Rambooster. yeah or nay?

[DukeP]

Im running some modelling software on my smallish computer here at my University office.

Its runing win nt and its equipped with 256mb ram.

Any gain by using the program rambooster?

Anyone that has experience with it?

(www.rambooster.net).

Its free, so Im wondering wheter its loaded with spyware or other annoyances. Its quite cheap to BUY (15$) but I cant see the advantage of buying it, when its allready free.. (sic.).

Please enlighten me, allknowing MURCERs.



~~DukeP~~

[Guru]

I used to run cacheman on my old win9x comps it worked great!

[Guru]

link

http://www.outertech.com/

[rugger]

With OS's like XP and 2000, I doubt a program like rambooster could make much difference at all.

XP/2000 memory management, while hardly optimal, is hardly what one would call weak.

Furthermore, people misunderstand the meaning of free memory. In the old DOS times, free physical memory was important because it limited the size of the programs you could run. Also, programs like smartdrv used staticly sized caches that held a specific quantity of memory. This meant that manually controlling the amount of memory used was important because it significantly affected your ability to run programs and the performance you got from those programs.

However virtually all modern operating systems are based on a unified virtual memory pool system. Such a system has few static limits and only requires a small amount of permanantly stuck in RAM allocated information. The rest of memory is used as needed to provide the best dynamic performance possible. The disk cache can be expanded and contracted as required, unused but allocated memory can be moved to the virtual memory. Programs are loaded into memory as required, and program memory can be freed if needed. The OS decides what to do with the memory given the type and level of memory pressure programs are excerting on the system.

For modern operating systems, the goal of the OS is to have very little free memory. Free memory to an OS designer is simply memory going to waste that should be doing something to improve the systems performance and reduce access to expensive IO devices.

The real performance questions to ask on modern operating systems are:

1) Is my workload RAM requirements smaller then the actual RAM I have installed in my computer. The simple answer to that is to run your workload, and if the page file is under heavy access, the answer is NO.
2) How much memory can the OS quickly give me if my programs ask for it. This is the total of firstly the actual free ram, secondly, how much RAM the OS can prune from the disk cache, thirdly, how much unused/rarely used RAM the OS can take from other programs. This greatly affects the performance of many programs.
All rambooster probably does is excert that little bit of pressure needed to free this memory and add it to the free memory statistic.

As a further note, one reason why XP/2000 appears somewhat swap happy while your system is idle is because it is writing rarely used memory to the swapfile. This adds to the memory that the OS can free quickly if needed. This also, along with a little bit of memory activity, seems to have the side effect on XP/2000 of pushing programs out of memory into swap even though there is enough physical ram for all programs.

[rugger]

Originally posted by Guru
I used to run cacheman on my old win9x comps it worked great!

Yeah, win9x had some pretty awful VM issues that show themselves in high memory configurations

[DukeP]

Ok. So Rugger, I really shouldnt see any improvements by running this (or alike, thanx Guru!) products?

My problem steems most likely to memmoryleakage, everything _just_ works dandy, the first hour or so.

~~DukeP~~

[rugger]

hmmm, programs that leak memory ussually push the leaked memory into swap. For example, my games sometimes leak memory, but play fine until the virtual memory is completely exhausted.

Give ramboost a try anyway, it's free, and I could be wrong in your situation.

[Gurm]

Never been a fan of spending RAM and CPU cycles... to... FREE Up some RAM and CPU cycles... ROFL.

- Gurm

[YueYang166]

I tested it, it is very usfull , I want to buy it as soon.

The website saids, RAMBooster.Net is a RAM Optimizer (Memory Booster); it's a smart memory management program that will keep your computer (PC) running better, faster, and longer. It allows you to instantly free up RAM (memory) when your system slows down.

www.rambooster.net

[rugger]

Originally posted by YueYang166
I tested it, it is very usfull , I want to buy it as soon.

The website saids, RAMBooster.Net is a RAM Optimizer (Memory Booster); it's a smart memory management program that will keep your computer (PC) running better, faster, and longer. It allows you to instantly free up RAM (memory) when your system slows down.

www.rambooster.net

How does RAMBoost.NET improve the efficency of the memory management system in NT/XP/2000?

Why is instantly freeing up memory useful when the OS will free memory for you as your application needs it?

[Technoid]

"Rambuster" is a big marketing hype, avoid at all costs

[DukeP]

Originally posted by YueYang166
I tested it, it is very usfull , I want to buy it as soon.

The website saids, RAMBooster.Net is a RAM Optimizer (Memory Booster); it's a smart memory management program that will keep your computer (PC) running better, faster, and longer. It allows you to instantly free up RAM (memory) when your system slows down.

www.rambooster.net

Lol. Somehow THIS wasnt exactely the answer I was looking for...


Anyhow, tried it, it works (sort of) but it takes far to long to do its stuff (and it crashed once).

I found someone who had a spare 512mb pc133 laying around.

Thx all.
~~DukeP~~

[YueYang166]

you can try it.

[Gurm]

RAM boosters are useless pieces of shit. There, I've said it.

2k/XP aren't the BEST memory managers in the world, but they're pretty darn good. They don't need any "help".

- Gurm

[bibble]

I have used them in 98 noticed a bit of difference. I used in 2000 and xp and not much to be honest - i second gurm but withless vehemence