News Item: : Six is the new Two (Windows 7, part 2)
(Category: Computer Software)
Posted by DHAJ
Thursday 29 October 2009 - 09:33:10
In my previous post, I mentioned how Windows 7 has basically the same performance as Windows XP. Well that's still true, except Win7 not only takes more memory, it takes A LOT more memory. Not quite as much as Vista, but still a bunch compared to XP. The light at the end of the rainbow is how Win7 is able to manage the amount of memory it has and it does a very good job. When I installed Win7 on my machine, I had 2GB of RAM, which is a solid amount for running Windows XP. In fact, I could only upgrade to a total of 3GB on my Windows XP machine, since it's 32-bit. Because the version of Windows 7 I installed is 64-bit, it supports much higher amounts of memory. Win7 Professional supports up to 192GB of RAM. Waaaay more than anyone will need [for a while]. Anyway, when my computer booted up, it used roughly 600-700MB of RAM. When running most of the programs I keep open all the time, it was closer to 1GB. Now that's half my memory... used for my day-to-day sort of things. And it would go higher depending on how much web surfing I was doing.
And that should beg the question, if half the memory is used for just Windows, how can you play any games? Most older games run fine since they don't need a ton of memory. Those that need close to 1GB are fine. In fact, the operating system scales itself back automatically and quickly enough that a user hardly notices. Now I know that this feature has been available for many versions of Windows, but not so it's very unnoticeable. I did notice some slight jerks and glitches in Left 4 Dead, but when I closed the game and looked at my Task Manager, I saw the memory meter was pegged. Windows had scaled back to around 400MB. I also realized that Outlook and IE (which I had left open while playing) responded very quickly and I had very little indication that memory had been shuffled around.
Since I like a little extra horsepower under the hood on all my computers, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my memory. I knew I could get away with 4GB of RAM, but I decided to go ahead and upgrade to 6GB. This should give me a decent bit of head room. I installed the memory last night and so far no problems (fingers crossed). One thing I noticed is that Win7 realizes it has extra memory and goes ahead and uses it. So now, while my computer is idle with only a few applications running, it's using 1.6GB of RAM when it had been using 800-900MB. I tripled my RAM and now the system has adjusted to using twice as much. I also tried a couple chapters in Left 4 Dead and had no problems.
So in short, if you're looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and plan on staying there for a while, a memory upgrade should be on your mind. It's a simple procedure and takes less than 20 minutes from start to finish. 4GB of DDR2 800 cost me $82 (shipped) but it's got a $20 mail-in rebate. You could get by with 4GB of RAM if you want to save some cash, but that's your choice. I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my personal laptop a while ago and it only has 1GB of RAM. The Win7 part ran ok, but I wasn't able to play games with much speed. I'll test it again here in the next few weeks.
This news item is from Christian Gamers Network
( http://www.christiangamersnetwork.com/news.php?extend.197 )
(Category: Computer Software)
Posted by DHAJ
Thursday 29 October 2009 - 09:33:10
In my previous post, I mentioned how Windows 7 has basically the same performance as Windows XP. Well that's still true, except Win7 not only takes more memory, it takes A LOT more memory. Not quite as much as Vista, but still a bunch compared to XP. The light at the end of the rainbow is how Win7 is able to manage the amount of memory it has and it does a very good job. When I installed Win7 on my machine, I had 2GB of RAM, which is a solid amount for running Windows XP. In fact, I could only upgrade to a total of 3GB on my Windows XP machine, since it's 32-bit. Because the version of Windows 7 I installed is 64-bit, it supports much higher amounts of memory. Win7 Professional supports up to 192GB of RAM. Waaaay more than anyone will need [for a while]. Anyway, when my computer booted up, it used roughly 600-700MB of RAM. When running most of the programs I keep open all the time, it was closer to 1GB. Now that's half my memory... used for my day-to-day sort of things. And it would go higher depending on how much web surfing I was doing.
And that should beg the question, if half the memory is used for just Windows, how can you play any games? Most older games run fine since they don't need a ton of memory. Those that need close to 1GB are fine. In fact, the operating system scales itself back automatically and quickly enough that a user hardly notices. Now I know that this feature has been available for many versions of Windows, but not so it's very unnoticeable. I did notice some slight jerks and glitches in Left 4 Dead, but when I closed the game and looked at my Task Manager, I saw the memory meter was pegged. Windows had scaled back to around 400MB. I also realized that Outlook and IE (which I had left open while playing) responded very quickly and I had very little indication that memory had been shuffled around.
Since I like a little extra horsepower under the hood on all my computers, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my memory. I knew I could get away with 4GB of RAM, but I decided to go ahead and upgrade to 6GB. This should give me a decent bit of head room. I installed the memory last night and so far no problems (fingers crossed). One thing I noticed is that Win7 realizes it has extra memory and goes ahead and uses it. So now, while my computer is idle with only a few applications running, it's using 1.6GB of RAM when it had been using 800-900MB. I tripled my RAM and now the system has adjusted to using twice as much. I also tried a couple chapters in Left 4 Dead and had no problems.
So in short, if you're looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and plan on staying there for a while, a memory upgrade should be on your mind. It's a simple procedure and takes less than 20 minutes from start to finish. 4GB of DDR2 800 cost me $82 (shipped) but it's got a $20 mail-in rebate. You could get by with 4GB of RAM if you want to save some cash, but that's your choice. I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my personal laptop a while ago and it only has 1GB of RAM. The Win7 part ran ok, but I wasn't able to play games with much speed. I'll test it again here in the next few weeks.
This news item is from Christian Gamers Network
( http://www.christiangamersnetwork.com/news.php?extend.197 )