How I Free Up System Resources - RAM mostly

Well, my computer has only 512Mb of ram and nowadays it's not sufficient to play good games. But Lot of people I know actually wastes their system resources like ram on a lot of start up programs and other programs they don't actually need to play games.

Normally when I start my PC my Ram usage is about 320Mb out my 512Mb. So this is what I do to save my system resources. Note, I am using windows XP. After I am done, I end up with a ram usage of only 150Mb-170Mb out of 512Mb.

1. I keep a separate XP User Profile to play games. That way I can totally tweak it to save as much ram to play games.

2. First I clean up the unwanted start up programs in my new user profile. I use the Microsoft Autoruns tool. In it I remove ticks from all the the startup programs i do not need to play games like 3rd party software. Eg: adobe updater etc....

If you are using an ATI graphics card and you have the catalyst center installed, you will be able to see it running in the background from the task manager. It's process name is ccc.exe and there is another process associated with it named mom.exe. You do not need either of them to play games. It is there just to open the catalyst center. It alone eats about 25-40Mb of ram. I always stop both ccc.exe and mom.exe processes when playing games. You can also find the Catalyst Control Center service in the Autoruns tool and remove it from start up programs. When you want to access the catalyst control center again just tick it in the Autoruns tool and restart the PC.

There are a lot of stuff not visible to us even from the task manager. But do not remove drivers and things like that. What I do is I look down the column of the manufacturer. I keep all the ones from Microsoft and remove other stuff that I already know about.

After that I restart my computer. WARNING. Removing System Programs can cause problems. Therefore when you first open the Autoruns Tool, Save the configuration as default. Then change the startup programs and if some thing goes wrong load the default file.

3. I also stop my virus guard as it takes about 100 MB of ram. Mine is Kaspersky 2009 and I stop its protection and then close it.

4. Then I use a software called Memturbo 4. It can defrag, free and optimize your ram. It has a lot of other functions that helps to speed your computer. It is very good for gamers. I always defrag and free more ram before playing any game.

Well that's it. After I've done all these, my ram usage is only about 150Mb.

 

 

 

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Ram is so cheap that this is a lot of effort compared to buying another stick. 512, even if you got 4/5 of it, won't be enough for new stuff to be smooth.

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Yeah, RAM is dirt cheap as you can get 2GB for about $40 or less. Of course, you don't say much about the rest of the specs of your computer, especially how old it is, either way all you need to do as add more ram to your computer and your done. If it is a PC 3.5GB at most but 2GB of RAM is all you really need to get your computer to run a bit smoother. Also if you have a gfx card see what kind of memory it has, such as 256 or 512MB and that way the games will use that memory first before tapping into the computer's memory.

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If your games are lagging a bit then get more ram but you could also up the amount of virtual ram; ram that swaps from your hard drive to the northbridge. If you go into the system windows click on performance and click virtual ram.

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First of all, the "virtual ram" you're talking about is not going to speed up your computer, in fact it slows down your pc because the hard disk drive is a lot slower compared to "real" RAM memory, access times are 10x to 50x slower and throughput is even 100-500x slower. There is no need the change the size of the pagefile because windows is managing it for you, you can do a lot more harm when changing the setting because if you set the upper limit to low and windows runs out of memory you will get a BSOD.

@BHerath: wow, you've got to get a new virus scanner, my Avast/Sygate Firewall combination only uses 80Mb of memory .
Another thing, I suggest not using one of those ram defraggers/cleaners. All they do is moving data from the faster RAM to the slower pagefile (as told before). In fact you're slowing down your pc because now windows has to access the disk first more than usual. They are only usefull when you're using application that suffer from serious memory leaks.

 

 

 

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I have 4 GB of RAM, I just have let the system use 2 GB for software cache with 0 "Free" so that the system would be using the RAM to the full potential. Note that caching software doesn't actually really "use up" your RAM as it will flush the cache when an application requires space on the memory module.

Usually to clean up RAM usage is to run less applications, this includes background processes that are not system-critical. Many people leave a lot of background processes which eats up their RAM and CPU resources. Furthermore, make sure that you don't have any malware installed as they commonly also use up valuable system resources.

xboxrulz

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close programs dont use goto task manger and see what is takeing the most and end a few things and then you be all set

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Alternatively you can remove startup items which are using too much memory manually. To remove unwanted startup processed, follow these steps :
1. Click Start and then RUN. Type msconfig and hit enter.
2. This opens System Configuration utility. Now select Startup tab. Now you can uncheck unwanted items such as yahoo messenger, adobe reader etc. Just check system processes and antivirus.

You can also use a small application called Game Booster developed by Iobit.

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