Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

I'm looking for recommendations about how to best optimize my computer. Specifically, I want to increase the amount of physical memory my machine actually uses. When multitasking, my CPU usage is regularly at 100%, yet over three days of heavy use my peak commit charge is only 628,128 out of 4.5 million KB. My current setup is this:

Windows XP Professional
AMD 64 3200 CPU
1.5 GB of PC3200 RAM
10,000 RPM SATA HDD(OS is on this)
7,200 RPM SATA HDD
7,200 RPM IDE HDD (3GB Pagefile is on this)

I guess my questions are: should I reduce, move, or eliminate my pagefile since none of it needs to be used? Does anyone have any other suggestions to increase windows physical memory usage and reduce CPU dependance?

Most people on these boards seem to recommend at least 1GB of memory for people getting new machines, but despite my best efforts I cannot use that much. All input would be appreciated.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Most people on these boards seem to recommend at least 1GB of memory for people getting new machines, but despite my best efforts I cannot use that much.

[/ QUOTE ]

most users can't. "buy as much memory as you can afford" has been around since the stone ages, but 512MB is enough for most people. 1GB is enough for multitabling/multitasking/browsing/etc. people also push cpu speed over all, but hard drives have a more meaningful impact on more modern setups. i would rather have a 2.4ghz cpu and a raptor than a 2.8ghz cpu and a 7200rpm 2mb d740x.

as for the page file, i have run 1GB without one for years. feel free to disable it and see how it goes.

for more enlightened discussions on these matters, see the forums at www.storagereview.com. posts by the user named 'cas' are particularly good.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

I found this article useful on page files:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

"i would rather have a 2.4ghz cpu and a raptor than a 2.8ghz cpu and a 7200rpm 2mb d740x . "

I'm shopping for a new tower. So, some terms are unknown to me. I'm guessing that the response time with a slower chip is lower with a better HD(raptor brandname?)

For PT, PV, 8- tables and gaming(Wife's RollercoasterTycoon), what is the best HD(and chip for that matter) whatever the price? Also, what will get the job done for my needs?

Thanks for anyone's help. I'm a little dim when it comes to computers, so try to be gentle and use small words.

MS Sunshine

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

the maxtor diamondmax 10 series is tops right now in terms of holistic bang for the buck: speed, size, acoustics. the western digital raptor wd740gd is faster, but it tops out at 74gb and commands a much higher price per gigabyte. most power users should still be pleased with the dm10, that's what i would recommend for you.

www.zipzoomfly.com is a great vendor for hard drives, they pack them better than most and that means a lot in terms of reliability. prices are also reasonable to good on most other things and 2-day shipping is priced in. brutish packing/shipping can often result in doa drives, or at least drives with shorter lifespans. www.newegg.com is widely regarded as the top general vendor for computer stuff.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm looking for recommendations about how to best optimize my computer. Specifically, I want to increase the amount of physical memory my machine actually uses. When multitasking, my CPU usage is regularly at 100%, yet over three days of heavy use my peak commit charge is only 628,128 out of 4.5 million KB. My current setup is this:

Windows XP Professional
AMD 64 3200 CPU
1.5 GB of PC3200 RAM
10,000 RPM SATA HDD(OS is on this)
7,200 RPM SATA HDD
7,200 RPM IDE HDD (3GB Pagefile is on this)

I guess my questions are: should I reduce, move, or eliminate my pagefile since none of it needs to be used? Does anyone have any other suggestions to increase windows physical memory usage and reduce CPU dependance?

Most people on these boards seem to recommend at least 1GB of memory for people getting new machines, but despite my best efforts I cannot use that much. All input would be appreciated.

[/ QUOTE ]

To me, it seems like you have plenty of fire-power with your PC. if your PC is at 100% CPU use all the time, I think you may have some malicious virsu/adware.

SamJack

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
To me, it seems like you have plenty of fire-power with your PC. if your PC is at 100% CPU use all the time, I think you may have some malicious virsu/adware.

SamJack

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm 99% sure that's not it. I keep a pretty tidy machine.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

Then what programs are you running that are giving you 100% cpu utilisation?

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Specifically, I want to increase the amount of physical memory my machine actually uses.

[/ QUOTE ]

You'd be hard pressed to tell your box to use more memory. You might try setting your system up for "background tasks" but trying to tweak how Windows uses memory is just asking for trouble.

[ QUOTE ]
I guess my questions are: should I reduce, move, or eliminate my pagefile since none of it needs to be used?

[/ QUOTE ]

NO! Do not remove your pagefile. This is not simply used as "slow memory" as some people think.

[ QUOTE ]
Does anyone have any other suggestions to increase windows physical memory usage and reduce CPU dependance?

[/ QUOTE ]

RAM and CPU are pretty much mutually exclusive. One is storage and one is power. However, if your box is at 100%, you might also need to look at other possible problems. Make sure you don't have any spy-ware on your box. Use Windows task manager to check out apps that are using a lot of resources. What does your load look like when nothing is running?

[ QUOTE ]
Most people on these boards seem to recommend at least 1GB of memory for people getting new machines, but despite my best efforts I cannot use that much. All input would be appreciated.

[/ QUOTE ]

A gig of RAM is just nice to have. As other posters have said, 512MB is more than enough. But more importantly, I don't understand why you believe that using all of your RAM is critical. I have 1GB of RAM in my box and barely ever use it all (except for playing something system intensive like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3).

Don't worry about it, and be happy your box isn't swapping like the dickens. If you really feel that strongly about it, drop it down to 512MB and send me the gig you have left over [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Then what programs are you running that are giving you 100% cpu utilisation?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm usually running at least 5 of the following:

Pokertracker (updating every 2 minutes)
iTunes
Between 5 and 20 windows of poker
DVD applications (either ripping, encoding, writing, or watching)
WinTV
Firefox
Thunderbird
AIM
Word
File transfer clients (usually about 25 transfers)

Also, I have 3 monitors running and I believe some extra CPU performance goes toward managing my displays.

[ QUOTE ]
What does your load look like when nothing is running?

[/ QUOTE ]

0% CPU usage, about 250 of 1500MB physical RAM used.

[ QUOTE ]
But more importantly, I don't understand why you believe that using all of your RAM is critical.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not critical, but if I can use more of it to improve performance, I'd like to. If the consensus is that my setup is optimal or close to optimal, so be it.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

Do you know what "socket" type you've got? Since you've got an Athlon64, you have either a 939 or 754. If it's a 939, you're in luck...dual core Athlon64's should be out before the end of the year. That would definitely be an upgrade worth considering. With dual cores, you'll essentially be getting 2 CPUs on one physical chip, which means MUCH better multi-tasking ability.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Do you know what "socket" type you've got? Since you've got an Athlon64, you have either a 939 or 754. If it's a 939, you're in luck...dual core Athlon64's should be out before the end of the year. That would definitely be an upgrade worth considering. With dual cores, you'll essentially be getting 2 CPUs on one physical chip, which means MUCH better multi-tasking ability.

[/ QUOTE ]

754. I've read about this, but I don't think I'll be upgrading to 939 for a year or two. The price compared to the performace increase doesn't look like it will be worth it to me in the near future. Probably when Windows 64 gets up and running I'll go with that chip.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

http://www.antec.com/images/400/Sona...view_final.jpg

This is my recommendation for a case. I own it, it has tons of exhaust fans, and it is so quiet.

Antec Sonata

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm usually running at least 5 of the following:

Pokertracker (updating every 2 minutes)
iTunes
Between 5 and 20 windows of poker
DVD applications (either ripping, encoding, writing, or watching)
WinTV
Firefox
Thunderbird
AIM
Word
File transfer clients (usually about 25 transfers)

[/ QUOTE ]

And you wonder why your box is pegged?

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm usually running at least 5 of the following:

Pokertracker (updating every 2 minutes)
iTunes
Between 5 and 20 windows of poker
DVD applications (either ripping, encoding, writing, or watching)
WinTV
Firefox
Thunderbird
AIM
Word
File transfer clients (usually about 25 transfers)

[/ QUOTE ]

And you wonder why your box is pegged?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. I wondered if I could use more of my memory to improve performance.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

Almost certainly not.

From that list of applications i would suspect you are disk and cpu bound. The dvd ripping is probably doing the most damage on both counts.

Basically it's like this. Historically there has always been a major bottleneck somewhere on your pc, caused by a drastic mismatch in relative throughput speeds between different components. This used to be the network card in the days of dialup connections, now it's the disk drive which really hasn't increased that much in speed in the last few years, (cpu has typically gone up by a factor of 10 in the same time), and the backplane of the computer - unless you've got a 64 bit PCI bus - and even then.

To speed things up for that kind of application mix, the best thing would be to get fast SCSI disks, since you have the 64 bit computer - they're not that cheap though.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Then what programs are you running that are giving you 100% cpu utilisation?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm usually running at least 5 of the following:

Pokertracker (updating every 2 minutes)
iTunes
Between 5 and 20 windows of poker
DVD applications (either ripping, encoding, writing, or watching)
WinTV
Firefox
Thunderbird
AIM
Word
File transfer clients (usually about 25 transfers)


[/ QUOTE ]

I would suggest a dedicated machine for file transfer and DVD/MP3 ripping. Your CPU will thank you for it.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
A gig of RAM is just nice to have. As other posters have said, 512MB is more than enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not a technical guru, but I thought I'd mention this anyway. In my experiece, the extra RAM does help if you use pokertracker. I was having problems during certain PT operations (particularly compacting/backing up the database) where the RAM was getting all used up. This hadn't happened until recently and was probably because my database is getting pretty large, probably close to needing to start a second one. I recently added another 512 of RAM (had 768 before that), and it's helped quite a bit.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
A gig of RAM is just nice to have. As other posters have said, 512MB is more than enough. But more importantly, I don't understand why you believe that using all of your RAM is critical. I have 1GB of RAM in my box and barely ever use it all (except for playing something system intensive like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3).

Don't worry about it, and be happy your box isn't swapping like the dickens. If you really feel that strongly about it, drop it down to 512MB and send me the gig you have left over [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

My guess is that he's hearing his hard drive grinding all the time and wants to hear less of that, so he's wondering if some of the constant write to disk could be cut back.

I've noticed that my computer can seem to grind its HD like crazy too when I'm playing 8 tables and importing from them on Pokertracker.

I've solved this problem in a few small steps.

First, I put pokertracker on a separate disk, so I can do disk intensive things without writing on the same disk so often, and often getting laggy results because of it.

Second, I time my pokertracker imports. I will generally have imports at around 15 minutes per site, and if the imports are timed close together, it can sound like constant disk grinding and lead to big slowdowns and even delays and disconnects from the tables. Making one site auto-import at minute 7 and one at minute 15 takes care of that.

Add ons can slow things down, too. Gametime was getting a little notoriety when it first came out because of that problem. Now I restart gametime after a few hours.

Finally, the Party skins put hand histories on your hard disk, and the more hand histories and tables there are, the more imports and database collating can slow down as pokertracker churns through more and more data. Deleting or moving handhistories from tables you have left or from previous periods of time can help keep imports quicker and result in much less HD grinding.

A little note on games, just from my personal experience -- I used to be a big time RTS game and MMORPG game player, and found that 512 seemed to be a minimum for good gameplay in varied situations -- both these types of games are constantly reading and writing to disks as many factors in their game "worlds" are constantly changing and being recorded, and memory is very quickly filled. It's often not enough, and I've noticed in multiple games a significant benefit to going up to at least 768 of RAM, and often but not always a notable difference between 768 RAM and a full gig of RAM. Depending on the games you play, your mileage my vary.

For multi-taskers like me, there are often web pages and other things up no matter what you're doing, so I'd strongly recommend a gig of RAM to almost anyone at this point.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm usually running at least 5 of the following:

Pokertracker (updating every 2 minutes)
iTunes
Between 5 and 20 windows of poker
DVD applications (either ripping, encoding, writing, or watching)
WinTV
Firefox
Thunderbird
AIM
Word
File transfer clients (usually about 25 transfers)

[/ QUOTE ]

And you wonder why your box is pegged?

[/ QUOTE ]

That kinda blew me away too.

The DVD ripping etc is already pretty crazy, but importing into Pokertracker every 2 minutes is also clearly going to be a strain.

If I were playing 20 tables, I'd be doing it on at least two computers, preferably three.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

I appreciate the input from anyone.

As far as multitasking, I have everything pretty evenly distributed, with each of my hard drives sharing the burden (7 partitions across 3 drives). The bottleneck is most certainly coming from my CPU, which clearly resents my ambitions to multitask.

My desire is to utilize more memory to compensate for this, but it doesn't seem like this can be done. Also, I should point out that I really don't have much (usually not any) overall slowdown; it's just that continually seeing my CPU usage at 100% with memory usage below 50% bothers me.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

hit ctrl-shift-esc, click 'processes', then click 'cpu' twice to sort by cpu utilization and you can see exactly what is using what % of your cpu

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

You're talking about this like you've done a lot regarding your disk usage, when you've done virtually nothing. Putting the pagefile on your slowest disk is error #1. Not even entertaining a software raid is error #2. If you've got cash enough to splurge on 1.5GB of ram, then you've got more than enough to splurge on a couple or preferrably 3 or more 10k RPM sata disks. I seriously doubt your CPU is the bottleneck here, I think I/O definitely is.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

no. if it says his CPU is at 100% then it's his CPU.

I run ATA133 disks since I'm too cheap to get the new Serial-ATA [censored]. Now then, at my speed buffered disk reads happen at something like 30MB/sec (this is assuming UDMA is enabled, which is a given in Windows). W/ serial ATA, the speed would be considerable greater. There's no way he's reading or writing to disk at greater than 50MB/sec.

Now what about RAM. Well first off he's got 1.5 gig of the stuff so capacity isn't a problem. He's most likely running PC3200 so there's no particular bandwidth problem. One possibility (and I haven't checked this out) is that since he's running 1.5GB instead of 1.0GB he's not taking advantage of the dual channel capabilities of his motherboard. --> check your motherboard. Are there different colored slots? If so, make sure their filled up in pairs. That is to say, make sure only the blue slots are filled...next the black. I'm guessing you've got 2 blue filled and one black - this might be causing a memory bottleneck. However, this alone isn't enough to cause the problems you're seeing.

Realistically, the problem is the CPU. DVD ripping is seriously CPU intensive. So are database applications (one of which is PokerTracker). There are also a number of "cruncing" apps that you had listed. Unless you're running quad Xeons, you're going to be bottlenecked.

But...you've got a nice box so you just need to stop hammering it so hard. Or get about $50k together and we'll solve your problems with a Sun E420.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
You're talking about this like you've done a lot regarding your disk usage, when you've done virtually nothing. Putting the pagefile on your slowest disk is error #1. Not even entertaining a software raid is error #2. If you've got cash enough to splurge on 1.5GB of ram, then you've got more than enough to splurge on a couple or preferrably 3 or more 10k RPM sata disks. I seriously doubt your CPU is the bottleneck here, I think I/O definitely is.

[/ QUOTE ]

1. I put the pagefile on the disk that otherwise has the least activity. My two other drives are used significantly more. A lot of the time, the only thing active on my IDE drive is the pagefile.

2. I've never heard the term "software raid" before. I am only familiar with RAID 0,1, and 0+1. Enlighten me, please.

I would also like to reiterate that my CPU is at 100% usage in the instances I'm speaking of. How is that not my bottleneck?

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've never heard the term "software raid" before. I am only familiar with RAID 0,1, and 0+1. Enlighten me, please.

[/ QUOTE ]

Software RAID is basically RAID 0. However, this won't do anything for I/O.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

Good thought about the motherboard; that hadn't crossed my mind. Unfortunately, that's not it. Though I'm not terribly familiar with dual channels, my mobo only has 3 RAM slots, all monotone, and I don't recall anything about dual channel in any literature I've read.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've never heard the term "software raid" before. I am only familiar with RAID 0,1, and 0+1. Enlighten me, please.

[/ QUOTE ]

Software RAID is basically RAID 0. However, this won't do anything for I/O.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was under the impression that software RAID has the CPU offloads the all the computations needed for raid on the CPU instead of it's own dedicated chip. Sort of like comparing software vs hardware modems.

Plus in terms of speed, RAID gives a performance boost of at most 10-15%, and that's for server related applications. For the general user they will not see much of a difference.

Like fluxrad said, do not remove your pagefile.

Like others said, DVD ripping / encoding will basically slow your system down to a crawl if you try to do anything else.

I don't have / use WinTV, but I'm sure that it is probably a big factor in slowing down your system. If you have the Tivo effect, then basically your computer is reading / writing a huge 2-4GB MPEG buffer file on your computer for the ability to pause live TV.

If you record shows and have WinTV compress them, that sucks up even more CPU.

If you use your DVD applications often or record / compress shows off WinTV. You're better off with a second computer dedicated to these tasks. Upgrade to a socket 939 chip and make your current rig the dedicated machine. You don't need a second monitor for the computer, just hook it up to your TV and remote desktop / VNC in to use it.

I still would recommend at least 1GB of RAM. When I had 512MB (and even 768MB) it was often not enough and I'd be using almost all my RAM all the time. Now that I have 2GB of RAM, I rarely see usage spike over 1.2GB. Most of the time it hovers around 830MB.

I wouldn't worry too much about dual channel RAM if you have an Athlon 64. I was messing around with my memory timings and running benchmarks but it didn't seen to have as much of an effect as overclocking the memory used to have. I remember someone stating on Anandtech that Athlon 64's memory optimization has inadvertently made most of dual channel's effectiveness redundant. *shrugs*

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

Software raid is any onboard raid that isn't driven by its own CPU. ie, onboard "raid" cards are software raid rebadged so the idiots can figure out how to set it up. Raid 1 is mirroring, raid 0 is striping, raid 2,3, and 4 aren't used, raid 3 is some kind of odd parity where a single disk is the parity disk rather than raid 5 where parity is spread across the disks. Raid 0 isn't technically a raid type anyway.

This has everything to do with I/O. And as for AncientPC, he quotes that this has at most to do with server applications, yet WinTV/Tivo is going to be the perfect application of a good software raid with that gigantic amount of disk usage. If you can manage to set one up for yourself, it's worth it. As for the 10-15% performance increase, that's pretty much bunk. Moving from 2 disks on separate channels using mirroring (raid 1), my sustained read rates jumped from 35MB/s from a single disk to about 58MB/s from the 2 mirrored disks. Striping will sustain read and write rate improvements that will be akin to that, if not better. The more disks you add, the less your performance increase will be, and putting ATA disks on the same channel decreases your advance in speed considerably.

Re: Tech question about RAM (mostly OT)
 

software raid isn't limited to raid 0, and raid 0 will only do something for sequential io. IT WON'T MAKE GENERAL USE ANY FASTER. everybody should read http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-in...leDriveVsRaid0 (there are other raid faqs available as well).

it is perfectly fine for him to disable his paging file if he isn't coming close to using all of his physical memory.

asking tech questions in the zoo is worthless because it always comes down to some sort of dick waving contest instead of actually trying to help the original poster.