Trying to understand Vista's memory usage

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dale White
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Dale White

Understanding that Vista does memory different and all that good stuff, I'm
trying to understand, if in this case, "Different" means better or worse.
This is also probably a question equally aimed at the game developers, and I
plan to post this in their forums as well

The easiest examples I have is video games (since Visa is a recommitment to
gaming). I'm looking at the memory usage under XP versus Vista32 and namely
Vista64.

In this example, though there seems to be plenty of others, I'm looking at
the new game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And trying to figure out why the performance is
worse (I understand part is about Video driver optimization, but in this
case, the problem doesn't "appear" to stem from that)

When the game runs under XP, I'll notice that overall memory usage us around
1GB. I noticed under Vista32, it's around 1.6GB and Vista64, 1.8GB. When I
use the games, in game memory stats it shows that XP has a committed amount
of around 750MB, under Vista 64 it has a committed amount around 1.7GB and
Vista 32 around 1.5GB
Why almost double the memory allocation for the same game ?

In this case, because the game perform worse under Vista, then XP, my video
settings are actually lower than XP. One would think XP's memory allocation
would be higher.

Funny enough, one of the fixes for Vista's performance issue is to turn off
the games Prefetching, which seems to cause endless stuttering under Vista,
but not XP.

Also, I'd like to note, that just for fun, I added another 1GB off ram and
it didn't help performance at all. The memory allocation stayed the same an
the stuttering due to prefetching was just as bad.

Here are some screenshots using Microsoft latest Process Explorer with
memory usage highlighted.

XP
http://images.filecloud.com/461870/Stalker_memory_usage_XP.jpg

Vista32
http://images.filecloud.com/461867/Stalker_memory_usage_Vista32.jpg

Vista64
http://images.filecloud.com/461868/Stalker_memory_usage_Vista64.jpg

Vista64 no Prefetching
http://images.filecloud.com/461869/Stalker_memory_usage_Vista64_noprefetch.jpg


Again, games like Battlefield 2 and 2142 report the same kinda pattern,
though not quit as extreme.
 
you mean superfetch... not prefetch..

superfetch caches more stuff...

I dont like the way vista handles anything ... lol if you ask me they made a
large amount of mistakes
on the design of that OS....

The poor performance of games might be another matter though...

try turning off services and stuff you dont need. Also ditch that horrid
sidebar... yuk...

see here www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

and here http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html

Since I dont play games I have not tested vista with them or even XP .. so I
cant say much...
but I do know vista has problems with older games that use some specific 3d
renderings...

Sorry to tell you this, but vista is a poor performer in all categories
compared to XP...

I have said this many times in this newsgroup... if you came here before you
should not be surprised.

you might want to take a look at these sites I have posted before on this
newsgroup:

Note: this article has 11 pages, press the next arrow on the bottom to see
the other pages

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/

and


http://thepodest.blogs.keznews.com/2007/05/22/comparing-vista-and-xp-with-performcetest/

You can also see this link
http://keznews.com/2902_Vista_vs._XP_in_Performace_Test
 
No I mean Prefetch. It's a game option added to the command line of the EXE.
It's suppose to work like superfetch in that the game prefetchs the textures
it thinks you're going to use, but it appear to have a bug as it is
constantly fetching the wrong things (it's acting more like a random fetch)

Plus Superfetch doesn't cause the memory used by a game (application) to go
up. In my case, it doesn't matter I run with Superfetch turned off. It's
always fetching the wrong files. Though I did turn it on and it was pretty
much the same results.

I just run the side bar for the widget to show CPU and memory usage and
which OS it is X86 or X64.

Outside of that, I keep Vista slim and trim, with most of the services
turned off. But again, this isn't about how much Memory windows is using
issue. It's how much more memory a game\app is using under Vista than XP,
with no performance gains.
 
I see....

well as I said I dont know much about games.. but I am sure that if you hang
around forums of
the sites of games.. you will find lots of people discussing performance and
tweaks...

I realize that you know your stuff.. from the way you asked your question..
I just had to
give you some info just in case you didnt know it...

:-)
 
Dale said:
Understanding that Vista does memory different and all that good stuff, I'm
trying to understand, if in this case, "Different" means better or worse.
This is also probably a question equally aimed at the game developers, and I
plan to post this in their forums as well

The easiest examples I have is video games (since Visa is a recommitment to
gaming). I'm looking at the memory usage under XP versus Vista32 and namely
Vista64.

In this example, though there seems to be plenty of others, I'm looking at
the new game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And trying to figure out why the performance is
worse (I understand part is about Video driver optimization, but in this
case, the problem doesn't "appear" to stem from that)

When the game runs under XP, I'll notice that overall memory usage us around
1GB. I noticed under Vista32, it's around 1.6GB and Vista64, 1.8GB. When I
use the games, in game memory stats it shows that XP has a committed amount
of around 750MB, under Vista 64 it has a committed amount around 1.7GB and
Vista 32 around 1.5GB
Why almost double the memory allocation for the same game ?
Click to expand...

Probably drivers. When a game makes a call to DirectX, it's handled by
the graphics driver. Different drivers might implement things
differently, and bad drivers might use loads of memory.

Alun Harford
 
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