Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Windows Vista Home Ultimate "eating" RAM

Sep 16, 2007 1:54AM PDT

Fellows,

Is it true that Windows Vista Home Ultimate will "eat" most of the 2 GB of RAM in my laptop???
I'm talking about the HP DV9580US.

I play some heavy games and programs in the computer and usually multitask, that's why I choosed this laptop with 2GB, but now I read that this damned OS will take most of the RAM for its own.

Thank you

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Yes. Any VM OS will eat all the RAM.
Sep 16, 2007 5:29AM PDT

If you've been following Virtual Memory based OSes over the years the one thing they are supposed to do is to first grab every byte and then dole it out to applications. The idea of free RAM in VM OSes is incorrect and usually comes from those that ran DOS way back then. There are also some companies sponging off the uninformed by selling FREERAM programs.

Even Linux, MACOSX and such all claim all the RAM.

Now with that out of the way, what's the next question?

Bob

- Collapse -
And on a related point...
Sep 16, 2007 9:28PM PDT

Vista itself will 'eat' around 500MB of RAM, give or take, for the processes enabled by default. That can be minimized by turning off the services you don't need. The longer you run it between reboots the more it will take, but you can expect reasonable performance with 1GB and should have no problem multitasking and/or gaming with 2GB, provided you have a decent graphics card.

John

- Collapse -
ok
Sep 17, 2007 4:37AM PDT

Thanks Bob and John once again.
Very informative.
John, the graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS with 256 dedicated and up to 1GB shared.
The laptop is the HP DV9580US

Once again, and I dont get tired of repeating, this vista spawn is the worst thing I have ever come accross in computer terms... ooopss I almost forget to mention IE7 another ugly spawn from the gentlemen at Microsoft... what were u thinking guys?

I miss the good XP and IE6... snif

- Collapse -
A member gave a great tip for Vista gamers.
Sep 17, 2007 5:12AM PDT

Turn off AERO since it will nab some 3D video memory for it's own use.

Bob