but the tank is the size of 2 buses.
Here is teh deal, it makes sense about caching a lot in memory but what is the ACTUAL benifit? Not the INTENDED benifit, what is the REAL benifit cause it's NOT system performance! Is Vista faster than a solid XP/2000 system? Nope, actually slower because since the memory is loaded up all the time the system quickly goes into the page file which bogs the machine down. Whenever there is more than like 1.3GB RAM in use my sytem starts to crawl. So in previous OSs I had control...don't run too many apps and usually the sytem rocks, but now even if I' only runing a few things it's a big deal since I have much less RAM available. Basically it looks like Vista needs 4GB RAM because it's memory usage is sloppy, not genius.
Carl on February 20, 2008 8:43 AM
Alright I read the majority of these comments, and so I should post my thoughts as well.
Personally I am ANGRY at Vista using my ram as a cache, and I'll tell you why. For the past year (really 1.5 years), I used XP with 128 mb of ram. Truly, I cannot express how awful that time of my life was.
But the story ends well, I purchased a new system not a week ago. Quad-core (Core 2 Quad Q6600), with 2 GB DDR2 800mhz, and a GeForce 8600, that came with Vista Home Premium. For me, a paging file should not have to exist, I have more than enough ram (soon I'll have 4GB at least, so there). However, I don't mind paging files, and I do not mind Vista using some of my ram (because there is more than I really need, at least at this point in time), but DID THEY HAVE TO MAKE THE STUPID THING USE ALL OF MY RAM.
I did experience the lag that people have been describing. I opened the speech recognition program in Vista, and it must not have guessed I was going to use it (Free Ram = 0, from task manager), and so my computer lagged for 5 seconds or so while it thrashed. SuperFetch failed me, my system should remain responsive at all times (barring rouge programs and other such factors).
For me, this is UNACCEPTABLE. No matter how advanced the algorithms are for SuperFetch, and unless I have an absurd amount of ram (enough to cache everything + at least 2 GB free for anything else), then SuperFetch will always be a bad idea, at least how it is now.
I wonder why I can't just tell SuperFetch that it can have free reign over 50% of my ram. Honestly I think it's a superb idea to allow SuperFetch at least 300-512 MB of ram! By caching the top 3 or 4 of my most used programs, I imagine there could be a significant performance boost to be had, but as it stands I do not know of a way to limit how much ram SuperFetch uses, and so it is being shut off. My reasoning for this is as follows.
I've stated that SuperFetch CANNOT predict well what I will do, humans are hard to predict, especially myself, which is why I think it is futile to fill my ram to capacity with "educated guesses" of what I might use. I'm not going to use all of it, or even any of it. I believe that SuperFetch suffers from DIMINISHING RETURNS.
In other words, there is lots of performance gains for the first 25-50% of ram that is filled (I would say the top 5 most commonly used programs would suffice), but after that, you really aren't getting anything out of using the entirety of ram-space as a cache.
Microsoft needs to put more options in the hands of the consumer, because there are obviously disagreements about how beneficial SuperFetch is currently, and because people use computers for so many different things, SuperFetch should be more configurable by the user.
Jeff Williams on February 20, 2008 10:30 AMMy question to you Jeff Williams and everybody else...does superfetch really make ANYTHING faster? I use IE and Media center EVERY day...so they should be in my cache right? At least they are faster right? No! Nothing is faster.
I'll just be blunt, I do not see any performance advantages to Vista. The main difference I see are in a few conveneince features that frankly could have been added to W2k and WXP. Compare the performance nightmare that was w95 and wme to the clearly more stable win98, then compare that to very obviously faster and more stable WinNT and W2k. Thats where advancement stopped(for me...I never had XP)...
I was thinking that games are more advanced, but is that Vista? I think it's more the graphics cards and CPUs that have steppped up.
Carl on February 21, 2008 6:09 AMWell this certainly clears up some questions i had. I have a friend that is getting vista Ultimate and is sharing the key with me. But he is hoping and me as well that 6 gigs of mem would curb the demanding uses of ram that superfetch causes. Now i know that there is no hope unless ditching superfetch altogether. We're both running raid 0 so accessing any program wouldn't be an issue anyhow and actually negates the need for superfetch in the first place. I also agree that Superfetch will never be a good psychic so what's the point of superfetch again? I never know what i'm going to do when i load up my machine and i think it would be safe to say that 70 percent of people don't. I guess the biggest performance problems with vista is the bugs that are in it. I can easily and simply just disable the worthless feature of superfetch which is what i'll do but the millions of bugs in vista needs to be fixed.
Jayw654 on February 22, 2008 2:22 AMI have been strugling with a probleme for a while now, and I didn't get much help from the Toshiba support. Its like my new Toshiba has a memory probleme, but I dont know if its caused by Windows Vista or if its HW related.
This is what happens:
When I surf with IE7 og have more than 7 tabs open at the same time, its like windows runs out of memory, all of a sudden I cant open any new tabs and right click on the touchpad does not react. If I then minimize IE7 and right click on the desktop nothing happens either.
If I then close a couple of programs (its only Yahoo messenger og coreTemp that are running(coreTemp shows how warm your cpu is, and min is constantly between 56 og 64 degrees celsius)), then right click works again.
Usually when this happens I cant even get the taskmanager up, but if I close Yahoo Messenger then I can, and now I can see that there is used about 47% memory, under proceses i can see that:
Yahoo uses up to 50MB,
Iexplorer 27 - 150MB
og Dwm.exe takes up to 120MB.
The problem also happens if Yahoo is not started, so thats not the cause.
I have disabled aero and use minimal of all the things Vista comes with, so the I get max. performance following most of the instructions from www.Vistaguide.dk but the probleme persist every time I use IE and use more than 7 tabs (This should not happen, and using more than 7 tabs is perfectly normal).
Besides surfing on the net, I use it for playing video by VLC or GOM player, and music by Winamp. I dont play games.
Here it never runs out of memory.
Its Vista Home Premium Danish and in general I think it runs worse than Home Basic did on 2GB ram.
My laptop is an Toshiba satellite L40-139:
Intel Celeron M 520 1.6Ghz, 2GB DDR II 667Mhz(that fits the model), Toshiba 120GB S-ata HDD, Atheros Wi-fi, Intel 943GML Chipset.
Comes with Norton Internet security pre-installed.
I have set auto tunning to High: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglev=high
It did not solve the probleme.
Basically its like Vista simply runs out of memory, but I can see in taskmanager that is not the case since there is only used 47% of 2GB Ram together with a swapfile of 4096MB.
What I dont get is that there is other people who have a similair systeme and they dont have this probleme.
I scanned for virus and other dirt with Dr. Web Cure it and it didn't find anything neither did Norton.
The things that I think might be causing this is :
1. Norton Internet Security 2007, that might have an flaw that makes this happen.
2. The CPU is has an 533Mhz FSB and the Ram has 667Mhz FSB (should only be a probleme if the Ram was slower than the CPU). Memtest says they are OK.
3. Vista has an error that makes it not releasing the memory again, but it just stacks up until the error happens.
4. That there is an flaw in my CPU or in the chipset.
If its 4, does anyone have a programme so I can test this?
The probleme has been there ever since I bought it and even with the original Ram inserted.
Anyone know a solution for this?
With kind regards
JBJ
JBJ on February 25, 2008 6:59 AMI've stated that SuperFetch CANNOT predict well what I will do, humans are hard to predict, especially myself
Strange, the other caches on your CPU seem to work OK at predicting what you will do.. or at least what the code running on your PC will do.
When I surf with IE7 og have more than 7 tabs open at the same time, its like windows runs out of memory, all of a sudden I cant open any new tabs and right click on the touchpad does not react.
You are running into this..
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000966.html
Jeff Atwood on February 25, 2008 8:02 AMI dont care what you say, vista is not worth anything. Is a ploy to cache you cash. The fact is that on every vista system we have everything runs slower than XP, FACT! The new machine have more memory and faster processors, duel core even, and vista cant do anything right.
Oh and dont forget that guy that showed you can run the MS game on XP with a hack and installing directX 10. And yes, they run faster than vista.
Mr on February 28, 2008 7:07 AMIt appears that Vista is a resource hog big time. I have the HP Tablet PC tx1000 and out of the box I spent almost 3 hours uninstalling the bloatware that came with it, i.e. Vongo, etc. because I figured that was the problem regarding my resources. This machine has 2GB of RAM upgradable to 4GB so needless to say I will be upgrading it soon. Just for the system to boot run idle with no applications running I am using between 900-1000GB, it's ridiculous.
Rashawn Sanchez on March 6, 2008 2:14 AMI've actually finally made the leap to Vista Ultimate SP1 from XP, and I'm happy with the new OS. The darn thing boots to the login screen in 12 seconds, desktop instantly responsive in 3 seconds after credentials, and my programs (like VS2008) load instantaneously.
Sure, it is running on a 2.4 GHZ Quad Core on a 1333mhz FSB motherboard with 4GB of 800mhz DDR2 ram, and a 7200rpm SATA-300 drive...
But I guess my point is - as long as it performs as expected - which it does - I'm happy as sin.
KarlB on March 13, 2008 12:27 PMI also thought that Vista was crap and was bloated... but i took my friends copy of vista which he got on a computer that doesnt work anymore...
and I dual booted XP... and when i first ran it i obviously liked it.. iv used it before.. but i only liked the visuals and effects.. thats what drew my attention and so then i start XP and it seemed a lot faster so i looked up ways to make vista faster and i turned off a bunch of services and features i didnt need and a lot of the visuals that i dont need and vista still has the cool aero effect... and so i was still thinking XP was faster but after about 4 days its beein going really fast it loads my programs a hell of a lot faster then XP! some things run slower and it says im using a crap load of memory that i know im not using... but it loads stuff like none other right when i open the computer up after i turn it off! i almost like vista better then xp which i never thought id ever say... and i cant wait to try the ReadyBoost but i dont have a flash drive yet :( should speed things up with the help of SuperFetch combined with ReadyBoost
I had problems running XP sp2 (slow operation with low virtual memory msgs on 2GB - and I am not even talking about all the other "makes-me-wanna-curse" stuff to deal with like viruses, crashes, spam, upkeep, defragmentation, re-installation - I can re-install XP with eyes closed - security patches, updates for this and that and other (and not legitimate updates but screw-up-quick-fixes that will need to be patched up later on, too).
Then I 'borrowed' VISTA key. Well, in short, I was NOT impressed, so I went out and bought an additional 2GB of RAM. 4GB should help, I thought. Yeah, right! Vista took it's time switching between apps 4GB or not even under modest use (my old 2003 PC could handle it better, with 256MB of RAM, I kid you not!). How much RAM do we need to have before Microsoft's S!*T works? 32GB of RAM? 128? How much? What processors do we need to run a couple of tabs on IE? I can just see the ads on TV: Intel's new 24 linked SuperDUPER Double Quad duo Quattro XEON x 4 CORE PRO processor IS THE BEST!!! Make sure It's Super DUPER INSIDE! This is pathetic, no?
And then it hit me (actually it hit me when I lost AutoCAD file I spent two hours working on - on a freshly re-installed XP). And I thought about how much time and effort I was spending on everything OTHER THAN work and fun things on a computer - like fixing, troubleshooting, re-installing, cleaning, even (no-offence, guys) reading blogs like this for hours on end and others about which Antivirus is better, what are the latest security flaws were discovered in Windows or IE or Messenger or whatever...
And I told myself screw this! My time and my health (with all the frustration from PC) are just not worth it! I went to Apple an ordered new 24 inch iMac. Impulsive? YES! And I have 2 grand less, which, well, sucks. But now, a month after, I see that that was one of the smartest decisions I made in a long time! Everything on a Mac just works, and I don't even know how to use it! No viruses, no crashes, everything is fast, elegant and - brace for it - INTUITIVE! Mcrosoft is as intuitive as counting sheep by number of legs they have - try to
explain Ctrl+Alt+Del to someone who never used a PC... Good Luck!
The funniest thing is my iMac came with ONLY 1GB of RAM. And yes you can get more if you want to, but I have hard time justifying it - everything I do is just about instantenious!
Get a Mac and you'll forget most of the computer terminology - you'll never have to use it! Computer today is a creative and entertainment tool, and if you are not using yours for work or fun what's the point
?
i don't know much about computers so i need help. my recently bought computer, a quad core with 2.4ghz, 5gb ram, e-GeForce 8800GT 512MB, and runs on windows vista 32bit home edition, is really slow.
when i click on firefox or internet explorer it takes 10min to open up(i run on cable )and to goto a website it takes 2-3mins and most of the time it just won't go. downloading stuff is fine and all but starting the download takes forever.
another problem would be the video. most of the time i watch a movie(.avi, .mkv, .mp4, .omg) its all laggy and glitchy. the sound just follows the glicthy movie.
i did a full computer scan and it said the hardware and hard drive is running perfectly and theres no virus or spyware on my computer(scanned with mcafee. and turning the computer on and off is fast
i seriously need help the slowness is killing me.
Thanks in advance and sorry if some of the stuff i wrote down seems stupid
idunno on April 3, 2008 2:35 AMto idunno,
It's hard to see what could be the cause of your problems. Did you have this before? Or did it start happening after you installed something.
Vista generally is slow after a fresh install because it's caching everything (for search and stuff).
Also, I believe you can only utilize 3 Gigs if you are using a 32 bit system, switch to 64 :) (This could be a reason why your system is slow... not sure though)
I use Windnws server 2008 64bit built on vista sp1 kernel. I made some adjustments to transform it to 'so called' workstation. I use it mainly becouse its free for 8 months. Till now I have been useing xp sp2 2GB with page file off - no problems at all. I play games most of the time. Bf2 was all the time smooth under xp. Under win 2008 was stuttering for like 10 sec after switching back to gameplay from desktop. Additional 4GB ram sorted it. Now I have 6GB of ram and everything flies so far. 3d Mark 2006 score is the same as it was in xp. Bf2 performance is the same in xp. General use performance is about the same as in xp. So far I am happy with my modified Windows server 2008 built on vista sp1 kernel.
ados on April 4, 2008 10:37 AMI would like to add some more detailed comments to my previous post. As I stated I use windows server 2008 64bit which is built up on vista sp1 kernel. I made a modifications to it and turned off some server features so I can use it as a ordinary desktop system. It uses windows vista 64 bit drivers so driver-wise I had almost no problems apart from instaling my pci-e wifi card from Abit, because manufacturer's drivers won't work I had to use a chip based driver and it works flawlessly now. Superfetch is off by default in this system but I enabled it and the outcome it that windows allocates 3.8 GB out of my 6 GB of RAM and is showing that 1.8 GB is free. Pagefile allocates 1 GB. No matter what application I run it remains about the same even if I run and play battlefield 2, which I play on the best possible details in 1280x1024 with 4xAA on. Starting time for all my applications is almost none. I mean applications like skype, miranda,email client, opera browser, burning software, commander, system info, 3d mark06, and similar ones. When the superfetch is off my windows allocates like 500MB of ram when idle and more according to programs needs. I have tried to open all my apps I have instaled and some more windows so I had like 20 open apps on my taskbar and then started my most demanding game Bf2 and loaded map with 40 players and it has no impact on performance whatsoever. Loading times were the same and the gameplay was the same smooth experience as ever. Switch to desktop and back to gameplay was without any delays or stuttering and its worth to notice that I use areo with all possible eyecandy on. Taskmanager was still showing the same with superfetch on which is 3.8GB used and 1.8GB free. So to me superfetch works and it works great as long you have a decent computer with 4GB+ of ram. When my system is held CPU usage is fluctuating between 0 and 1 percent. The only time I would maybe like to put the superfetch back off would probably be if I decide to cut some huge video or audio files but till I dot try that I cant say If maybe superfetch would be that smart and empty the memory for me recognising that I am going to need it. So so far I have to tell that I never had such a great and fast desktop experience like now and I went through windows 3.xx, 95, 98 se, millenium, xp but not the linux thou.. But I have to confirm that you need that decent computer with 4GB ram or more. Windows 2008 'workstation' is said to be generaly faster then any vista, but I cant confirm that since this is my first 64 bit vista based operating system.
You can read about windows server 2008 modifications in here www.windows2008workstation.com
My system specifications are: MB Abit IP35 Dark Raider, core2 intel e2160 1.6GHz overclocked to 2.9GHz with fsb 366MHz and original voltages and cooled with artic freezer 7 pro with 80mm sharkoon golf ball (2000rpm all the time yet very quiet end effective.) FSB:MEM 1:1, 6GB DDR2 corsair xms2 pc6400 cl4 4 4 12, ati radeon x1900xtx 512 DDR3 with modified bios and aftermarket cooler accelero S1 with turbo module, psu 720Watt Enermax infinity, hdd 250GB SATA II Samsung spinpoint, wifi pci-e abit airpace, onboard sound, mouse Microsoft-razer's Habu, joyistick Saitek Cyborg Evo Wireless, ordinary 17 inch CRT (going for 30 inch daewoo soon), going to upgrade CPU and graphics card soon as well. The CPU of my choice will be probaly core2 quad 2.4@3.6GHz (with fsb on 400MHz)
ados on April 5, 2008 4:45 AMSorry, I have posted bad link for windows server 2008 workstation modifications. The correct one is www.win2008workstation.com
ados on April 5, 2008 10:11 AMWow there sure is a lot of people here saying the same thing over and over again. Talk about waste. Did all of you even read the discussion before you posted or do you really thing it is necessary to say the same exact thing someone above you posted. I don’t even know how many different times I read “Vista is Bloat Ware” or “Vista is Garbage”. Did some of you really feel the need to tell us how superfetch works using after the author already did that. Some of you added to the authors comments and that is fine but some of you repeated everything the author told us. This is not high school we do not need to hear 50 people summarize the article.
This article contains information that is helpful and useful. Computer technicians need to work with Vista to stay up to date with the problems their customers will experience. Especially with so many inexperienced home users are getting this OS with their new systems.
Vista Uses a lot of memory. Vista uses more memory than XP we get that, but the amount of memory Vista is using is not measured by subtracting the free memory from the total memory. The amount of memory being used is displayed in the top left hand corner in the box labeled memory. The little green indicator is telling you how much memory is being used. In the example given in this article vista is using 905 MB of memory. If you subtract that from the 2 GB (2048MB) supposedly in the system you will see that there is actually 1143MB unused. Watch that little indicator every time you open something and you will see that it increases when you open an app and decrease when you close an app. I don’t know why it says there is only 6MB free but this is not a true indication of the amount of Memory free on your system.
Some of you asked if they tested Vista before they marketed it. Well I recall them having Vista Beta so that it could be tested. Last I heard that is testing. But Microsoft did understate the minimum requirements to run Vista which is why they are in the middle of a law suit for false advertisement. (Read about it in Google news last week)
Microsoft has consistently presented its customers with more Demanding software over the course of its existence. It has fallen under much scrutiny since the beginning of its popularity. Win 95 Was horrible and the only reason I ran it was because certain software required it. Win 98 (1st edition) did not improve much. It seemed more like Win 95 with the Plus features on it. Now Win ME ran great for me. I hear many remarks about this one but I had fewer problems with ME than any of its predecessors including 98 SE. 2000 Was the most stable but was more focused on the business community not the home user community. XP had many bugs at first, I have seen Endless boot loops many times. Not to mention in the beginning you could not install Win XP on a system with 512 MB of Memory. I remember having to take out one of the mem sticks just to get it loaded then reinsert the memory after Win was installed. Over time they improved XP to its current state (which is better but not perfect). I presume Vista will get ironed out as well.
I tested the performance of Vista by opening certain small apps side by side with an equivalent XP machine( such as notepad, word, iexplorer) and there was now evidence to support Vista is considerably slower. Notepad and iexplorer opened at the same time. Word opened a little slower but the time difference was not so marginal that you could run to the kitchen and get ice cream. It was less than a 1 second delay.
One of you stated that there is a ceiling on 32 bit machines. This is a correct statement but the ceiling is actually 3 GB to 3.5 GB. So everyone who says they have 4GB or more, if you are not using the 64 bit version you really aren’t using all of that memory. (if you are using the 64 bit then great for you I don’t need to hear about it)
You can disable superfetch permanently (not just per session using the command line entry) by going under services and disabling the service. For those who do not know where to find services it is under control panel administrative tools services. There you will find the superfetch service. You will also find the service for search indexing (which is labeled windows search) and readyboost(which can be disabled if you do not plan to use a flash drive for page files) As for me I use flash drives for sneaker net functions not for page files.
For those of you who said you are not easily predicted, I hate to tell you but after reading your first few sentences I knew what the rest of your post was going to say. Just like I predict that there will be some upset people after reading this post. Your video game not running fast enough is not much of a reason to be angry.
I had 101.0 GB and I shut my computer down and re-opened it. Now I have 71.0 GB, what's going on?
Verna on April 16, 2008 9:07 AMtry disable restore point on hard drive reboot then enable restore point. now you should have all your free gigs back on your hard drive
ricky on April 25, 2008 11:26 AMFrom your own screen shot:
2045 - 1277 - 6 = 762MB being consumed for essentially having nothing running (unrelated to aggressive disk caching) in vista vs 334MB in XP.
I suspect the reason they got rid of "commit charge" in Vista was to hide the real indicator for comparison of how much more of a pig vista actually is on RAM. This kind of memory usage out of the box is absurd and unecessary. Even the server versions of vista (win 2008) use much less memory when doing absoultely nothing.
Yes if you have 2GB of ram and never use more than 1GB running applications Vista is great. If you actually want to use the memory you have the picture is quite different. The only time I used vista was on a notebook with 768MB of ram... Opening more than a few browser windows lead to swap hell (painfully slow). It took me more than an hour disabling enough useless crap that most people don't need or want to get that changed enough to make the system semi usable.
is there a way to clear the cache?
Alisa on May 6, 2008 12:10 PMDisabled superfetch, indexing, I have 2Gb of RAM and Vista says I have 2030Mb, Cached is 1110Mb with 25Mb free.
Why is the cache so full and I only have 25Mb free???? I reboot the PC and for about 12 hours I have about 1Gb of free RAM to load apps with no lag time.
Noticed a few vista sidebar gadgets that apparently clear the cache but they don't work!
Anyone ...is there a way to clear vista's cache???
Spackie on May 7, 2008 9:40 AMI think its shadow storage that occupies or decreases your memory in vista it eats up 15 percent of hardrive
you can reduce it just follow these steps
Reviewing Shadow Copy
1. Click StartComputer and on Local Disk (C:) you'll see the available disk space you have left on the hard drive of your Windows Vista desktop/notebook computer.
2. Click StartAll ProgramsAccessories.
3. Select Command Prompt (make sure you right click on Command Prompt first, and select Run as administrator).
4. Type in vssadmin list shadowstorage
5. Press Enter/Return. Command Prompt will show the allocated space towards Shadow Copy. This can be reduced to allow more free hard drive space.
Reducing Hard Disk Space Allocated for Shadow Copy
1. Exit Command Prompt and backtrack to Step 3 in Reviewing Shadow Copy. Open Command Prompt, again selecting the Run as administrator option when right-clicking.
2. Type in vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum space you will allow for Shadow Sorage, e.g. 3GB].
3. Press Enter/Return. The results will be displayed in Command Prompt.
4. Click StartComputer and once again review the available disk space for Local Disk (C:).
A lot of forum posts says superfetch is the reason vista uses 50% of Ram (so 1 gig on mine) and they to this article even though here is says "all my memory". Take the example of this screenshot:
Total: 2045
Cached: 1277
Free: 6
So, when it says 44%....isn't that used by vista. That is: 802 mb(2045 - (1277 + 6))
My understanding of superfetch is that free memory decreases and cached memory increases. If a memory intensive application starts, free memory will increase.
So how much memory does vista really use? 802 mb?
Thanks All About Me for the well placed sarcasm.
Disabling SuperFetch appears to have helped some on my PC. I have a 3 GH Pentium 4 with 512 MB of Ram. Until recently it had Windows XP Professional. XP ran like a champ with Visual Studio, InterDev, PaintShop Pro, SQL, numerous IE browsers and tabs, Notepad, Outlook, and other applications running simultaneously.
After getting hit with a virus I took the "opportunity" to rebuild with Vista Ultimate. After that my PC became a fat silicon turd.
Right now I have virtually no development software installed. Admittedly, I should have read the hardware recommendations which clearly state at least 1 GB of RAM for Vista Ultimate.
Rather than repeat the symptoms many of you reading this blog are likely experiencing, I'll just mention that task manager initially showed 88% of my Physical Memory Usage History consumed. After disabling SuperFetch and rebooting I could detect little change in that memory usage figure. Right now it's at 79%.
Overall the PC is not as sluggish as it was before disabling SuperFetch. But, I'm experiencing issues that were not present with XP. For example Internet Explorer keeps crashing when there is virtually no load on the system. By virtually no load, I mean that I have the following windows open:
IE with 2 tabs.
Task Manager
Notepad
In the background Task Manager shows a dozen svchost.exe and about 25 other processes.
Under the pre-2000 versions of Windows I was used to intermittent application failures. They were a fact of life in the 90's. Does anyone remember the days when you would install a program and pray that Windows would still boot up after doing so? I do, and don't want to go back to those.
I think Microsoft has done a good job of raising the quality bar with Windows; in fact they've done such a good job that I now expect applications to virutally never fail because of the operating system. Of course they do, but it's rare.
My work PC has Windows XP and simultaneously runs multiple instances and versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, Office, and other resource intensive software. Rarely do any of those applications fail. The only time that system gets sluggish is when Norton kicks in for a system scan. For some reason Symantec has been incapable of producing a virus scanner that enables users to govern its resource use.
That's probably what needs to happen with SuperFetch. Put an option to throttle SuperFetch at some memory percentage level. For example, if Windows wants to pre-cache, I'm willing to gamble that it will be right 50% of the time, so it can have up to 50% of my available memory. Leave the rest alone.
Unfortunately I'll probably go back to XP Professional, at least until I get a 64 bit dual core with loads of RAM. :)
Ken on May 19, 2008 10:10 AMI think this is funny. If people knew how to read this there would be no issues or fussing. Look at the graphs again at the top and then translate the information, in particular from the Windows XP claim.
DO YOUR MATHS!!
Under XP 2096620 total memory
and 1506504 free memory
so how come it has 1481992 system cache?
If you do your maths on this one then 1506504 - 1481992 = 24512
Seems to me like Windows XP is doing the same, your only really have 24MB of ram left in the example you have posted, its just windows reports it to you differently.
If you pay for 2, 3 or 4Gb of RAM why do you want so much to be free, Windows is just caching useful data in case you need it. Once you load a program that requires memory that information is unloaded and released for use by the program.
Why have all that memory and not have it used by the system.
Windows XP and Vista do basically the same thing with memory, cache previously used software, only Vista actually achieves this a lot more efficiently. XP just doesn't own up to the fact that it is cache system information.
I find it amusing that you'd have all this memory and insist that it is free, if it is free then it's not doing its job.
The only people who need free physical memory is gamers, but as Windows is a multi use system it can't afford to keep memory free just in case you want to play a game.
There's no point going back to Windows XP, it has a flawed security model and is inefficient on multi-core processors. Vista is massively more secure and uses hardware a lot more efficiently.
It's time to put Windows XP to bed and move on unless you've got an older machine.
Paul on May 25, 2008 1:12 PMI have 4GB RAM and currentrly run Vista x32 (I will try x64 too, but i haven't installed it yet).
Vista has only 2813MB avaialable, because its x32.
Currently I see the following values in Task Manager:
Memory-Graph: 1.39GB
Physical Memory:
Total 2813
Cached 1667
Free 0
So I think, that the 1.39GB is the memory, whicch is used by windows in the "old-fashioned" way an the other ~1.4GB are used for superfetch.
But I will disable superfetch now, because form what I read in some other comments here, this should be faster in games and games are the only tasks on my PC that need performance.
MrBurns on May 27, 2008 8:41 AMMost people so far seem to have said that disabling superFetch helps performance. Reality trumps theory. Wear and tear on the system is reduced by disabling superFetch. That's reason enough.
BooBear on May 28, 2008 12:02 PMEamon, I agree there are specific narrow situations where SuperFetch is detrimental. In those cases I've issued a "net stop superfetch" myself.
But for typical, general use it is quite a bit faster to let the OS pull in everything it thinks you might need -- put that 2 GB or 4 GB of memory to use instead of sitting idle and empty 90% of the time.
When I go back to Windows XP now it feels a lot less "snappy" as I launch apps, and I think SuperFetch is a part of that.
Jeff Atwood on May 29, 2008 3:28 AMHere's what I do. On every client machine with Vista, I turn off SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, Windows Search, Windows Defender, and System Restore.
Like magic, the machines run _almost_ on par with XP. The difference is freakin' night and day, really.
Now, this works even on machines with 2GB of RAM, so explain to me again why all of this grafted-on after-the-fact bloat crap is supposed to be GOOD for my clients?
TAO on May 29, 2008 9:04 AMSo let mi get that straight. Microsoft decides what to cash for you IN CASE YOU MIGHT NEED IT…
These are the facts. My machine is Intel Quad core 4 gig of RAM Vista Ultimate 64 nVidia 8800GT. I play Second Life on this PC and 4 GIG of RAM is not enough?!?!
If SL is running more than 1h on this machine and I load different regions of the game the memory usage for SecondLife.exe is shooting through the roof reaching 1.8gig at times eventually Vista freezes.
This never happened on XP64 so I don’t know what Microsoft did but whatever new memory management they decided to use is total crap.
Nice Article Jeff! I really like your writing style and think the input and responses to this article have been very interesting indeed.
My thoughts...
Superfetch IMO is a very good idea but frankly it appears even if you have 4GB of ram (as I have) Superfetch will simply not 'guess' correctly every time. Applications start faster, but try something Superfetch does not guess correctly (in my case opening up an application I use everyday (yes every day) and my system starts to crawl.
I really like the idea of Vista using my 'free' ram. Why not? But somehow my real world experience is really poor management of my 'free' ram.
Solution?
If,if...if only we as users could simply tell Vista what apps we want to use Superfetch with (in a similar way to telling Vista or XP what app to use to open a type of file) I think that would be huge step forward. I think Superfetch and Ready boost are good ideas but it's almost as if they are not quite 'finished'.
As a Linux user as well, I see no system lag doing the same things using the same hardware as Vista.
TAO's comments...
"Here's what I do. On every client machine with Vista, I turn off SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, Windows Search, Windows Defender, and System Restore.
Like magic, the machines run _almost_ on par with XP."
TAO is IMO absolutely SPOT ON.
That is *exactly* my experience. Whatever Microsofts plans were for Vista, making the tweaks that TAO and others like myself do to Vista should never result in a more reliable and/or more responsive OS.
Reliability should not be achieved by switching things off that really should be left *on*. It is supposed to be the other way around. Switching things off that are on by default should cause reliability issues!
Sudden system crawls and slowdowns really provide an unreliable environment for users who might use more than a few applications consistently.
I get the feeling that Microsoft designed Vista with far too much of the future in mind. I am trying to remember who from Microsoft made a comment about "PC's being so much more powerful by the time Vista comes out"
Yes when everyone has 6gb or more of ram and Vista 64bit(based on 'ados' excellent post, more on that later) then it looks we will see pretty much the real Superfetch in Vista.
The time will come when you walk into a store buy a PC and the lowest base unit system has a 64 bit version of Vista with 6 - 8gb of ram. Fire it up and forget about performance issues.
By that time it's likely Windows 7 would have been available for about a year or two. With a service pack already released. It's just too far down the line for joe public to think about now.
He wants Superfetch on Vista 32 to work as advertised (now) with the hardware he currently has available (4gb + Quad core in my case)
I just think that Microsoft should have 'finished' Superfetch. It seems better in SP1 (IMO) but the system lag I experienced pre SP1 simply just took longer to show up. Maybe Vista SP3 (if there will be one)will have a further revised Superfetch that delivers on it's promises but without having to run a 64 bit OS with 6GB + of ram.
{Back to the 'ados' post reference earlier}...
'ados' posted a superb write up on just how much ram a user may need to really see what Superfetch can do.
I really hope someone from Microsoft reads that. If you want to find that post quickly it look for a post from ados on April 5, 2008 03:45 PM
That really was a real world detailed example of how to take the guess work out of Superfetch and let it do what it was intended to do properly. Thanks for taking the time to do that ados.
The problem...
...of course is that Superfetch appears to favour users of a few apps consistently (to be fair that is Likely Microsofts main target demographic) but of course for any mid to high usage, not even very heavy usage, Superfetch fails IMO. Even with 4GB of ram on a Quad core PC (mine).
Give it enough ram and based on ados' post Superfetch will really fly. But to expect a user to have to fork out for a 64bit version of Vista and 6GB or more of ram to really get such a potentially highly useful (as advertised) feature working to it's optimum level, is not a realistic expectation for Microsoft to have and is somewhat different to XP in terms of what was needed to get the best our of it.
I appreciate as a business Microsoft likely wanted to focus their efforts with Superfetch on the larger part of their target market (who may have far less, if any problems with Superfetch) but that approach does not work. Let us decide what apps Superfetch is used with. That will save a good chunk of cash on additional memory (6GB+)and a copy of Vista 64 bit.
An interesting twist to my post...
I actually have a native 64 bit application (Cakewalk Sonar) that I will use on a 64 bit version of Vista.
Sonar can access up to 128 GB of ram so it will have no problems with my second upgrade...memory up to 8GB.
So in a strange way my move to 64 bit Vista (disc arrived today)is application driven and not as a result of the failings of Superfetch. I will also run some 32 bit apps on 64 bit Vista like Zynewave Podium, and Office 2007 (through WOW64) but my upgrade is really down to Sonar.
Also some other plugins I use for Music Production are starting to appear as native 64 bit plugs so I think now is a good time for me to move.
I still have another version of Vista 32 bit on a second PC that would benefit greatly from a further revised and enhanced version of Superfetch in future that hopefully will not need 6GB+ of ram to totally eliminate any issues.
Nice idea in theory but it just does not appear to be 'finished' yet.
UKG on May 31, 2008 4:07 AMvista is using too much the hard drive, no mather what amount of ram you have or if you disable the search indexer, windows defender, sistem restore.
-------------------
regards,
Ochelari de vedere
Someone should make a program that finds out what is causing vista to take up so much space. I mean... look at linux, it looks cool and has more features and still doesn't take up as much space. Ms should check their products again.
guest on June 5, 2008 7:56 AMamusing to hear these XP fanatics strut their stuff.
XP-eol this year.
Not sure about you, I'd move on to the upgrade rather than whining about it all day long.
sianz on June 8, 2008 9:01 AMInteresting article and comments (on the whole).
From Win2K onwards Microsoft/Windows has been stuck in it's own bootloop.
- Launch new product (unfinished)
- Start pimping next product
- Put most of your programmers on the next product
- Leave a few strays tidying up the new poo you just pooped
- Hope they get the "new" product up to speed (i.e patched and actually working within three or so years) in time for:
- Launch new product (unfinished)
I reluctantly moved to XP last year from Win2K because of one prog that wouldn't run on 2K, plus the product support on 2K will die. I also bought a laptop that HAD vista on it.
XP compared to Win2K sums up the problem many users here are describing with vista, which just takes it some steps further. This problem is an increasing removal of control from the user towards the OS.
Vista with it's super administrator account, millions of clicks on "yes I really really want to change the fu{@ing time please, please Mr Computer". Superfetch. Super indexing. Super graphics, Super slow.
Super for Micro$oft yes, but basically everything they touch is the definition of bloatware - and a perfect reflection of the narcissistic Gates' ultimate greed.
I'm moving everything to Linux. It's a learning curve, sure. Yet the idea that the computer will not be doing lots of things I do not want it to do and will be doing the things I want in the way I want them done is just too attractive. It makes the learning curve worth it.
Gates is fighting a war now against Linux, not anyone else. He can employ 64,000 programmers but he can not fill them with love for what they do. He can fill their pockets with cash yet that will not make them do their best work.
Two years ago Linux was not really an option for anyone but an expert if you actually wanted the machine to do something useful.
Today there are linux distro's that install more easily than windows. OK after that things can get tricky for certain specifics (Digital TV card anyone?) yet the pace of improvement is vast and what we do not see with Linux is it getting fatter and slower and hungrier. We see it getting tighter, faster, easier.
Two years from now, with an ever growing body of developers contributing, Linux will be an out-of-the "free download" OS that will beat the pants off Vista, Windows 7 and anything else Microslop come up with, if they can get someone to buy it.
The main spanner in the works, potentially, IMO, is the anti-virus companies - who will now start paying people to write nasty Linux viruses to scare people off. They are in a lovely snuggly co-dependent relationship with Microslop.
Matthew
ps Whoever is running Norton ..... just always expect a slow system, however many processors and such it has.
matthew on June 10, 2008 10:34 AM"Someone should make a program that finds out what is causing vista to take up so much space."
Sysinternals
duke dynamite on June 18, 2008 7:21 AMI love it! Great place to let go over this whole issue...
Look, it's really simple: Keep the Totally Clueless Sexually-Confused End User on the treadmill with the latest and greatest chrome-plated crap from whatever keeps abusing them. They love it; and it's great for business! To Vista, and beyond!
For the rest of us: Stop where common sense has defined the natural edge. XP/2K is good for everyday use from 384Mb RAM up, with NO pagefile; bearing any common sense regarding system setup and program selection.
Linux stinks from a common usage standpoint (try installing a typical printer or anything beyond a distro's spread of pre-installed programs); and isn't ever going to figure out what the masses wasnt at the rate they're building their distro Tower of Babel.
When ReactOS FINALLY comes past Alpha we'll see true, lasting computing freedom for the PC desktop. 'Til then, hang on to what works; and use it for all it's worth ;o)
Pax.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Us
nuff said eh?
Strigner on July 14, 2008 4:57 AMWhile RAM-as-cache SOUNDS like a good concept, in practice it seems like another we are microsoft and we know better then you attempt. So now the system knows exactly what programs I'm going to launch? What if I use a lot of different apps? Now I have to wait for the system to unload memory it tried to cache for me so it can load up the app I want to use. Or if I want a certain program to run faster (like a game), there is no way for me to change the priority because the system treats my one big app as not so often and my web browser as often.
Caching works perfect for system files and such that every program needs, but it doesn't make a lot of sense for user apps. Or at the very least there should be a mechanism for changing it to work better for MY setup, and what -I- want to have happen.
Man im trying to play my lineage2 on vistas had no prpoblems for 7 months, now i cant even log into game because it has a critical error stating that i dont have enough virtual meomory wtf???
Viski on August 5, 2008 1:03 PMMy system was running great at about Free-780 suddenly it just started hogging ram down to between Free-0 and Free-8 and kept hogging; as a test I tried to hogg the ram before vista get's to hogg it but that just made it worse.
Yes; there's a definate memory hog; it's not open source so not telling; maybe it's best that MS sweat it a bit as that's what they deserve.
I now have it running at Free-1410 and it's great!!!
Is there possibly a way to turn super fetch against itself?
Possibly before it even caches the memory, you could set aside X amount of RAM to be used for a game of your choice. Since I started using Vista, I can't play my games online. Although before, I had JUST enough RAM to run the game, but then I got the Verizon Security suite which of course added yet another RAM requirement to my long list of Memory Loads.
So is there a way to set aside some RAM that super fetch cannot cache?
I have over one Gig of RAM available, however it is already cached.
nVida Geforce 9600 GT 512 mb
2GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Basic 32 Bit
Jeff,
I am having a similar problem to this. I am running XP with 3 gigs of RAM on a Gateway Laptop W350A T-1628. I am having a tough time typing in anything, let alone this text box, without it coming to a complete halt. It freezes up every several seconds while typing, then fills it in. I am using Mozilla Firefox as well. Does this issue relate?
I checked my Free and it was 35MB in the Performance manager/Task Manager pane. I am not a tech guy, so any help would be great!
I am only running Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 and Mozilla right now, but I am using 5 windows for browsing, and most only have 2 or 3 tabs but one has around 15. My PC usage is only 6% though in Task Manager.
Am I just using too many Firefox windows at once? Thank you for your help!
Paul on August 17, 2008 3:49 AMProblem is, they did not disable the low memory warnings. Running almost nothing, I get low memory cautions all day long, with display driver outages, blanking screens, and insistence that I close the apps using the most memory like Firefox or Google earth. Stupid Microsoft.. PS Ive got 3GB and it isn't nearly enough for Vista.
Jer on August 22, 2008 10:36 AMJust checked SP1 - same old... the souce seems to be Task Scheduler.
HOG-VISTA-HOG on August 29, 2008 12:54 PMVista 64 Ultimate SP1.. Dual Core 3.2.. 8GB of ram. Vista is a memory crack addict.. most times I have under a gig of memory free. 7 gigs..into a black hole.
I've had my paging file on and off.. mostly running IM programs, email..movies.. not a big load. Sidebar takes a gig alone, Windows search takes a gig.....clearly there is a massive issue with memory allocation within this 64 bit OS. Even after closing the sidebar and search (which should free up 2gb) it free's up about 400mb instead.
Under a fresh install the system ran great with 8GB, it was normally using 2-3gb.. now im sure if I gave it 50GB and ran Outlook it would be 99% used................................wtf
Wodz on September 3, 2008 5:10 AMHelpfull article . Thanks
Gazduire Web on September 3, 2008 11:36 AMAs far as I see, the green bar graph shows under Vista how much memory is already in use and cannot be freed for other purposes. The cache can be shrinked / freed if applications need more mem. Same is true for the Physical Memory Usage History if you have Page File off.
But for the same services running in background and just having a desktop, Vista seems to need approx 500 MByte, while XP used approx 150 MByte. This is a huge difference.
Do not believe that you find under Processes a reliable amount of memory used by a process. There are Win32 API functions to allocate memory which does not show up there, but only in the green bar and in the History.
One explanation for the higher memory requirements of Vista may simply be the ill-done winsxs stuff, keeping all old DLL versions on disk and using them for applications linked to them. If there is only a single version of a DLL, its code is in RAM one time and shared by multiple apps (or DLLs). If every app gets an other version of the DLL, then every version occupies RAM for its code.
Even such simple applications as notepad.exe use old DLLs from winsxs instead the latest version.
You can shut it down but why would you want to? Its not like if the memory is filled it cant load anything else. If the memory is full and what you need is there,it just uses it. If its full and what you need is not there,it just overwrites it. It doesn't take any significant effort to just release the pages and reuse them.
Michael on September 11, 2008 8:44 AMwho cares about memory usage,or at least the kind of memory usage we are talking about here. I have 8gigs of ram and it cost me 150 dollars. At that price,windows can use all it wants.
Michael on September 11, 2008 8:46 AMIn order to ixnay on the oadinglay you just have to stop the SuperFetch service.
Note on the side (to the guy that disabled SuperFetch and still has no clue), memory management isn't impaired by disabling the SuperFetch service since its a design, SuperFetch is only meant to IMPROVE it and isn't the engine behind it, think of it as high-class motor oil.
sniffey on September 18, 2008 4:44 AMvista precaches regulary used programs
fa on September 28, 2008 7:59 AMWhen i try to update AVG Free 8.0.169 from a dir (Tools- Update from directory...), i get the message Update Failed. General Error - not enough free memory, write error. I have tried every thing from increasing virtual memory manually to setting virtual memory to be system managed - no effect. i still get the same message. i don't think memory management is so hot on Vista. The feature of AVG works fine on my 1.5 GB RAM Laptop whereas my desktop (which has the problem) running VIsta Professional SP1 has 2 GB RAM and is a Core 2 Duo processor to boot.
Any suggestions????
When i try to update AVG Free 8.0.169 from a dir (Tools- Update from directory...), i get the message Update Failed. General Error - not enough free memory, write error. I have tried every thing from increasing virtual memory manually to setting virtual memory to be system managed - no effect. i still get the same message. i don't think memory management is so hot on Vista. The feature of AVG works fine on my 1.5 GB RAM Laptop whereas my desktop (which has the problem) running VIsta Professional SP1 has 2 GB RAM and is a Core 2 Duo processor to boot.
Any suggestions????
Hello - I have 8 gigs of ram, and windows has decided to use all of it. So much so that I can't even save a 400x300 jpg out of photoshop that has 4 layers and no effects.
I could see letting Vista pre-cache with a couple gigs, but it caches up 6GB! This is ridiculous. Everything runs super slow. Launching Firefox takes forever. And everything keeps saying not enough memory to run etc. I don't know what is wrong with the service... maybe something got corrupted. But it would be kind of nice if you could have a setting of max RAM to use in your pre-cache. Or tell it programs to not precache.
Out of RAM! on October 14, 2008 11:33 AMI am having a similar problem to this. I am running XP with 3 gigs of RAM on a Gateway Laptop W350A T-1628. I am having a tough time typing in anything, let alone this text box, without it coming to a complete halt. It freezes up every several seconds while typing, then fills it in. I am using Mozilla Firefox as well. Does this issue relate?
the reason why this usually happens is windows XP has a background task that defrags the hard disk. when it kicks in, you feel it. massive swapping can cause this too. Really, other than defrag, I honestly don't know what causes this. I have 3GB ram too, and I have the same problem.
I think the more memory you have, the slower the system you are going to have, because windows must manage more ram, and it does it in chunks. some programs do garbage collection, which takes a while.
These are only educated guesses. I would really like to nail this one down because it really bugs me.
Jim Michaels on October 17, 2008 10:54 AM(1.66 dual, 2 gig RAM, 32 bit) One thing I didn't see mentioned here is starting the computer in Safe Mode, which I plan to try soon. This is supposed to run bare OS processes only. I can see caching is sapping my CPU resources, because every time I do something, CPU spikes disproportionately. I have turned off most non-
dependent processes, which has my RAM used now at about 730 Mb. The person who said RAM not used is RAM wasted fails to consider that RAM unused can be used for the computing-intensive application you're currently using, and it takes CPU to modify that RAM. I will take the advice to get a second high quality hard drive, but does anyone know how to set the page caching to the second hard drive?
Superfetch as nothing to do with it!!! The cache still registers as free memory when seen by programs, cos Vista just discards it when you need the memory. I want to know why Vista has to use something like 700MB+ all on it's own (i.e. that difference between 905MB and 334MB on the graphs you show)
sj on November 3, 2008 6:39 AMFree available RAM is *everything* in modern IT environments that run vm's, java, firefox ...no free RAM and you get swapping to disk.
And why shouldn't the user be able to choose which apps are cached rather than Vista???
I've got 3069Mb of RAM, Cache 2659Mb, free 73Mb
The question is how can one view what vista has cached???
I got 1 gm RAM and vista, it was working quite well but from yesterday I cant even update my briefcase in my USB pendrive with the mother folder in my Laptop. It is saing dont have enough memory to run.. Task Manager showing, it is using 77-85% of the physical memory. I have done everything possible from hijackthis to disabling various services, still no outcome. I am desperate. please help.
roy on November 8, 2008 1:49 AMYou, sir, are and idiot (sic)
lex luther on November 8, 2008 11:39 AMThank you very much for this useful article and the comments.
sohbet on November 14, 2008 11:21 AMOk here's one i didnt see on this whole page. I just built a new rig, and opted to switch to vista to take advantage of the 8 gigs of ram i threw in. the system registers that there are indeed 8 gigs installed, but strangely the task manager physical memory is limited to 2 gigs. any attempt to run software of high demand is met with out of memory errors. i cant seem to find any way to get Vista to use the other 6 available gigs of ram. anyone seen anything like this before?
kyle on November 15, 2008 4:43 AMintel core2 duo (2x T7300 @ 2ghz), 3gb ram, 8600gs.
windows indexer - manual
ready boost service - off
all auto update services - off (I manually check for updates on a regular basis, and do update checks for security software once a day (more often if I'm abouts to download data or launch the browser)
Physical memory (MB):
Total 3069
cache 2398
FREE 1 ---- JUST ONE MEG!!!!
Page file 914/6340
I find vista does lag, and lags very often. I start any browser (firefox/ie/opera/avant/safari/netscape and others) they launch no problems, but soon as I click in a search box, I get the mouse pointer change to its 'busy' icon, and it stays like this for around 3-5 seconds, WHY? all i've done is click an input box. doesn't matter what input box I select, the same happens. This is clearly a major problem, and must be something to do with my free memory being 1 meg.
I use a whole bunch of different apps, I'm also a big games player, do lots of web designing and video editing, I'm very random on what I'm going to do, with 320 gb harddrive capacity, theres absolutely no way that the computer can predict the next thing I'm going to do, when its memory is no more than 2 percent of the amount of data actually on the drive.
This superfetch is a good idea though, but must be user limited to prevent this lagging.
The latest games all require that the cpu in a vista system must be more powerful than the cpu for an xp system, on avergae it looks like vista needs an extra 0.2 - 0.6 ghz of cpu power to play the same games, surely this tells you that vista is a p*ss poor os and slower than xp don't you think?
I'm very spontaneous and have a great lack of concentration, I can be working on some web stuff, and within half hour be either bored or just have the urge to launch fear, juiced 2, COD4. All games play fine. Then I get bored of that, decide on some video editing, get bored again and have a good few hours of browsing the net. My vista experience can sometimes really be a pain in the neck with all these lags in the os environment.
On some websites, if its a long page, I can often find myself happily (sarcasm) watching the menu bar display '(Program Not Responding)' for anything upto 5 minutes while the cache is emptied to make room for the web page. No sh*t. Thats an extremely pleasent experience, and Bill should get a baseball bat across the back of his head for making us all so happy and thrilled with the smooth running of vista.
My systems not exactly top notch in the high end market for a laptop, but is one of the good ones, and I certainly dont expect the slowness I experience. My last xp laptop was only 1.6 single core with 1 gig, and was far far faster without lags within the xp enduser experience.
So, anyone found a way of limiting the amount of ram used for caching yet? I'd be happy to have 512meg of real unused memory, so when I do launch something superfetch didnt predict, i dont have to wait so long for the program to launch. 512meg would also give me a good amount spare to fill up while browsing the net without having to wait before I can interact with the browser again.
Sorry if not made much sense, been awake 45 hours now so not thinking too good lol.
A do have another question, if I increase my ram from 3gb to 4gb, will the other half a gig that cant be used by the os, instead be accessible by my graphics card? (256 meg dedicated, upto 1.5gig shared)?
Thanks, and so far this thread has been a good read.
Zig on November 25, 2008 1:52 AMSame here. I have 8gb of RAM in dual channel mode (1066), Intel CoreDuo 3.16ghz, etc. Just finished playing a racing game, and only had 30 mb free. Now it is 10 minutes later, and I opened Firefox, and TaskManager says I still only have 39 mb free, and 6292mb cached, with a total of 7166mb reported. Seems like it won't go down. Total paging file size for all drives is reported as 7466mb. This is running Vista x64 of course.
troubada on November 28, 2008 8:20 AMWell that was a great article, I didn't take the time to read all those reply's to it. It did answer my question though. I been using Vista on my home laptop for a few months now. It only had one GB of ram to start with so I assumed Vista was just that hungry for memory. After adding more and getting it up to 4GB's (3 for system and 1 for Video) I went in the task manager and to my horror I was staring at 7MBs or less of free Ram. I was still thinking on the old XP system memory usage.
I was like, well if its all full whats using it. I knew it had to be some free memory some where because all my programs were loading fast as hell and the computer was even cutting off faster. I just wanted to know why it was so full all the time. I tried killing processes and all kinds of stuff but it was always full! So then I hit up Google for the answer, and it led me here. Now I just feel silly, I was trying to unknowingly break the one thing that makes it run so well.
Thanks for answering that one for me
-Britton
Britton on December 8, 2008 4:24 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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