Boot optimizing for multibooters, Layout.ini util

[gemisigo]

Yes, there is. If you want a program to occupy some memory, just start it .

A very-very strange perception of memory management it is

Usually, my most frequently used programs then stay open and even Superfetch cannot prevent them to be written to the pagefile, if free memory gets short.

Nothing could prevent that, and preventing would be a performance penalty for your currently running application anyway which might be in need of that memory. There are many different memory management strategies (drop the last/least used or the smallest/largest/mounteverest/whateverest page) to counter this, alas, no matter which one you happen to use, it always turns out you should have used another one
There is one very greedy solution though. Get MOOOOORE memoryyy 

So I don't want prefetch to occupy more RAM with programs I don't want to use right now, enforcing the use of the slow pagefile.

That's it!!! This is the word emphasis is on. The word "right NOW". That's why I've written it helps if you use your machine consistently, and that's why you're right, Superfetch is a good invention for regular users (let's not say normal, they might not be ).

It'd even work for you playing games if you were a "regular" user who arrives home after work, let's say about 5pm. boots into windows (if it's not running yet), spends an hour here on the forum and starts playing game somewhere at 7.20 pm and does that regularly. If you do that almost every day, most of the files needed for that (or some other if there are many) game would be loaded into memory till 7.10pm and starting it "should" be lightning fast (ok, I know that is never the case ). But if you are capricious, or if there are many different games you play and change them unpredictably, or if there are days that you play at 5pm. some other days you play at 11pm and so on, then Superfetch would be of no use to you.

It could even be pain in your... well, down there. Then you should disable it. It's there to help you but nobody should stick to something just because others find it useful. There are always exceptions. If it's not good for you, get rid of it.

Talking about wasting something: Normal office-pcs already have Quadcores build in. Thats a real waste of electricity.

They're playing much, aren't they?

[Darlis]

I fully agree with you, especially at this point:

There is one very greedy solution though. Get MOOOOORE memoryyy 

... and starting it "should" be lightning fast (ok, I know that is never the case ).

Have you seen this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs
This makes the whole discussion about RAM and SuperFetch obsolete

Talking about wasting something: Normal office-pcs already have Quadcores build in. Thats a real waste of electricity.

They're playing much, aren't they?

The hidden game in excel and calc, yes.   

[gemisigo]

Have you seen this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs
This makes the whole discussion about RAM and SuperFetch obsolete

True. That was awesome But hey! Wait! What if those applications were Superfetched already?

[jonib]

Have you seen this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs
This makes the whole discussion about RAM and SuperFetch obsolete

Nice, I'll check my budget, hmm empty, I guess I wont upgrade to that then. 

jonib

[verdy_p]

Thats SuperFetch, a new bug feature of Vista. Instead of just keeping a list with the files to (pre)fetch, Superfetch also loads them directly into the RAM. So, the RAM usage will grow overtime, until the the slow pagefile has to be used again. I always disable this.

That's wrong: if some data is read preemptively but not used, it will become an immediate candidate for discarding, to make space available for other more urgent needs, instead of swapping out this unused data.

The SuperFetch in Vista works in collaboration with the VMM to mark the preloaded pages the first time they are effectively accessed. So these pages are just filling the cache, but do not cause additional swap to occur (except if a "dirty page" that has been accessed and modified, but has not been accessed since quite long, probably several minutes but I don't know how the statistics are tuned exactly, in which case such dirty page may be swapped out but still maintained like other pages in the cache, and subject to discarding later according to oldest date of use).

Disabling SuperFetch in Vista (or Seven) has always resulted in lower performances and more IO seek delays later that could have been avoided. The same cannot be said with XP's PreFetch which doesn't work collaboratively with the VMM and does not maintain any accurate usage statistics and just works as a LIFO priority list without taking into account the kind of accesses performed on them or the data source of these pages. So yes, it makes sense to disable PreFetch in XP, but not SuperFetch in Vista.

Also, in most cases, the effect of disabling swapping out of the kernel executive has a negative impact on Vista (except if you have 4GB of memory or more, and don't use very memory-intensive applications, where the benefit is extremely small and will disappear as soon as you want to use a memory-intensive app): you should only do that for server-like installation where you can experiment very variable rates of remote requests for which you want a more immediate response for most of them, and you should use a 64-bit version of the system to manage larger amounts of memory and a much larger number of concurrent threads for your completely independant clients performing very different kinds of operations. Another good use of this setting is for running a virtual OS on top of a parent OS (which should really avoid having its executive pages out): this case is quite similar to the case of application servers for the parent OS (but the hosted client OS should have its kernel executive pageable in its own paging file, especially when there are concurrent client OSes).

If you are the single user of the system, even if you are playing some very CPU-intensive game with lots of textures, animations, maps, and actions, disabling the paging out of unused parts of the kernel executive will just reduce the size of the cache, and reduce its efficiency (so you'll get lower performances). One exception may be made for massively collaborative online games, where the events are unpredictable and come from independant sources, but in most cases this won't make your game use more parts of the system kernel.

[Darlis]

Last time I used SuperFetch was in Vista pre SP1, about a year ago. After a few days the RAM was almost full. So, using a memory intensive application would have resulted in heavy swapping -> slow. (also the constant disk activity noises were extremly annoying. I now have a HDD silencer) Thats why I disabled SuperFetch and of course the overall performance was a bit slower but the sorting functions of MyDefrag helped a lot.
I'm now using Win7 and I'll give SuperFetch a new chance. It really seems to work better than the Vista SuperFetch (less memory usage), so I'll probably let it stay enabled.

If you are the single user of the system, even if you are playing some very CPU-intensive game with lots of textures, animations, maps, and actions, disabling the paging out of unused parts of the kernel executive will just reduce the size of the cache, and reduce its efficiency (so you'll get lower performances). One exception may be made for massively collaborative online games, where the events are unpredictable and come from independant sources, but in most cases this won't make your game use more parts of the system kernel.

Disabling the paging results in less performance? I always disable paging because I have 4GB RAM. I thought that I would get a better performance with this.

Btw. I wouldn't disable PreFetch in XP. It would make the system noticeably slower.

[poutnik]

but remember - empty RAM is wasted RAM.
Especially if content is anytime ready to release the occupied space, if needed. ( = without swapping )