Making more use of my large amount of memory

fogfreak · 04 Sep 2009

I have 4gb of ram installed. Windows 7 says it exists so I think it's set to go. What's annoying is that the computer never uses more than say 1.5 GB of memory. I'm annoyed than when I want to seek through a video file there's an annoying lag as it has to stop every notch and seek from the hard drive. Is there a way to set it, or a certain video player, that will have it load, say, the entire video file into memory, and, say, load more into memory when running intensive applications? Thanks

king44 · 04 Sep 2009

Is your OS x86 or x64? 4GB plus RAM will only be fully utilized on x64 - but in order to run x64 you have to make sure your processor is compatible - if it is Core 2 Duo - then I'm sure you'll be fine. x86 is limited to 3.25 GB or 3.00 GB of RAM.

curiousmurf · 08 Sep 2009

i'm interested in what the OP said too...

Barman58 · 08 Sep 2009

The issue here is not I believe one of memory per-se, it is more related to the buffer used by the video player.

In Windows Media Player -press the Alt key and go to tools - options an then the performance tab - this is normally set to use default buffer - you can set the buffer manually (std 5 Sec), adjust this figure until you find the optimum for your system.

matt_0978 · 08 Sep 2009

but thats only for netstreaming isn't Nige?

Barman58 · 08 Sep 2009

On second checking It looks that way - seems the WMP doesn't give access to the main buffer

Corpsecrank · 10 Sep 2009

Also take into consideration that video plays at a high bitrate. You have to buffer or load into memory a lot during video playback without robbing the system of memory it needs. This is generally why they limit how much video can be buffered.

But the way it has been described bugs me a bit. Why would the computer need to buffer a local video file? If the HDD is seeking like crazy the reason could be that the drive is slow 5400 RPM and/or on a slow connection such as an external USB HDD.

If you try to play video files from a USB drive you usually end up with stuttering or lag because you cannot send data across the USB connection fast enough. Even though bulk transfer rates over USB are around 380Mbps there is enough delay to lag videos.

A slower RPM HDD will only further hinder video playback.

At any rate I would still need more info to be of any real help.

Just as a side note. It doesn't matter how much ram you have if you have a single core CPU and you have other stuff going on while trying to play back video you will probably get lag in the video.

rangerevo8 · 10 Sep 2009

Also take into consideration that the video format, compression and decoder u used to play the video file.. higher compression require higher processing power to decompress it (better decoder improve this..)

Also take note.. some decoder does not support 'hardware accelerator' which pass the video to your graphic card for processing.. hence it will use ur CPU to process (which is not specialized in graphic processing) and may experience stuttering or lag..

P/S: RAM only used to store.. (its only matter enough or not..) while CPU/GPU is the one to process..