64 bit O/S and 32 bit apps RAM usage

technogiant · November 1st, 2009, 12:19 PM

I'm a non tech guy so please forgive me if these are the ramblings of a fool but as a new convert to 64 bit O/S I have some questions.

I'm running Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit version and I have 8GB of ram.

I also have two SSD's running in raid0 and as a consequence have turned off page file, superfetch and prefetch.

It was doing this has made me look further into memory issues physical and virtual.
In my reading I became aware that even if you are running a 64 bit O/S if you are running a 32 bit application on it then that application can only address 2 - 4 GB of ram as outlined by the below microsoft page.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx

It seemed to me that as my system is only used for gaming and I would only be using one rescource intensive application at a time and games are generally 32 bit that much of my system ram would be unused. I was also concerned about having no page file available as to what would happen if the game/app needed to access virtual memory.....I'm aware that some games like ARMAII require a page file regardless of your ram capacity.

I've been wondering how to make use of the additonal ram or at least make it accessible as I don't think it is being used for cache or anything as I've turned off superfetch and prefetch.

I've been thinking that using a 3-4 GB ramdisk as a page file would at least make the ram available to the 32 bit app in the form of an extremely fast page file system.

Another alternative I've come across is using Address Windowing Extensions which allows 32 bit apps to access upto 64GB of ram provided you lock the memory so it can't page file. I'm not sure if these features are available in win 7 home premium 64 bit or just in server O/S's.

Would value your opinions.

gen.Rage1991hrv · November 1st, 2009, 01:37 PM

uhhhh hmmmm well i am using windows vista x64 and i have not seen any problems with x32 applications (yes they run on 3.6Gb but do you need it more??)
some programs-games are patched so it can run max ram you have but for rest idk

technogiant · November 1st, 2009, 02:55 PM

I would imagine those game patches are patching it to a 64 bit version to allow access to all the system ram.

As regards whether the 32 bit app/game needs more than the 2 - 4 GB of ram?....I really don't know....do 32 bit games need to access page file often or at all if they have their full 2 to 4 GB of ram available to them?

**Regeneration** · November 1st, 2009, 03:01 PM

Some of the latest 32-bit games and applications are aware to 3.5+ GB. I guess more developers will provide 64-bit binaries now after Windows 7 got released.

technogiant · November 1st, 2009, 05:03 PM

So currently I don't think it would have any negative affect if the apps I'm using are 32 bit if I were to use a small ramdisk as page file...perhaps 3Gb leaving 5GB for system ram....what would you suggest I should use in the system settings when I set it as page file...allow the system to decide size or custom and if the latter which initial and maximum size?

archwarrior · November 1st, 2009, 08:38 PM

Hi, First of all I think it is very important that you use x64-bit operating system, yes it’s true that 95% of games & applications work in x32 mode, however you will of course know you need x64 to benefit from the FULL 8GB of ram, as far as paging file and ram usage in concerned, deleting the page file all-together is not a good idea at all, despite what tweak guides may tell you, most of which was written in the days of XP, pagefile as come a long way since then, you need a page file because if you don’t have one you won’t be able to put your PC to sleep, plus many apps and games require a page file, from personal intensive experience of this, I would advise you turn off raid have 1 OS for your primary hard drive, and 1 HD blank to begin with, then once you have installed all your software, games & apps, create an image and place this image on the blank hard disk, you should still have 1000s of GB available, then have your page file on this hard drive, setting it to automatic works best I have found, as it will increase and decrease as and when if needed, but I have noticed you will never-ever use over 12% of the page file with 8GB of ram, I have 6GB and my page file percent as never risen from 12%, but I have noticed it using even less than that, so do not concern yourself about ram & page file usage, in fact having you PC set as it is now without a page file etc is decreasing your speed immensely.

Use a program such as Vista Manager or Windows 7 Manager to get the best from your OS, disable all security modules such as windows defender, user account control panel and certainly disable DEP, disabling DEP is quite advanced but quite simple using command prompt, disabling DEP is not recommended in many tweak guides but if you are a gamer its very very important, because some games WILL NOT work with dep enabled, all this DEP, defender and user account control panels is for newbie’s, you don’t need them, if you want to be a gamer, services also play a very important role in your ram usage check out black vipers windows services tweak guide (for vista), and set many to manual, it’s quite simple to follow, with 8GB you don’t need to actually disable any services just set them to manual.

You might be thinking well why disable RAID, well RAID is a lazymans way of cloning the hard disk, but by doing so you hard disks are constantly talking to each other un-necessarily, just create an image and update as and when you need to.

make sure you have also tweaked your BIOS, to enjoy maximum performance, you don’t need to overclock with your spec so don’t start thinking about it, trust me when I say I have been there, done that when it comes to trying to squeeze everything out of your ram and hard drive which becomes an habit and in-time corrupts more that benefits, find the best settings and stick with them.

Also you have made a big mistake disabling prefetch all-together, again from experience you need to set readyboost to automatic, and using a registry edit set your page file to ONLY fetch start-up programs and nothing else to do this goto:

Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters then set ENABLE PREFETCHER to 2 and set ENABLE Superfetch to 2

once this is done re-enable superfecth and set it to automatic, job done, you must have readyboost and superfecth enabled and set to automatic all you will run into invisible problems, readyboost with or without USB hardware increasing your boot time by a massive 5 seconds +.

Make sure you clear out the prefetch folder before you do all this you should NEVER delete the readyboot folder though, just delete its contents.

also make sure you have not got lots of junk programs loading at start-up you don’t need any more than 4, rest can be done from desktop, turn off all automatic updating within programs especially including windows update, because having updates set to automatic can decrease you speed by upto 5%, trust me I know, just update as and when needed yourself, automatic updates are mostly again for noobs and it’s a way of been lazy but it takes up resources, so get rid of all the junk from start-up.

Don’t have too many security programs loaded one will do fine, and not an all-in-one firewall and anti-virus solution this will decrease your speed by a massive 10% despite what they advertise.

To conclude read tweak guides, monitor your performance try different settings, but don’t keep swopping all the time, find the best and stick to it, every time you change your system settings changing occur blind to the average user, which can in-time simply set everything back to default without your knowing, it’s all done in the registry.

Vista Manager is a great program or Windows 7 Manager is great to, but remember don’t get hooked to tweaking to the max, find the best stick to it.

I’ve been using PCs over 20years now, I fix more than 3 PCs a week, and I’m a PC gamer and know the inside of windows far more than most of your PC world technicians know.

Remember always use x64, to get the best benefits. Any more questions please feel free to ask remember to re-check what I have said about prefetch, pagefile etc.

ALL THE BEST GOOD LUCK.

archwarrior · November 1st, 2009, 08:55 PM

Oh! and one more point in NGO I have written a guide about superfetch and what it actually does, entitled "To Superfetch or not to Superfetch" search for it, and have a good read, you might also want to check out my Windows 7 Posting, you will see that what I have told you in this post contridicts some of what I have said in those postings, but stick with what I have said in this posting, ideally keep superfetch set to manual until you have everything set up on your PC, then apply the regedit I have talked about in this posting and re-enable it to automatic along with readyboost.

But be AWARE that everytime you change your Windows Theme and in some cases your sound scheme superfetch will revery to default - fetching applications and everything else, so you need to watch out for that, you should only ever have superfetch - superfetching your startup programs unless you are using the EXACT same programs daily.

Superfetch as been modified in Windows 7 but still set it to only fetch the startup stuff, nothing else.

the problem with many people is that they leave all the services etc at default which is most cases is using more than 20% of resources which if you are a single PC, alone internet user you will NEVER-EVER Need, so check out the services tweak guide. http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Good Luck and all the best.

technogiant · November 1st, 2009, 11:42 PM

WoW...thats a lot of info....I'm going to have a good look through all that...thanks very much for your advice.
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As regards disabling raid.....I'm actually using stripped raid0 of two ssd's and not a mirrored raid setup...so I don't think the drives are doing what you describe in my set up and I back up manualy using disc imaging software to a large conventional HDD.

I've read your previous post on superfetch with interest and agree fully with what you say and your arguments against it...I can't understand why you now suggest I should re enable it? Surely the arguments against Superfetch are even greater when you are using an ssd as access times are so fast that superfetch is made redundant.

I'm quite confused about page file as well. I've been messing with the settings and have found that when I set it to "system managed" it creates an approx 8gb page file, conversely if I set its size manually and set its initial minimum size to the minimum size of 16MB it actually stays at that size and must pressume it is not being used because the system does not need to use it because I'm using 8 gb of ram......in fact I was experimenting using the msconfig to limit the amount of ram the system uses and found that the page file only increased in size when I starved the system of ram and ran a demanding game.
My question being why on earth is the system creating an 8gb page file for when set to system managed when it appears it is not required?

It's all interesting stuff though and I'm going to look further into such matters as superfetch, prefetch, readyboost and page file.