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And the guide specified that Cacheman be used rather than CachemanXP. Are their any performance differences between the two? And please feel free to post your opinions on which program I should use and why. Also any other performance enhancing program better than Cacheman(XP) .
WinXP Pro SP2 RC2
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe
XP3200+
1GB Samsung DDR
9600XT
120 GB SATA Seagate
The things you need to tweak in XP are your Services. Find Black Viper's list, tweak, and you'll find more performance increase than anything Cacheman could provide.
YARDofSTUF wrote:I say they are both useless in windows XP
XP manages memory very well.
Dear Yos,
I read this and although you put it up some time ago, do you still hold the same opinion? And what other advise would you give for 2007 regarding memory tweaking on XP SP2,
I read this and although you put it up some time ago, do you still hold the same opinion? And what other advise would you give for 2007 regarding memory tweaking on XP SP2,
Thanks for the support,
Best Regards,
Contact
Yup, same oninion. Best memory tweak, dont load tons of usless crap in the system tray.
Best to let xp manage memory, 3rd party memory tweakers for xp are unnecessary and often a burden because they too must use memory to work.
Most people don't really understand what memory and how xp manages it.
Here's a quick write up I did for a friend's kid who was tickled when his new 4 GB ram arrived for his gaming pc. (in my original effort to explain to him that the 4 GB won't get used by xp, he felt invalidated, so I clarified it all in an email to him)
Most people, including tech trained, don't really understand how a computer uses RAM and other types of memory. Yes, there are several types of memory.
A normal XP system can have a maximum of 4 GB of installed ram. However, by design, XP will never utilize and cannot utilize more than 3 GB of ram. This is by design, since no one will ever need more than 3 GB of ram in use at one time. Windows XP 64 bit edition can use 128 GB or ram, as can some server operating systems use terabytes of ram. The home or office workstation will never need more than 3 GB of ram, no software or games will ever require that much ram in XP.
XP won't even recognize if 4 GB of ram is installed, it will report anywhere from 2.5 GB to 3.5 GB of installed ram. This, apparently abberated, is by design (actual). This leads to the second type of memory a computer uses.
XP automatically sections off a part of the hard drive to be used exclusively as "virtual memory" called the "page file". The amount of virtual memory (page file) is automatically set at 1.5x the amount of installed ram. The size can be adjusted by the user via a XP advanced settings dialog.
keywords:
page - a fixed number of bytes recognized by the operating system.
address - A location of data, usually in main memory or on a disk. You can think of computer memory as an array of storage boxes, each of which is one byte in length. Each box has an address (a unique number) assigned to it. By specifying a memory address, programmers can access a particular byte of data.
address space - The set of all legal (allowed) addresses in memory for a given application. The address space represents the amount of memory available to a program.
When the computer is booted, essential operating system programs and files are loaded into ram. When a program is run, only the necessary parts of the program are loaded into physical ram, meaning only those parts of the program which are currently active. The rest of the program gets loaded into virtual memory (the page file). These parts of the program are stored in ram or on the disk in sections. Each section has an address.
For example, one loads a Word document and the text, window decorations, menus, etc. are loaded into ram, but all else (such as Word Help program) is loaded into virtual memory (page file). What you see on the screen is in ram, what you don't see is in the page file (virtual memory). When the user attempts to use a currently inactive part of the program, such as Help, the program "interupts" memory and the operating system reaches into virtual memory (page file) and "pulls" the Help program into physical ram, and puts other programs' components into virtual memory. This is called "swapping" or "paging".
The program tells the operating system, "I need the Help program located at address 4". This is known as the program generating what is called a "page fault". Because Help is not located in ram at address 4, the operating system looks to virtual memory for address 4. This all goes on invisibly and smoothly. A page fault is not a bad thing.
When the program's code (instructions) are corrupted/damaged or poorly designed, and the program generates a page fault, and "address 4" cannot be located by the operating system, you get what is knows as an "invalid page fault". I think everybody has seen an error message at one time or another: "xyz.dll caused an incvalid page fault at address 000xxxxxx."
How does this all apply to XP?
Now, by design in XP, the maximum amount of virtual memory (the page file) that can be used by any one program is 2 GB. Therefore, the maximum amount of physical ram that can be used by one program is 2 GB, this is so "paging/swapping" has the potential to "add up". Since 2 GB will never be needed by any single program of a home or business workstation, this is all fine and dandy.
Will installing 4 GB of ram improve the computer's performance? Yes, potentially.
Will the XP operating system ever use the full 4 GB ram? No, it cannot use it, by design.
Then what is the benefit of having 4 GB ram? An XP file can be edited that changes the "max use of the page file by one program" from 2 Gb to 3 GB. And since certain types of ram perform best when installed in "matched pairs", using 2 pairs of 1 GB ram modules will perform better than using 3 GB of ram (3 modules). Thus the performance increase is noticed "in speed of page faults", meaning the inactive parts of a program get loaded faster when the program requests them.
Caveats:
Since the page file (virtual memory) is located on the hard drive, then performance is also dependant upon the speed and qualities of the drive, despite having a lot of ram. XP will always use virtual memory. The user cannot instruct XP when and what is to be paged, or what is to be put in or out of virtual memory.
However, the user can turn off the page file completely and force XP not to use a page file at all. Doing so requires the computer have a lot of ram, at least 2 GB. The computer will perform just fine and invalid page faults will not be encountered, provided the user is not doing heavy multi-tasking, meaning the computer has enouh ram where ALL the programs' active and inactive components can be loaded.
When the page file is enabled, XP will "swap" data back and forth between the page file and ram, even if the computer has enough ram that a page file is not needed. The user cannot control this activity. This is visible by observing the led lights on the computer. There's usually a light that indicates hard drive activity. One will see this light blink from time to time even when one is not interacting with a program. Sometimes you can even hear the hard drive making noise when this occurs.
32bit or 64bit operating systems:
XP is a 32 bit operating system. A program instruction can address up to 4GB of memory, using its full 32 bits. (The 32nd exponent of 2 is exactly 4,294,967,296, or 4 GB.
Newer Intel and AMD processors have support far more than 32 bits (2 to the 64th power). Thus there exists 64bit versions of XP and other operating systems. A program installed on such an operating system can address much more than 4 GB, thus more ram can be installed and more ram can be used by the operating system. However, the program must be coded with 64bit support, and most software is coded only for 32bit support. Thus, it does not pay to use a 64 bit operating system because the only software that will utilize the potential performance increase are specialty software, such as server software, databases and certain software that is used to build new software.
What's the bottom line?
There's nothing wrong with having 4 GB ram. If anything, it's just nifty kewl to be able to say "I have 4 GB ram!"
Vista operating system is also limited to the same memory restrictions as XP, but future changes to Vista may include support for the full 4 GB ram.
tt
No one has any right to force data on you
and command you to believe it or else.
If it is not true for you, it isn't true. LRH
Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate the in depth laymans way of explaining things. However I notice a considerable difference in programme usage when I do not have Cacheman working, or if I uninstall it. Even when you boot, the little bar that shoots from right to left is much faster.
If I follow your advice above and unistall Cacheman XP, can you give me any advice that will make my PC faster or equal to when using the programme?
I have a pentium 4 running on sdramm -512 with a 18. GHz cpu. Win XP SP2- have all the usual, adaware, spyware, spybot etc.
Again, thank you for the support and the above which really opened up my thinking of this. I am totally happy I didn't buy more memory- its so expensive...
Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate the in depth laymans way of explaining things. However I notice a considerable difference in programme usage when I do not have Cacheman working, or if I uninstall it. Even when you boot, the little bar that shoots from right to left is much faster.
If I follow your advice above and unistall Cacheman XP, can you give me any advice that will make my PC faster or equal to when using the programme?
I have a pentium 4 running on sdramm -512 with a 18. GHz cpu. Win XP SP2- have all the usual, adaware, spyware, spybot etc.
Again, thank you for the support and the above which really opened up my thinking of this. I am totally happy I didn't buy more memory- its so expensive...
Best Regards,
Nico
1. It would benefit you you have at least 1 GB ram, XP will use it.
2. Disable unnecessary startup programs.
3. Disable unnecessary Services from starting at boot.
The above will increase your pc performance by at least 25% or better.
From the CachemanXP site:
RAM-Recovery
How does it work?
RAM-Recovery functionality is already included in Windows. You may ask yourself why there are so many programs that offer this feature. There is no magic behind this function. Inactive or crashed programs are simply moved from your physical memory (RAM) to a space on your Hard Drive called the Paging File (=Swap File).
If Windows does recover RAM already, why bother?
As an example imagine a computer with 1024 MBytes of RAM. After booting up you have 700 MBytes free RAM left. You launch several larger applications, work with them and free RAM goes constantly down. After hours there is only 50 MBytes of free memory left. Then you start loading a data file that needs 80 MBytes of RAM. Now the Windows RAM recovery feature becomes active, programs that have not been used for a longer time are moved out to the Paging File in order to make room for 80 MBytes of data. This process consumes both CPU time and causes disk activity - it creates a slow down. Preferably you would like to work with the data immediately, not wait until Windows makes room for it. Instead your cursor becomes a hourglass and you have to wait.
The "trick" in their sales pitch is this: "After hours there is only 50 MBytes of free memory left.". This is almost impossible in XP. The only real way that can occure is if every program crashes instead of cleanly closing and if every program contained code that caused it to leak memory, meaning to still consume memory even after it has been closed. And I know of no large programs that need that much ram, except for maybe CAD programs, and a CAD production compter that has only 1 GB ram is senseless.
The default XP Home install has 32 services starting and running at boot. Unless you are ona corporate lan with a domain server, you need only about half of those services to use the computer. Disabling them will free about 70-100 MB of ram at boot. 512 ram is the minimum to have XP running smooth & quick, even though MS says the minimum is far less.
And if your video uses "shared memory", meaning the video uses ram instead of its own memory chips, then that too will slow down the comp. Thus 1 GB is about optimum for XP.
No one has any right to force data on you
and command you to believe it or else.
If it is not true for you, it isn't true. LRH
[quote="TonyT"]
1. It would benefit you you have at least 1 GB ram, XP will use it.
2. Disable unnecessary startup programs.
3. Disable unnecessary Services from starting at boot.
The above will increase your pc performance by at least 25% or better.
Dear Tony,
Thank you very much for that. I have seen quite a lot of information even on speedguide concerning how to do point 2 and 3. Would you be so kind as to point me where I can get the most accurate information about this, and do you think it would be advisable to have the XP operating system on 10 GIGs as a C: drive and use D: for all other programmes. I will shop around in the meantime and find some more memory...
Contact wrote: and do you think it would be advisable to have the XP operating system on 10 GIGs as a C: drive and use D: for all other programmes. I will shop around in the meantime and find some more memory...
The only performance benefit from having programs on another partition is if it's a separate spindle...(meaning..another physical hard drive), and different from your pagefile.sys file (virtual memory file).
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Guinness for Strength!!!
YeOldeStonecat wrote:The only performance benefit from having programs on another partition is if it's a separate spindle...(meaning..another physical hard drive), and different from your pagefile.sys file (virtual memory file).
Thanks again, whew! saved a lot of work when I re-install the system. But you missed the little step by step guide on startup and currently running programmes... any links or information you could post for me?
I put the operating system and all programs on one partition, then I put my data files, music, video, personal & business stuff on a separate partition or separate drive. The My Documents folder can even be moved there.
Cacheman vs CachemanXP
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