Minor Vista Issues

[Guest]

Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel Pentium D CPU 3.00GHz
2.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB
Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Vista installed without any problems except my sound card, which required me
to go online to Creative for Vista drivers. After that, it was smooth sailing
except for three issues I am having.

1-Memory usage. XP used about 23% of my memory. Vista is using at least 35%,
sometimes up to 45%. I tried disabling a few programs running in the
background and it didn't help much.

2. In one game in particular, I am having poor performance. haven't tried
installing Need for Speed Most Wanted yet, but the one game I did insI
haven't tested any other games yet, but have heard they run perfectly. Nascar
Racing 2003 Season, granted it is an older game cannot run smoothly in Vista.
In XP, I had a constant 70+ fps. In Vista, I'm lucky if I can get over 10fps.

3. iTunes/Sound Playback: When running iTunes, songs will, for no apparent
reason, begin to play as if they are being buffered (slow, with stutter,
interference-like) and then it will go away and the song will play normally.
It happens about 4 times per song, so about once a minute. Also, when playing
soapbox video or youtube content, the video/sound will stutter and interrupt
until fully loaded.

When this issue happens, I notice that my CPU usage goes from about 0-25%+.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[ray]

Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel Pentium D CPU 3.00GHz
2.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB
Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Vista installed without any problems except my sound card, which required me
to go online to Creative for Vista drivers. After that, it was smooth sailing
except for three issues I am having.

1-Memory usage. XP used about 23% of my memory. Vista is using at least 35%,
sometimes up to 45%. I tried disabling a few programs running in the
background and it didn't help much.

What do you have it for if not to use?

 

[Guest]

What do you have it for if not to use?

Well, I was under the impression that the less memory my operating system
used, the more that would be available for gaming and applications.

 

[Mobilehavoc]

What do you have it for if not to use?

It's a paradigm shift for users that will take some time. The concept
that unused RAM is wasted RAM is foreign to most people...you want
Vista to use as much if not all of your RAM at all times. Your RAM
sitting there free is not doing anything good for you or your system
at all.

I actually get worried if Vista is using LESS than 50%!

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP]

Idle RAM is wasted RAM.. Vista uses as much as it can for the amount of
processes up and running..

Current video drivers play some part in poor performance.. bear in mind that
many present games are not optimized for Vista graphics handling.. rather
than patches appear to fix the problem, I suspect that new versions of games
will be released..

Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel Pentium D CPU 3.00GHz
2.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB
Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Vista installed without any problems except my sound card, which required
me
to go online to Creative for Vista drivers. After that, it was smooth
sailing
except for three issues I am having.

1-Memory usage. XP used about 23% of my memory. Vista is using at least
35%,
sometimes up to 45%. I tried disabling a few programs running in the
background and it didn't help much.

2. In one game in particular, I am having poor performance. haven't tried
installing Need for Speed Most Wanted yet, but the one game I did insI
haven't tested any other games yet, but have heard they run perfectly.
Nascar
Racing 2003 Season, granted it is an older game cannot run smoothly in
Vista.
In XP, I had a constant 70+ fps. In Vista, I'm lucky if I can get over
10fps.

3. iTunes/Sound Playback: When running iTunes, songs will, for no apparent
reason, begin to play as if they are being buffered (slow, with stutter,
interference-like) and then it will go away and the song will play
normally.
It happens about 4 times per song, so about once a minute. Also, when
playing
soapbox video or youtube content, the video/sound will stutter and
interrupt
until fully loaded.

When this issue happens, I notice that my CPU usage goes from about
0-25%+.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Guest]

Are you sure your not talking CPU usage instead of Memory usage?

Memory usage:
This would be one of those big improvements that Vista is offering: Using
RAM more efficiently.

Vista attempts to maintain programs that you commonly used 'pre-loaded' so
that they will start up faster. If you select something that isn't in the
common category, or something that needs more memory, then it will want to
write that information before proceeding.

End result: Commonly used programs start faster. "Uncommon" programs load
slower.

Once loaded, it should run the same.

CPU usage:
Open Task Manager and monitor CPU usage. Especially processes. Is something
eating an abnormal amount of time? If you have all the Vista bells and
whistles turned on, try setting the machine to Performance optimization
instead of Quality optimization and see how things run.

Lastly, stuttering sound... lots of posts dissing Creative for the moment.
May need yet a newer driver.

 

[Guest]

Are you sure your not talking CPU usage instead of Memory usage?

Memory usage:
This would be one of those big improvements that Vista is offering: Using
RAM more efficiently.

Vista attempts to maintain programs that you commonly used 'pre-loaded' so
that they will start up faster. If you select something that isn't in the
common category, or something that needs more memory, then it will want to
write that information before proceeding.

End result: Commonly used programs start faster. "Uncommon" programs load
slower.

Once loaded, it should run the same.

CPU usage:
Open Task Manager and monitor CPU usage. Especially processes. Is something
eating an abnormal amount of time? If you have all the Vista bells and
whistles turned on, try setting the machine to Performance optimization
instead of Quality optimization and see how things run.

Lastly, stuttering sound... lots of posts dissing Creative for the moment.
May need yet a newer driver.

It is definitely the memory that is switching so much, but I suppose I do
need to get used to Vista's new memory management. As for the video
drivers...what a hassle waiting. Same for sound drivers. I can't listen to
music or watch video without stuttering sound.

 

[Guest]

It is definitely the memory that is switching so much, but I suppose I do
need to get used to Vista's new memory management. As for the video
drivers...what a hassle waiting. Same for sound drivers. I can't listen to
music or watch video without stuttering sound.

Also, when the sound does stutter, the task manager shows no increase in any
open process going above 2%, so I do not know what is causing the spike in
CPU usage.

 

[Guest]

My video driver issue has been resolved somewhat. I can now run the Nascar
Racing 2003 Season with everything maxed EXCEPT on car shadows. Without
shadows, the game runs 50+ fps, 20 less than xp but better then when I enable
shadows. With on car shadows, my frames drop into the single digits. Also, I
occasionally get game stutter, even when getting 50+ fps.

Guess I'm joining the wait for new video and sound drivers.

 

[Guest]

3. iTunes/Sound Playback: When running iTunes, songs will, for no apparent
reason, begin to play as if they are being buffered (slow, with stutter,
interference-like) and then it will go away and the song will play normally.
It happens about 4 times per song, so about once a minute.

I am also experiencing this problem. Except, it's all sound on the
computer, not just iTunes. I get this stuttering no matter what sort of
audio it is. Is this a driver problem as some people as implied? I have an
X-Fi and they've updated drivers several times now...I've reinstalled each
time but nothing changes. Anyone?

 

[Guest]

Huh? I like my OS using as little ram as possible. That way, when I run
large apps, the ram doesn't run out and the computer end up swapping, which
causes the HD to churn and performance goes into the toilet. Having an OS
that uses up lots of memory being a good thing just doesn't make any sense to
me.

 

[Rock]

Huh? I like my OS using as little ram as possible. That way, when I run
large apps, the ram doesn't run out and the computer end up swapping,
which
causes the HD to churn and performance goes into the toilet. Having an OS
that uses up lots of memory being a good thing just doesn't make any sense
to
me.

Memory that is allocated for caching items is immediately freed for use when
a program needs memory. But in the event that the program that needs that
memory happens to also use the data / files that are in the cache then it
loads / runs even faster.

So it is, in a sense, "free memory", and instead of sitting in the corner
twiddling it's thumbs doing nothing, it is put to some use in anticipation
of future needs based on past use practices.

I think the concept is simple to grasp.

 

[Adam Albright]

Memory that is allocated for caching items is immediately freed for use when
a program needs memory. But in the event that the program that needs that
memory happens to also use the data / files that are in the cache then it
loads / runs even faster.

So it is, in a sense, "free memory", and instead of sitting in the corner
twiddling it's thumbs doing nothing, it is put to some use in anticipation
of future needs based on past use practices.

I think the concept is simple to grasp.

The concept is simple, but not well thought out. Any application to
run, MUST first be in memory. If Vista already has memory in use that
a application has to be moved into then the OS first needs to remove
whatever it put there, then bring in the application you want to run
and it's data. All this swapping not only will cause your hard drive
to churn away shuffling things in and out of RAM from virtual memory
on your hard drive but actually can slow things down since all this
moving paging files in and out of memory eats up CPU cycles. Just
another example of Microsoft thinking it knows what you want better
than you do.

If on the other hand you have "free" memory, then when you tell
Windows you want to use application X, it does one operation, moving
that application into some of your free memory. If Vista uses caching,
it often will first need to move out what's already in memory swapping
it to virtual memory, then move in what you actually want to do.
That's two steps as opposed to one step.

Such a method new to Vista in how it is implemented only offers
marginal improvement if what you want to do is already being cached,
which makes little sense unless you use your computer to repeatedly do
the same thing over and over. Since Vista by default will load up as
much memory as it can until sometime else needs it, you initial boot
takes longer with Vista busy trashing away loading RAM with what it
thinks you'll need, if you really need it or not.

Billy G, must have watched the Movie "1984" a lot when he was growing
up. ;-)