Vista 64-bit and 8GBs of memory.

[chuckbam]

I may not know as much of some of you. But, I do spend a good amount of time fooling with Windows OSs. And I test my charges with a number of benchmarks.

I can only access about 40% of my 8 GBs of memory. After about 40%, my Quad Core CPU at 3280MHz gets bogged down. So I am limited by the CPU.

I have tested no pagefile, pagefile on a separate disks and Pagefile system managed with and without readyboost. I find that Pagefile system managed with readyboost gives me the best performance.

I think that indexing and Prefetch slow down my computer with needless hard drive activity. So I disable indexing with two methods. I have Prefetch set for: Cache Boot Files Only

I have Superfetch set to: Allow Only Program Files to Preload

I have found that a manual update of the ini files of the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (in safe mode) increased my hard drive performance by a substantial amount.

[ATINUT]

Originally Posted by chuckbam

I may not know as much of some of you. But, I do spend a good amount of time fooling with Windows OSs. And I test my charges with a number of benchmarks.

I can only access about 40% of my 8 GBs of memory. After about 40%, my Quad Core CPU at 3280MHz gets bogged down. So I am limited by the CPU.

I have tested no pagefile, pagefile on a separate disks and Pagefile system managed with and without readyboost. I find that Pagefile system managed with readyboost gives me the best performance.

I think that indexing and Prefetch slow down my computer with needless hard drive activity. So I disable indexing with two methods. I have Prefetch set for: Cache Boot Files Only

I have Superfetch set to: Allow Only Program Files to Preload

I have found that a manual update of the ini files of the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (in safe mode) increased my hard drive performance by a substantial amount.

Hate to rain on your parade, but the Prefetch tweak doesn't work. I have tried it in the past on my machine, and the boot speed was no different, and my games took longer to start up. I can safely say that the Prefetch tweak doesn't work.

As for Superfetch, there's no need to have it only cache Program files, there is no proof on the net that the Superfetch tweak truly works.

Why would you want to use Readyboost, when you have 8GB's of ram. Windows Vista, won't even use it when you have 8GB's of ram. I've tested my system with Readyboost disabled, and guess what, no true system performance either.

I also see no need to install updated chipset drivers or network drivers, when the built in chipset and network drivers for my board in Vista already work. If you have one of the newer Intel chipset motherboards, that's a different story.

There's something quite frankly wrong with your system, if you can only access 40% of your 8GB's of memory, which leads me to believe, there is something wrong with your Vista installation, or with your motherboard, or possibly with your quad core cpu.

I also don't have a lot of extra junk that I don't need running on my system.

The last thing I don't do, is I don't overclock my system, my system actually performs better without me having to overclock anything.

[johnrr6]

Chuck----looks like you've done some serious testing!!

I have a similar system but am still on Vista 32 bit----Have been thinking about slicking my Raid 5----buying 8 gigs of RAM and using Vista 64 bit ultimate as I have another rig with AMD stuff and 8 gigs and Vista 64 which just seems....quicker.....

What size of Readyboost drive do you use????

Originally Posted by chuckbam

I may not know as much of some of you. But, I do spend a good amount of time fooling with Windows OSs. And I test my charges with a number of benchmarks.

I can only access about 40% of my 8 GBs of memory. After about 40%, my Quad Core CPU at 3280MHz gets bogged down. So I am limited by the CPU.

I have tested no pagefile, pagefile on a separate disks and Pagefile system managed with and without readyboost. I find that Pagefile system managed with readyboost gives me the best performance.

I think that indexing and Prefetch slow down my computer with needless hard drive activity. So I disable indexing with two methods. I have Prefetch set for: Cache Boot Files Only

I have Superfetch set to: Allow Only Program Files to Preload

I have found that a manual update of the ini files of the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (in safe mode) increased my hard drive performance by a substantial amount.

[chuckbam]

Originally Posted by ATINUT

Hate to rain on your parade, but the Prefetch tweak doesn't work. I have tried it in the past on my machine, and the boot speed was no different, and my games took longer to start up. I can safely say that the Prefetch tweak doesn't work.

This tweak has greatly reduces hard drive activity that bogs down the system. A fast computer does not need that Prefetching. And with enough memory Superfetch does the job. You need to do both tweaks. I am not the only person who is doing this. Maybe you have slow HD performance. I hace a 3x RAID 0 and loading time is not a problem. All you are doing is writing notes in prefetch to open that game faster. After some time, that Prefetch grows larger and larger giving more for the computer to read.

Since, I have changed my pagefile to a singe size of 12300MBs Min/ Max on a partition on the C drive. Windows does not need to increase/ decrease the size and it greatly decrease fragmentation on C.

I also have a new 7200.11 1TB and it runs an avereage of 80GBs/ sec. Maybe a hard drive upgrade would help you on load time.

This is the old PCMARK. The new one fails on me because I moved default folder locations. But, I still think it is a good test. Reads the clock speed wrong. It should be 3.28 GHz.



7200.11 1TB



2x RAID MaXLine Pro 500



3x RAID MaXLine Pro 500

[chuckbam]

Originally Posted by johnrr6

Chuck----looks like you've done some serious testing!!

I have a similar system but am still on Vista 32 bit----Have been thinking about slicking my Raid 5----buying 8 gigs of RAM and using Vista 64 bit ultimate as I have another rig with AMD stuff and 8 gigs and Vista 64 which just seems....quicker.....

What size of Readyboost drive do you use????

Hi johnrr6, I just set the Readyboost at the max of 4 GBs. Programs do some pagefiling if you have enough RAM or not. I can not access all my 8GBs of memory before my 4 core CPU is maxed out processing The max I have been able to utilize is about 4.5 GBs. Do you think that could be my motherboard? I am upgrading to i7 next month. I have seen reviews that 12 GBs is being accessed. I am thinking about 12 GBs.

Even though I am using the 64 bit, I think Vista 32 bit with 4 GBs and it only uses about 3.6GB is faster. Many things you do in the 64 bit run is 32 bit anyway.

[Sir Skully]

Tom's Hardware explains how 8gigs work in Vista 64, and what ya need to know to set it up, here's the link...........
Vista Workshop: More RAM, More Speed : Windows Vista With 8 GB - Tom's Hardware

[chuckbam]

Originally Posted by Sir Skully

Tom's Hardware explains how 8gigs work in Vista 64, and what ya need to know to set it up, here's the link...........
Vista Workshop: More RAM, More Speed : Windows Vista With 8 GB - Tom's Hardware

Skully,
I read that. They even talk about not using any pagefile at all. I tested that for a while. I think I am set up right. 2 installs testing my last settings one at a time.

I will be going with the i7 sometime next month. It may be the motherboard. But, I have seen other people not utilizing all 8 GB of memory as well. It all shows up. It is just in the task manager and other program only show less than 4.5 GB of usage even during testing of trying to use more..

I would like to see a sap-shot of Task Manager using more.

[chuckbam]

johnrr6,

How do you like your RAID 5? I was thinking about that and am worried about a performance decrease.

Do you ever use HD Tune? HD Tune

I would really like to see one on a RAID 5.

[chuckbam]

I don't know if you guys have see this program. They come from the MS TechNet Windows Sysinternals downloads.
From what I have read, MS liked the programs and hired the author. I have seen a MS Seminar vid on them.

autoruns.exe

http://chuckbam.com/i7_P6T-D/AutoRuns.zip

Process Explorer

http://chuckbam.com/i7_P6T-D/ProcessExplorerv11.21.zip

Do you know that when you disable UAC, Vista still loads the sys file luafv.sys You can uncheck it in autoruns. Increases boot time and one less thing loaded.

I turned off the service Windows Search and finally stopped indexing 100%. I can still do a search by the way. I think indexing is just another thing on Vista to support a slow computer.

[chuckbam]

Ok, I did it. 4 Orthos and Prime95.

[XJ.]

Good! I know others using 8GB of RAM without problem. You are right about Vista32 and 4GB of RAM, you don't gain much more if you go to Vista64 because Vista64 eats up more memory. The only benefit is if you use >4GB of RAM or depend on some 64b programs.

[chuckbam]

Originally Posted by XJ.

Good! I know others using 8GB of RAM without problem. You are right about Vista32 and 4GB of RAM, you don't gain much more if you go to Vista64 because Vista64 eats up more memory. The only benefit is if you use >4GB of RAM or depend on some 64b programs.

With my other desktop, I am using 3.6 GBs out of 4GBs (I think). After an update, they all show. But, when you look further like in the Reliability and Performance Monitor you see different.

I am going i7 soon. After that test of 4 Orthos and Prime95, I decide to dump the 12GB idea and only go 6GBs. When the hell do I ever push my system that hard. If I do, I will be happy to pagefile

I use the 32-bit Media Player, ie explorer and I believe most other programs. I guess the OS is 64-bit. Maybe my Office 07 is 64-bit???

[johnrr6]

Chuck----I like Raid 5----and I just replaced a dead disk the other day with NO loss of productivity----none----slapped in the new disk and it rebuilt the array in the background....

Having said that----it IS slower----so you pay a price.

I'm debating wheter to use RAID 5 again when I slick my Intel system and go to 64 Bit...

I'm using Windows Home Server and it has a marevelous restore capability....

RAID 5 may be redundancy I really don't need anymore.

I find that if you have a ton of RAM----a fast processor----and just leave the machine on for afew days without turning it off......

Indexing seems to stop as if it is "done indexing"----and it doesn't seem to be a bother then.....

Good find on that UAC startup----I HATE UAC!!!!

[chuckbam]

johnrr6,

I think I am going to stick with the RAID 0. I do two kinds of backups. I do my files and a Window complete backup. That as got me going again in less than 2 hours. I upgraded from Vista HP to Ultimate just for the complete backup utility.

The only reason I have 3 drives in a Stripe, is because I found the 3ed one (new) cheap on e-bay. the 500 Pro is a discontinued "enterprise" Maxtor drive. I think it was 65 bucks.

[chuckbam]

PS: I think ATINUT could be right about ReadyBoost being used before the total system memory. I am going to test that further one day. Only thing, the system pagefiles if you need it or not. So, it may help in the short run, but, maybe not in the long hall situations. Does that make sense?