How to have faster loading times ?

[Starforge]

That refers to virtual address space not the amount of physical RAM...

Aye, and....?

Still good to know when determining optimal physical RAM to place into the machine unless, of course, you have unlimited funds in which case disregard .

[bovi]

Each program won't get to spend more than 2GB, but different programs can use up to 2 GB each. So you still get an advantage with more than 2 GB physical RAM.

[Starforge]

Each program won't get to spend more than 2GB, but different programs can use up to 2 GB each. So you still get an advantage with more than 2 GB physical RAM.

Well, practically, it's highly unlikely that you'll be running 2 memory intensive apps at the same time when gaming. Again - if you have the money - spend it but there's really no need to plan for more than 1 intensive app at the same time on your gaming comp.

Not going to beat this one to death, just thought I'd offer up some input if people were trying to improve how EB runs by having them not spend excess cash on something that won't actually improve performance after a point. Certainly not telling anyone what to buy or how to spend their cash. If you want to plop 8GB in your box - feel free but it's not going to make EB run faster past around the first 2GB.

[bovi]

Since Windows' own processes easily uses 1GB, having 3 is still a good idea. 8 is overkill indeed .

[Morte66]

Since Windows' own processes easily uses 1GB

But doesn't the XP32 virtual memory scheme mostly page it out to disk after boot, leaving maybe 100-200MB in actual physical RAM? So going from 2GB to 3 or 4GB installed RAM might get your one big application from 1.8GB to 2GB in practice.

Unless you have a 64 bit OS and a program written to actually use it, a single application won't go over 2GB. In the next couple of years, I think this mostly matters to people using Adobe Photoshop on a professional level.

And unless you run two big applications at once (probably on a multi-core), say a hefty game and a high definition video encoder each wanting 1.3GB, there's not much point to having more then 2GB installed RAM on an XP32 PC.

[bovi]

XP will page out stuff it considers that it doesn't need at the moment, including the memory taken by applications, probably defined by the data accessed the least recently being flushed out. You can especially see this in large java applications you leave open when you leave the computer for a while, they will be grey for a long time while everything it needs is paged back in (grey screen of undeath).

The amount of memory being paged is affected by the amount of RAM you have available. For instance, using Memtest, you can see that when you use up all the RAM you have available, a small amount will become available again as more is paged out. In fact, to test the biggest part possible of the RAM you may have to overcommit, so that everything else is paged out, then stop and quickly use only the available RAM.

Ergo, having more than 2GB of RAM will make sure that any application or game that actually wants that much (RTW doesn't) does not have to page out the memory it may be needing at some time => better performance. I'd like an option to tell Windows not to page stuff out until more memory is asked for and not available, if anyone knows...

[Tellos Athenaios]

Okay .

We can all agree that 2GB of RAM would work wonders, especially with the latest types of OS. 3GB might be even better; but with RTW, or M2TW for that matter, it's highly unlikely you'll ever need it if you use the program conservatively. (That is, you just play and don't mod it extensively - in a modder's case you may want to run both the game and other applications at the same time which is seriously demanding.)

Also, if you just have been doing something demanding in terms of RAM, you may want to spend a while on the Internet (just load up the explorer - don't start actually browsing the web or something). By starting up a new, light program, you tell your OS to get rid of all the junk previously stored in the RAM - without putting as much/more different junk there. Hence, nearly all of your RAM will be available immediately to your demanding application; which will decrease start-up time.

Now you may wonder what other programs can be so demanding in terms of RAM that you have to do this. Well, there's all kinds of Office for example. Copy/paste a lot, and behold the custom lag you can create!

[Starforge]

I'd like an option to tell Windows not to page stuff out until more memory is asked for and not available, if anyone knows...

Windows and garbage collection - you would think they would have figured out how to clean it up after all these years. OS/2, Novell, Linux all do / did a better job of it but /shrug. Maybe someday (though MS still blames the apps I'm sure.)

Edit - sorry just woke up and no coffee - I addressed something you weren't really saying. I don't know of any apps that will force it to keep things in memory.

We can all agree that 2GB of RAM would work wonders, especially with the latest types of OS. 3GB might be even better;

I plopped 4GB in mine for overkill and a quad which pretty much nothing is going to use for a while anyhow. Made me feel good though