RAM Boosting programs --- are they worth it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hari Hari Mau
  • Start date Start date
H

Hari Hari Mau

Hi, all !

I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade the
RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?

If so, which one do you recommend?

I welcome any of your suggestion, comment, opinion, criticism ....
anything !

Thank you all !
 
Hi, all !

I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade the
RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?
Click to expand...


No.
 
Hari said:
I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade
the RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?

If so, which one do you recommend?

I welcome any of your suggestion, comment, opinion, criticism ....
anything !
Click to expand...

No.
Things will likely always page - just the way things are handled.
How often do you actually utilize 16GB of your memory? ;-)
 
Hari said:
Hi, all !

I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade the
RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?

If so, which one do you recommend?

I welcome any of your suggestion, comment, opinion, criticism ....
anything !

Thank you all !
Click to expand...


Try one and find out and report back.
Most say they are worthless and actually use more ram. (ie:snakeoil)
Let us hear how it works out.
 
Hari said:
Hi, all !

I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade the
RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?

If so, which one do you recommend?

I welcome any of your suggestion, comment, opinion, criticism ....
anything !

Thank you all !
Click to expand...

Do you notice a slow down when it uses the page file, or are you just
relying on the fact that the page file is being used?
The page file will be used many times and it doesn't mean that all your
physical ram is used up.
 
No.
Things will likely always page - just the way things are handled.
How often do you actually utilize 16GB of your memory? ;-)
Click to expand...


According to Task Manager, all of it plus another 24 GB of paged. As I
have 4 HD in the comp, and set up page files in all the 4 HDs, total
paged is about 38GB and 24GB of it has been "committed".

What I am currently doing is rendering animation, very cpu and mem
intensive job, but still it shouldn't have used so much RAM. Since I
do not know how to track memory leakage or whatnots, I don't actually
know why the thing is using up so much memory.

That is why I am thinking of changing a mobo that can support 32GB of
RAM.

But before I do that, I like to know if any of those RAM Boosting
utilities work.

What I mean is, if there's some mem leakage, perhaps (just perhaps !)
the RAM Boosting utility could recover those RAM by "cleaning up"
those memories that are not being used and then giving it back to the
OS so my machine won't have to be paged like mad.

As it is now, the HD light is constantly on. All 4 of the HD are like
churning and cranking.

I have read in other places that those RAM Boosting programs are junk.
My purpose of posting the messages here is, maybe someone have had
experiences on those RAM Boosting programs and maybe they can tell me
more about mem leaks and how to recover those RAM memory.

Hoping to hear more opinion soon !

Thank you all !!!
 
Do you notice a slow down when it uses the page file, or are you just
relying on the fact that the page file is being used?
The page file will be used many times and it doesn't mean that all your
physical ram is used up.
Click to expand...


Hmm.... since it's a quad-core machine, it's kinda hard to "notice
slow down".

The thing, as right now is ... when I start the rendering job, it goes
smoothly, and after like 20 minutes or so, all 4 of my HD starts to
hum.

I've tested running the Task Manager, before I start rendering.

From beginning --- everything runs on the RAM. Then the "committed"
mem increases, until it flows over into the page, and the page thing
grows and grow. That's the time I start to hear my HD hum, and the HD
light is on constantly.
 
You seem to have a memory leak and NO ram utility will clean up your apps
mess. It would have no idea that you don't really need the memory. You have
to clean up your app with tracing and logging to find out where it leaks.
You may also be able to use a profiler to help.

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Do you notice a slow down when it uses the page file, or are you just
relying on the fact that the page file is being used?
The page file will be used many times and it doesn't mean that all your
physical ram is used up.
Click to expand...


Hmm.... since it's a quad-core machine, it's kinda hard to "notice
slow down".

The thing, as right now is ... when I start the rendering job, it goes
smoothly, and after like 20 minutes or so, all 4 of my HD starts to
hum.

I've tested running the Task Manager, before I start rendering.

From beginning --- everything runs on the RAM. Then the "committed"
mem increases, until it flows over into the page, and the page thing
grows and grow. That's the time I start to hear my HD hum, and the HD
light is on constantly.
 
Hi, all !

I have a quad-core machine, with 16GB of RAM.

I use it for very heavy duty rendering jobs, requiring lots and lots
and LOTS of memory.

Even with the 16 GB of memory and XP 64-bits, there are times the
thing goes to paged RAM.

Currently I have 2 choices --- either change the mobo and upgrade the
RAM to 32 GB, or getting one of those "RAM Boosting" programs to
manage the RAM usage. Thus, my question ---

Do those "RAM Boosting" programs work?

If so, which one do you recommend?
Click to expand...
None. For two reasons. There are two ways you can "increase" ram without
actually spending the couple of bucks to actually *do* it.

1. Compression in situ. This involves compressing all data while it is in
RAM thereby giving you more space, but at a substantial speed penalty.

2. Swapping to the hard drive. Windows does this anyways if you run out of
ram, so what you're doing is creating a second page file fighting with
windows. This makes it *really* slow. In addition to this stupidity, the
hard drive - any hard drive - is over 1000x slower than any RAM. This is
why when the computer slows down the hard drive light is always on, or
rather the other way around.

If you need a faster computer with more RAM, upgrade it. The "solution"
you suggest only worked when the hard drives were close in speed to the
speed of the processors. That's about 1980 or earlier. The original IBM PC
had a clock speed of 4.77 Mhz. Hard drive speeds (random access time) were
of the order of 80ms or slower. This leads to a ratio of 1:381,600 at
worst. In present computers, The speed is 3 Ghz (single processor/single
core to give a fair comparision) Hard drives still only are about 5ms due
to hardware limitations - motors only move so fast. That's a ration of
1:15,000,000,000. Now a read of a byte of ram takes pretty well the same
number of clock cycles - 4 with a couple more waiting depending on how
fast the ram is. Now you see the loss you get?


Try shutting down everything else *but* the program you're working on,
including anything in startup and see if that helps first.
 
Thank you for your suggestion. I've looked up on the mem leakage and
Microsoft supposed to have a program called "Perfmon.exe" that
supposed to be able to help trace which program is leaking memory.

That Perfmon.exe program is supposed to be downloadable ... however I
just can't find it !

Can anyone point out where I can obtain such a program, please?

Don't know why there is no "garbage collection" ability built in in
XP. If so, all the mem leakage problems would be a piece of cake, for
the OS itself can free those mem that are no longer being use. ....
but I digress ...
 
Hari Hari Mau said:
What I am currently doing is rendering animation, very cpu and mem
intensive job, but still it shouldn't have used so much RAM. Since I
do not know how to track memory leakage or whatnots, I don't actually
know why the thing is using up so much memory.
Click to expand...


Start | Run <type in>
perfmon.msc
<enter>

This is a performance graph used to find bottlenecks. It's not an easy
program to use, so you will need to read the help file (Hit F1) or you
will get a help file on how to use MMC.

Very quick start would be to Hit the + (or ADD) icon, then read all
the counters from each performance object.

But set up correctly you can find memory leaks, hogs, or those in need
of more.
 
Start | Run <type in>
perfmon.msc
<enter>

This is a performance graph used to find bottlenecks. It's not an easy
program to use, so you will need to read the help file (Hit F1) or you
will get a help file on how to use MMC.

Very quick start would be to Hit the + (or ADD) icon, then read all
the counters from each performance object.

But set up correctly you can find memory leaks, hogs, or those in need
of more.
Click to expand...

Many thanks !!!
 
Hari Hari Mau said:
That Perfmon.exe program is supposed to be downloadable ... however I
just can't find it !
Click to expand...
Can anyone point out where I can obtain such a program, please?
Click to expand...

You can run Perfmon.msc, it's found in the System32 directory.
It's Icon is located in the Administrative Tools.
You might need Admin access.

And it's Perfmon.MSC not Perfmon.EXE
 
You can run Perfmon.msc, it's found in the System32 directory.
It's Icon is located in the Administrative Tools.
You might need Admin access.

And it's Perfmon.MSC not Perfmon.EXE
--
Click to expand...

On my machine (WinXP Prof) it's either one or the other.
 
PeeCee said:
Thank you for your suggestion. I've looked up on the mem leakage and
Microsoft supposed to have a program called "Perfmon.exe" that
supposed to be able to help trace which program is leaking memory.

That Perfmon.exe program is supposed to be downloadable ... however I
just can't find it !
Click to expand...

Try perfmon.msc instead of perfmon.exe
 
Does the rendering programme use an Undo feature like you see in photo
editing programmes? What is the name of the programme you are using?


--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
those programs are
designed for machines
with low resources.



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