# Optimize Vista to use less RAM



## B1gg3stN00b (Aug 11, 2008)

Anyone have any clues on stuff I could disable to make Vista use less RAM? I've already turned off user account controls and a bunch of other useless garbage.


----------



## sneekypeet (Aug 11, 2008)

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=24912

nuff said!


----------



## Pinchy (Aug 11, 2008)

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=24912&highlight=vista+tips+tweaks



EDIT - AWW peet beat me to it ><


----------



## B1gg3stN00b (Aug 11, 2008)

Thanks a ton!

I've already got myself using 100mb less RAM and getting 10 more FPS on DOD:S! HAHA! Good guide.


----------



## B1gg3stN00b (Aug 11, 2008)

Eh, I'm using 250mb less RAM now but I'd still like to get it down to what I had on TinyXP (200 with all my programs running), I have 128mb shared for video.

What else can I take off to bring my 750mb used RAM down to 3-500?


----------



## farlex85 (Aug 11, 2008)

Turned off system restore, aero, indexing, and sidebar completely?


----------



## francis511 (Aug 11, 2008)

You`ll never get vista that low !!


----------



## Kursah (Aug 11, 2008)

It won't happen like Francis511 says, Vista handels memory differently than XP does, it's designed to load up a chunk of your RAM...especially after superfetch "learns" what you do from day-to-day, it works very well tho, I leave it on. Really you've done quite well already, but I don't know how much more you will get free'd before you start having issues.

But Vista will also remove pre-loaded stuff if you need more room in the RAM, I'd also set the Page File to the same size min and max...at least that's what I've done for years.


----------



## Wile E (Aug 11, 2008)

Yeah, Kurash is right, you don't want vista to use only 200mb of ram. A lot of the ram it uses is used by Superfetch. Superfetch caches parts of you most used programs in ram for instant launching. If you fire up a game, and it needs that ram, Vista releases it to the game. Just leave it on and be happy. Vista is using the ram wisely.


----------



## B1gg3stN00b (Aug 11, 2008)

Well considering all I use are 2 IMs, Firefox, Thunderbird, and MS Word/Excel I don't see that it would need 700mb RAM?

Is there a way to disable superfetch?


----------



## exodusprime1337 (Aug 11, 2008)

you don't want to disable superfetch.  it makes vista as responsive as it is.  you are fine with all the tweaks i could find i idle about 500 and in game i usually utilize 1.5 either way i'm nto using all 2 gigs so if you aren't don't worry about it.


----------



## J-Man (Aug 11, 2008)

I don't bother with all this small optimization crap. Lol, sorry but just my opinion.


----------



## Deleted member 3 (Aug 11, 2008)

B1gg3stN00b said:


> Well considering all I use are 2 IMs, Firefox, Thunderbird, and MS Word/Excel I don't see that it would need 700mb RAM?
> 
> Is there a way to disable superfetch?



Well, considering you only use two IMs, Firefox, Thunderbird and MS Word/Excel, why would you care that the memory is in use? Once you start something else the memory will be available.

Also, considering DDR2 prices I'd rather just add some RAM instead of being bugged by 250MB of memory.


----------



## oli_ramsay (Aug 11, 2008)

http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

These are some service pack one tweaks to make.  I followed the "tweaked" column and got a nice performance boost.

Also try turning off system restore, indexing, UAC and run "msconfig" and uncheck all unnecessary apps in the startup tab.

Should reduce RAM usage and give you a more responsive system, I think disabling superfetch may decrease performance unless you have <1GB RAM.

Or as Dan says save up £50 and get a 4GB kit.


----------



## Mad-Matt (Aug 11, 2008)

Disabling superfetch wont reduce performance.  it means you can use system right away instead of waiting an hour for it to finish loading stuff to mem each day  Hurts more the more mem you have to fill.  Even better, if you use sleep mode alot, stuff you have loaded will already be cached in mem ready for next time you load the same programs anyway. so again no need for superfetch in this scenario.

As long as drives are defragged often, superfetch is even less useful since superfetches job is to load recently used files into mem and will show biggest boost when files are fragmented as now they will be a continious block in memory.  If file is continious on hd, then the performance difference will be very small.


----------



## oli_ramsay (Aug 11, 2008)

Also disable hibernation


----------



## Lillebror (Aug 11, 2008)

Mad-Matt said:


> Disabling superfetch wont reduce performance.  it means you can use system right away instead of waiting an hour for it to finish loading stuff to mem each day  Hurts more the more mem you have to fill.  Even better, if you use sleep mode alot, stuff you have loaded will already be cached in mem ready for next time you load the same programs anyway. so again no need for superfetch in this scenario.
> 
> As long as drives are defragged often, superfetch is even less useful since superfetches job is to load recently used files into mem and will show biggest boost when files are fragmented as now they will be a continious block in memory.  If file is continious on hd, then the performance difference will be very small.



Its main job is to load loaders into the ram, so programs start up faster. If you have to wait an hour for it to finish loading dll's and such to the ram, you should try looking  after virus's and such 

Vista is using as much ram as it needs - When you start a game, it dumps all the stuff to the hdd that it dosent need to run the game or the programs in the background:

Ive tried a little test with it. Started photoshop, made a picture that was about 500 megs so that i use around 1500 megs of ram. Then i started a game, collected traces of the files the ram dumps to the hdd. It did even dump the picture and alot of other windows stuff. So it dosent really matter if you are useing 1 gig or more, just looking at your screen


----------



## Wile E (Aug 12, 2008)

Mad-Matt said:


> Disabling superfetch wont reduce performance.  it means you can use system right away instead of waiting an hour for it to finish loading stuff to mem each day  Hurts more the more mem you have to fill.  Even better, if you use sleep mode alot, stuff you have loaded will already be cached in mem ready for next time you load the same programs anyway. so again no need for superfetch in this scenario.
> 
> As long as drives are defragged often, superfetch is even less useful since superfetches job is to load recently used files into mem and will show biggest boost when files are fragmented as now they will be a continious block in memory.  If file is continious on hd, then the performance difference will be very small.



That's not true at all. No matter how well your drives are defragmented, they are not as fast as at launching apps as the ram. Superfetch only adds a couple of seconds to my boot time, but when it does boot, everything I use the most launches much, MUCH faster with it on, compared to with it off.


----------



## Mussels (Aug 12, 2008)

Wile E said:


> That's not true at all. No matter how well your drives are defragmented, they are not as fast as at launching apps as the ram. Superfetch only adds a couple of seconds to my boot time, but when it does boot, everything I use the most launches much, MUCH faster with it on, compared to with it off.



i get the same as wile E. superfetch does make things noticeable faster at loading, assuming you have 1GB+ of ram


----------



## Error 404 (Aug 12, 2008)

*Vista aims to use half your RAM*



francis511 said:


> You`ll never get vista that low !!



From experiance, Vista aims to use about half of the RAM in your computer.
Also, from experiance, Vista will run at less than 300 MB of RAM.
As I said, it aims to use half your RAM.
I had 512 MB of SDRAM. 
It used half. 
It also had 850 MHz of pure PIII POWER at its disposal, and 9.3 GB of HDD space. Using a 512 MB Readyboost capable USB, it ran faster than XP.
To acheive all this, I used vLite to customize my installation. 
I also disabled superfetch.
I'm planning to see how Vista Home Premium SP1 runs on my laptop, I'm done trying Linux...

So, want to get it running at 00 MB RAM? Take out all but 512 MB!


----------



## eidairaman1 (Aug 12, 2008)

http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm


----------

