Just want to know how the programs that free up ram work. What exactly do they free up? Is there any of these that are good with windows 7?? Does the program actually use more ram than ram it can free up???
I'm happy with my 1.5gb of ram right now and don't want to buy more but if these programs can really free up ram then I guess why not give it a go?? Yes I also use readyboost.
Thanks:)
In short, no. They typically just force the system to use more paging files and less RAM. Obviously, the RAM is faster than the hard disk, so at worst, you will see a reduction in speed. At best, you will see more RAM available, but no extra speed.
Hello vesh88,
Welcome to 7 Forums.
I used to use one of those apps. Don't bother anymore. Win 7 seems to handle ram better. If your happy with how things are, don't fix it. Remember that pre-fetch will load things into ram to make apps open faster. It will give up that ram if it is needed elsewhere. Cleaning all that out will slow things down and unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Gary
i agree with the original reply (and garysgold as well)... i have heard as well that all these programs do is simply flush what is currently in RAM to the page file... which as he mentioned... is going to be a lot slower than pulling it from memory...
but think of it this way... it's in memory for a reason, right? obviously something is using the data, or will be (unless in the exception of a memory leak or something, but i believe windows handles this stuff a lot better these days, also as mentioned).
so are you freeing physical memory? eeh.. yeah. but most likely, all that's going to happen is your open programs are gonna go HEY, I NEEDED THAT! then go right back out to the disk, and reload it into RAM... which is completely counter productive.
in other words --- it's a false sense of security and although does what it says... *literally*... frees up physical memory... that's not always what you want :)
so anyways --- agreed! don't believe these programs!
Aside from Readyboost, which is a different concept, since it is used as sort of another level of cache... that is, it's slower than main memory, but it's a heck of a lot faster than virtual/swap/page file memory (on your standard IDE/SATA drive)... so it acts as a secondary cache to your main memory -- aka: a more efficient page file.
if you go by the old standard, your readyboost cache/swap file should be about equal to the size of your main memory (in your case, 1.5GB), or some argue 1.5x the amount of main memory. Thankfully Windows Vista/7 takes the guesswork out for you and actually shows the recommended size for the Readyboost file on its tab. I know that 7 also will allow you to 'dedicate this drive to readyboost'.. not sure if Vista has that option or not.
Hope that extra info helps out some.
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