Any reason for the average [H] joe to get 6GB over 2GB of RAM in Winows XP pro 64bit.

I've got 2GB (2x1GB) of PC6400 RAM.

Newegg has a deal right now for 4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 = 80$ after rebate.

I have a decent computer, cheapo motherboard ECS 6100SM-M, BE-2400 processor (amd x2-4400 energy efficient equivalent), 7800GTX (nothing stellar) I do mostly gaming on my system and some video editing (windows movie maker using my home camcorder). The RAM price is sooooo cheap it's hard not to take note. Would there be any real benefit outside of a couple benchmarks for 6GB of RAM in XP pro 64 bit?

I can see the use in Vista...but XP pro?

Convince me not to buy it...I'm wanting to - but probably know better - XP's never really needed much more than 2GB in my mind.

is 2gig too little for you?

if yes get it, if no don't

If you've got the money to spare, go for it.

One thing you could do with that RAM - and this is extreme performance here, folks, and not many people aside from myself would ever do it (and I do it whenever I get the chance <hint, hint> hehehe), but...

With 6GB of RAM in an XP x64 box you could do this:

Get SuperCache II from www.superspeed.com. It's a piece of software that allows you to cache entire volumes or just directories in RAM (see where this is leading?) to allow for superfast system performance, hence SuperSpeed.

With that 6GB of RAM, SuperCache II and a cache size of 4GB that holds your entire Windows directory, your system performance would fuckin' skyrocket through the stratosphere.

Literally.

The data on the cache would be accessed first before it would be accessed on the hard drive, i.e. Windows would be running itself literally off the RAM drive - this is the dream performance of all serious [H]ardCore people looking to get the absolute maximum performance from their hardware.

Of course, using a UPS for battery backup protection as well as enabling the disk write function of SuperCache II is essential, but once it's set up properly, your system would SCREAM LIKE YOU NEVER DREAMED IT COULD.

Imagine that: an OS cached in RAM.

It's possible, and you're only $80 away from it plus the cost of SuperCache II.

Grab the RAM, grab a trial copy of SuperCache II for 30 days, mess around with it, and get ready to get blown away.

'Nuff typed.

ps
If you have to ask if you "need" 6GB of RAM, you ain't so [H]ard, man. Just kidding... I'd say buy it just because it's available at that price which is fantastically low. Go for it.

my windows directory on XP Pro 64 bit is 5.65GB with all patches and nothing more. It's a fresh install as of a week ago.

6GB wouldn't quite be enough - but that's a great idea!

Can you use this prog to cache a game into ram too or only the OS?

milkweg said:

Can you use this prog to cache a game into ram too or only the OS?

Click to expand...

Talk about quick load times lol. There was a RAM drive made that I think booted windows XP in like 2 or 3 seconds.

bbz_Ghost said:

If you've got the money to spare, go for it.

One thing you could do with that RAM - and this is extreme performance here, folks, and not many people aside from myself would ever do it (and I do it whenever I get the chance <hint, hint> hehehe), but...

With 6GB of RAM in an XP x64 box you could do this:

Get SuperCache II from www.superspeed.com. It's a piece of software that allows you to cache entire volumes or just directories in RAM (see where this is leading?) to allow for superfast system performance, hence SuperSpeed.

With that 6GB of RAM, SuperCache II and a cache size of 4GB that holds your entire Windows directory, your system performance would fuckin' skyrocket through the stratosphere.

Literally.

The data on the cache would be accessed first before it would be accessed on the hard drive, i.e. Windows would be running itself literally off the RAM drive - this is the dream performance of all serious [H]ardCore people looking to get the absolute maximum performance from their hardware.

Of course, using a UPS for battery backup protection as well as enabling the disk write function of SuperCache II is essential, but once it's set up properly, your system would SCREAM LIKE YOU NEVER DREAMED IT COULD.

Imagine that: an OS cached in RAM.

It's possible, and you're only $80 away from it plus the cost of SuperCache II.

Grab the RAM, grab a trial copy of SuperCache II for 30 days, mess around with it, and get ready to get blown away.

'Nuff typed.

ps
If you have to ask if you "need" 6GB of RAM, you ain't so [H]ard, man. Just kidding... I'd say buy it just because it's available at that price which is fantastically low. Go for it.

Click to expand...

this is the single biggest plant I've ever seen.

I'm not really willing to type out something that long, and it is true XP is designed for 256mb/512mb systems, but do you think the engineers behind this program are smarter then the army behind windows? I'm sure windows stock settings could take better advantage of all that L3.

And you'd be wrong.

If you think XP/XP x64 is "designed" to work best with 256/512MB RAM amounts the "best" then you are obviously missing something someplace. As for whether it can do a better job, in XP, definitely. XP x64 is NOT WINDOWS XP - it's actually Windows Server 2003 with an XP "theme" on it to look like XP Pro, but it's NOT WINDOWS XP PRO either.

It's based on the core code of Windows Server 2003, and as such is a much higher performance OS than XP Home or Pro could ever hope to be. It does manage memory better than XP Home/Pro does, however, but even so Microsoft's system cache code could stand a bit of help.

As for me or that post being a plant, that's your opinion. I can back up my statements with facts and hard evidence based on using such products and tweaking systems for the absolute maximum performance for decades. Most people around here have no clue just how fast their "hellamegamonster" PCs can actually go these days. The limitation is the physical hard drive, and even Raptors or U320 SCSI drives can only go so far - RAM is hundreds if not thousands of times faster, and if you've got a ton of it, there's no reason not to put it to use.

Note none of this information has anything to do with Vista, which is basically where Microsoft finally got their shit straight with the RAM caching in Windows - it's called SuperPrefetch and it works as advertised. Think of Vista as XP x64 with SuperCache II built in because after about 2-3 weeks of daily use, Vista turns out to basically work exactly the same, with even more benefits.

It's your loss if you choose not to max out the performance of your hardware, not mine. I could work on anyone's PC here at this forum and in 20 mins or less they'd get 20-30% higher benchmarks across the board. I've been doing that for over 14 years so far, haven't failed yet.

only one word! pwnzor! lol, hell yeah man i would get that and more!.. if i had the money for it. I'm just running on 512mb. More power to you for getting that, it's also bragging rights dude. I would just get it to show off, tell my buddies what 2gb of ram! you looser i got 6gb PWNED!

bbz_ghost: Did you try it? Is it really that fast? Can you post benchmarks?
If this actually works, then on hdtune the average read/write speeds should be 6000MB/s instead of 60. That's 100X faster

i can see the propensity for massive data loss with caching the entire OS and such into RAM.....

nobody_here:

SuperCache II sets up a "virtual RAID 1" in some respects: the data that is written to the cache in RAM is also written to the hard drive at nearly the same time in write operations - it's when you READ DATA that the benefits become so apparent because Windows will READ from the cache before it reads from the physical hard drive. It takes what, a few nanoseconds to look at a RAM cache and say "Hey, is the data I want here?" and if not, then the request is handed off to the hard drive. The cache check happens so fast you'd never even notice it except when the request needs to be filled from the physical hard drive. This stuff is really simply when you actually spend time learning about it, folks.

As long as that machine is on a UPS, realistically you're in no danger of any serious data loss aside from whatever you'd lose if Windows went down with a BSOD or some other error. The SuperCache is set up from data that already exists on the hard drive when you boot the computer and from that point on read requests would hit the RAM cache first and the actual reads would be done from the RAM cache also. No physical hard drive system on earth will match the read speeds you can achieve with such a setup.

Abu Som3a:

HDTune wouldn't show any difference because it tests physical hard drives, not RAMdisks or RAM caches. Don't be silly.

Hmm, so basicly, if you have supercache holding your entire operating system, with a disk backup, you can't really restart windows often?

No, I didn't say that either and I can't figure out how you might imply such a thing.

You can reboot as much as you want, but each time you do, once the SuperCache is created it needs to be populated, that means filled up with a copy of what's already on the volume you're caching - the system drive - so it takes time, meaning the boot speed takes a hit before you're able to actually use the PC.

In this day and age, there's no really logical reason to turn a PC off or even shut down when you're not using it. Use Sleep/Standby and it'll be up and running when you move the mouse or press a key. If you must shut down, use Hibernate which is typically faster on most machines - however with 8GB of RAM that means giving up 8GB of drive space and since the Hibernate file resides only on the system partition, that would really screw up the caching.

bbz_Ghost said:

No, I didn't say that either and I can't figure out how you might imply such a thing.

You can reboot as much as you want, but each time you do, once the SuperCache is created it needs to be populated, that means filled up with a copy of what's already on the volume you're caching - the system drive - so it takes time, meaning the boot speed takes a hit before you're able to actually use the PC.

In this day and age, there's no really logical reason to turn a PC off or even shut down when you're not using it. Use Sleep/Standby and it'll be up and running when you move the mouse or press a key. If you must shut down, use Hibernate which is typically faster on most machines - however with 8GB of RAM that means giving up 8GB of drive space and since the Hibernate file resides only on the system partition, that would really screw up the caching.

Click to expand...

As a PC technician for the last four years...I think what you are saying is interesting.

I would argue against one point. I think it funny that you say there is no reason to shut down windows in today's day and age. We are working with windows OS here. Windows XP likes to be shutdown after patches, upgrades, updates, program installs - you name it.

A computer that has been running for two weeks, heck even three days, of using hibernation at night begins to slow down dramatically. As a help desk technichian I get a call every so often where someone says their computer is just running horribly slowly and getting slower all the time. I'll troubleshoot for a while and not be able to find the problem. I'll ask them when the last time they've shut down is, they'll not remember. I'll have them shut down their PC and upon reboot it's fine. This is equally true with people who use hibernation. Even if the OS isn't the major problem, the diferrent applications people use can cause issues. Memory leaks - etc. Windows needs to be shut-down fairly regularly as a maintenance step in my opinion.

bbz_Ghost said:

And you'd be wrong.

If you think XP/XP x64 is "designed" to work best with 256/512MB RAM amounts the "best" then you are obviously missing something someplace. As for whether it can do a better job, in XP, definitely. XP x64 is NOT WINDOWS XP - it's actually Windows Server 2003 with an XP "theme" on it to look like XP Pro, but it's NOT WINDOWS XP PRO either.

It's based on the core code of Windows Server 2003, and as such is a much higher performance OS than XP Home or Pro could ever hope to be. It does manage memory better than XP Home/Pro does, however, but even so Microsoft's system cache code could stand a bit of help.

As for me or that post being a plant, that's your opinion. I can back up my statements with facts and hard evidence based on using such products and tweaking systems for the absolute maximum performance for decades. Most people around here have no clue just how fast their "hellamegamonster" PCs can actually go these days. The limitation is the physical hard drive, and even Raptors or U320 SCSI drives can only go so far - RAM is hundreds if not thousands of times faster, and if you've got a ton of it, there's no reason not to put it to use.

Note none of this information has anything to do with Vista, which is basically where Microsoft finally got their shit straight with the RAM caching in Windows - it's called SuperPrefetch and it works as advertised. Think of Vista as XP x64 with SuperCache II built in because after about 2-3 weeks of daily use, Vista turns out to basically work exactly the same, with even more benefits.

It's your loss if you choose not to max out the performance of your hardware, not mine. I could work on anyone's PC here at this forum and in 20 mins or less they'd get 20-30% higher benchmarks across the board. I've been doing that for over 14 years so far, haven't failed yet.

Click to expand...

You mean RAM's latency is thousands of times better or more. That I can agree with for sure. If you're talking about raw bandwidth, that is not true. It is in the general case a bit more than an order of magnitude (between 10-30) times better.

Archaea said:

As a PC technician for the last four years...I think what you are saying is interesting.

I would argue against one point. I think it funny that you say there is no reason to shut down windows in today's day and age. We are working with windows OS here. Windows XP likes to be shutdown after patches, upgrades, updates, program installs - you name it.

Click to expand...

You're talking about a warm boot, aka reboot - I was talking about a shutdown which is entirely different. A shutdown, as I meant it to be understood, is when people turn their computers off nowadays, which is simply illogical considering how much power Sleep/Standby mode consumes (a few pennies a month at best) and the fact that the PC is back up to a running state in seconds and not minutes for most hardware/consumer/OEM branded machines. Shutdown is one thing, reboot is another; big difference between the two.

Archaea said:

A computer that has been running for two weeks, heck even three days, of using hibernation at night begins to slow down dramatically. As a help desk technichian I get a call every so often where someone says their computer is just running horribly slowly and getting slower all the time. I'll troubleshoot for a while and not be able to find the problem. I'll ask them when the last time they've shut down is, they'll not remember. I'll have them shut down their PC and upon reboot it's fine. This is equally true with people who use hibernation. Even if the OS isn't the major problem, the diferrent applications people use can cause issues. Memory leaks - etc. Windows needs to be shut-down fairly regularly as a maintenance step in my opinion.

Click to expand...

I'd disagree, what with me being a computer technician for the past 34 years.

But that's me, I'm not Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, I just fix the problems he has and make a living from it. I don't have the issues that Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, has. I'm the guy that Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, calls upon when he has those problems and then I get the opportunity to make his machine work better than it did when he opened the box and plugged it in the first time because the OEM and typical factory installations are designed for compatibility and not performance or stability.

But that's just me.

I'm not saying Windows is perfect, far from it. But Windows, the operating system itself, typically can run for incredibly long periods of time all by itself. It's when you add third-party software into the mix that the problems happen. That's partially Microsoft's fault and I'll be happy to admit that. The closed-source nature of Windows prevents ANYONE from ever seeing all the necessary source code for Windows to be able to write an application of any kind and get it 100% perfect. Hell, even Microsoft itself can't do that because some parts of the coding and development programs inside the company still can't get 100% access to the entire source - so even Microsoft's own software like Office and the like aren't 100% reliable. That's simply a fact of life.

But Windows itself will run for a long time in my experience. I had a Windows 98SE laptop (a P166 with 32MB of RAM) that ran 98SE daily for 11 months without issues. I used it daily for basic stuff, word processing, email checking, some image processing, etc. 11 months uptime on a 98SE laptop - and there was a Knowledge Base article that said 98SE would die after 96 days because of a bug in it. Never caused a problem for me.

I can go weeks at a time with XP Pro, XP Pro x64, or 2K3, without issues like Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, has. But, that's just me.

And this thread has gone way </off_topic> sooo...

Bah 11 months uptime no biggie, now having a laptop battery that lasts 11 months is something!

Did you have your laptop plugged to power on a desk for 11 months or did you perhaps move it around also? If so, did the lappy ever go to sleep or get drained from battery? Inquiring minds wants to know.

bbz_Ghost said:

I can go weeks at a time with XP Pro, XP Pro x64, or 2K3, without issues like Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, has. But, that's just me.

Click to expand...

A public internet place removed deepfreeze from its computers. Within a few days the computers became infested with viruses/adware and a reformat was inevitable.

HDTune wouldn't show any difference because it tests physical hard drives, not RAMdisks or RAM caches. Don't be silly.

Click to expand...

I thought the program emulates the HDD.
Anyways, this should prove as a great alternative for SSD. The gigabyte iRAM uses a similar idea but is limited with interface bandwidth.
But did you really test it or are you just talking off your ass?

Funny I've always wondered where people get all these viruses and adware. I haven't seen a single instance for 3 years now.

This is what I have been looking for for months.
Guys over at MSFN.ORG said that similar functionality only Vista has.

ps. I allocated 256MB of 1024MB of RAM for cache. But when I would lunch a game and the game would need more than 768MB RAM would it then use the 256MB that is cached or would it start hitting PageFile?

I can't see how that program would make any difference to a normal user. How often do you read from your \Windows directory other than on boot? The system shouldn't have to re-read files it already has resident.

If you put the "program files" directory in this virtual raid thing, I could see it being useful, but I have 6 programs that take up 4+ gigs each on their own.

Whichev. OP, if you need 6 gigs, do it. If not? don't.

Abu Som3a said:

A public internet place removed deepfreeze from its computers. Within a few days the computers became infested with viruses/adware and a reformat was inevitable.

I thought the program emulates the HDD.
Anyways, this should prove as a great alternative for SSD. The gigabyte iRAM uses a similar idea but is limited with interface bandwidth.
But did you really test it or are you just talking off your ass?

Click to expand...

I test everything just because I can. Being retired from "the real world" affords me a lot of free time, and since computers were my career, this stuff is a breeze.

The program does not emulate a HDD - that would be a RAMdisk application, and SuperSpeed has that too: RAMDiskPlus. But SuperCache II isn't a RAMdisk; there are significant differences between the two, the most visible one being a cache doesn't get assigned a drive letter whereas a RAMdisk will. HDTune, HDTach, etc, none of them will "see" a RAMdisk because they're designed for testing physical hard drives, not "virtual" ones created by the RAMdisk software.

You're correct about the Gigabyte iRAM: great idea, shitty implementation. Taking all that RAM and still leashing it to the PCI bus speeds as though it were an ATA/SATA drive. How stupid is that...

As for the public Internet place, they don't know what they're doing 99.9% of the time anyway and simply by preconfigured hardware. Removing DeepFreeze was a dumber idea than actually trying to make money off a public Internet place anymore.

Ahaa.. now bbz_ghost is starting to make sense. Since he's retired and has all the time in the world in his hands to tinker about, he thinks everyone else has the same luxury (when it comes to wasting time with Vista oddities).

Sadly, this is not the case.