xp vs. w7 memory Q's.

A year or two ago, I fitted a StarTech 3.5" Sata hd caddy-less drive bay,
into a 5.25" bay, in my Antec Solo case|Asus M3N78 | Phenom II X4 3.2ghz cpu
| 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix, so that I could quickly swap hard-disks between
my gorgeous, robust, reliable, problem free (which takes a good deal of
expertise including an occasional quick Ghost backup before changing the
palatform in any way - so that I can restore it in 6 minutes flat if
necessary), XP Home edition, in which I do everything,

....and my other hard-disk with Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit version on it, wth
which I occasionally dabble, and gradually prepare it for XP's end of
product life !

Now, W7 is grindingly slow, and I've pondered on imaging it onto a SSD, and
swapping out memory modules for bigger ones - perhaps 2x4gb ? or would it be
better to simply add an extra 2x1gb into my two spare memory slots, which,
if I did, would enable channel interleave, (which would become available to
W7, when 2x2x1gb modules are fitted, in addition to Page interleave,
.....and with 2x2x1gb of memoury fitted how would the motherboard memory
controller behave with regard to XP, as regards to page-interleave and XP's
less than 4gb's use of avaialable memory ? ...if you see what I mean ?

regards, Richard

On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 11:22:17 +0100, RJK wrote:
A year or two ago, I fitted a StarTech 3.5" Sata hd caddy-less drive bay,
into a 5.25" bay, in my Antec Solo case|Asus M3N78 | Phenom II X4 3.2ghz cpu
| 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix, so that I could quickly swap hard-disks between
my gorgeous, robust, reliable, problem free (which takes a good deal of
expertise including an occasional quick Ghost backup before changing the
palatform in any way - so that I can restore it in 6 minutes flat if
necessary), XP Home edition, in which I do everything,

...and my other hard-disk with Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit version on it, wth
which I occasionally dabble, and gradually prepare it for XP's end of
product life !

Now, W7 is grindingly slow, and I've pondered on imaging it onto a SSD, and
swapping out memory modules for bigger ones - perhaps 2x4gb ? or would it be
better to simply add an extra 2x1gb into my two spare memory slots, which,
if I did, would enable channel interleave, (which would become available to
W7, when 2x2x1gb modules are fitted, in addition to Page interleave,
....and with 2x2x1gb of memoury fitted how would the motherboard memory
controller behave with regard to XP, as regards to page-interleave and XP's
less than 4gb's use of avaialable memory ? ...if you see what I mean ?

Windows Vista/7 is unbearable unless you have at least 4GB of RAM.

*Any* 32-bit Windows on a 4GB system, only 3GB can be utilized by the whole
system. The remaining 1GB is wasted because the highest 1GB of the memory
address space is reserved for hardwares.

RJK wrote:
A year or two ago, I fitted a StarTech 3.5" Sata hd caddy-less drive bay,
into a 5.25" bay, in my Antec Solo case|Asus M3N78 | Phenom II X4 3.2ghz cpu
| 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix, so that I could quickly swap hard-disks between
my gorgeous, robust, reliable, problem free (which takes a good deal of
expertise including an occasional quick Ghost backup before changing the
palatform in any way - so that I can restore it in 6 minutes flat if
necessary), XP Home edition, in which I do everything,

...and my other hard-disk with Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit version on it, wth
which I occasionally dabble, and gradually prepare it for XP's end of
product life !

Now, W7 is grindingly slow, and I've pondered on imaging it onto a SSD, and
swapping out memory modules for bigger ones - perhaps 2x4gb ? or would it be
better to simply add an extra 2x1gb into my two spare memory slots, which,
if I did, would enable channel interleave, (which would become available to
W7, when 2x2x1gb modules are fitted, in addition to Page interleave,
....and with 2x2x1gb of memoury fitted how would the motherboard memory
controller behave with regard to XP, as regards to page-interleave and XP's
less than 4gb's use of avaialable memory ? ...if you see what I mean ?

regards, Richard




Asus M3N78
Phenom II X4 3.2ghz cpu
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix

XP Home edition (32 bit)
Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit -- slow

*******

When more than 4GB of RAM is involved,
that would require moving to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

The 2GB should have been enough to make it work.
Especially if WinXP was OK performance-wise.

I would not expect "a miracle to happen", with 2x4GB installed.

A typical modern Windows, with large RAM install, will
have about 1GB "spoken for". Leaving your other 1GB
for your usage. As the available RAM drops, so does
the "spoken for" amount. When I run Windows 7 in a VM,
with only 1GB assigned to it, it still runs snappy.
The "spoken for" amount is 306MB.

http://imageshack.us/a/img30/322/al0.gif

My laptop, with 3GB installed... Notice how
the laptop is currently wasting cycles, in idle!

http://imageshack.us/a/img32/6517/3lh.gif

Your problem is, what cruft has been turned on in the
new OS.

The new OSes seem to be a bit sensitive to the amount
of services installed by modern software. I installed
just a webcam package and a printer package on my
Windows 7 laptop, and noticed an immediate sluggish
behavior. And that only added a few services.

If you can manage to set up a Virtual Machine environment
while running WinXP, give one of these guest machines a try, and
see how snappy it is.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

Select

"Windows"
"Virtual PC for Windows 7" or "VirtualBox on Windows"

and you'll see various downloads offered. These are
guest machines for a virtual environment. I selected
"Virtual PC for Windows 7" and with a little effort,
got the guest machine running in VPC2007. But, if you try VirtualBox
from Oracle (free) as a host, the virtual machine is likely
to be better supported. I still can't get shared folders
working to my satisfaction (VPC2007 implementation issue).

In any case, when I ran the IE10 - Win7

WindowsVPC.part01.exe
WindowsVPC.part02.rar
WindowsVPC.part03.rar
WindowsVPC.part04.rar

as a virtual machine, I found it behaved better than my
Windows 7 laptop (which is slow). And my virtual machine
environment, is limited to a single core on VPC2007. So that
tells me, that the guest OS is "tuned" and has some
important "cruft" turned off. Perhaps just disabling Aero
would help ? Or turning off indexing ?

You need to find a tuning article for Windows 7, like
how to run Windows 7 on a Netbook, to get some idea
how to make it behave itself. I don't think more RAM
is going to help, if it is already behaving like a pig.

You should be doing the normal benchmarking stuff.

1) HDTune disk benchmark - check for normal looking curve.
Not jammed in PIO mode and a flat line.
2) Task Manager - check for run-away processes.
3) Resource Manager (Hard faults per second, below 100).
4) SuperPI benchmark has normal run-time. The new OS should
not cause any disadvantage. I'm not up on multi-core
benchmarks, but you'll need to find one of those and test
both OSes.
5) Run your favorite video benchmarks. Specperf would suck
on both OSes. 3DMark2001SE might be fun, but of limited value
from a technical perspective. You need to see BITBLT or similar
2D desktop results as well (in case 2D acceleration is disabled).
The only fun bench for that, is too old (1997 or so?).

That's not an exhaustive list, just a "shoot from the hip".

*******

On an AMD system, you have options in the BIOS for
"ganged" or "non-ganged" operation of the dual channel
memory. The BIOS would normally select the non-ganged
by default, as that's a better match for usage patterns
on a quad core. "Ganged" is for a single core processor.
Your motherboard has "DCT Unganged Mode" with options
of "Auto" or "Always", so you don't have that much
choice in the matter. It should already be well-prepared
for quad core, by being unganged. In "Auto", it should
know you have a quad core, and do the right thing.

Also, make sure the RAM is actually installed on two different
channels. If you put both sticks on the same channel, that
would not be nearly as good. You could try CPUZ and see
what it says. Since I have no modern AMD systems here,
I don't know if it would report "unganged" "dual channel"
or not.

OK, found an example here. Yes, CPUZ can report "unganged".
CPUZ is available from cpuid.com . Use the "no-install" version.

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/5703/01h8.jpg

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
RJK wrote:

....and with 2x2x1gb of memoury fitted how would the motherboard memory
controller behave with regard to XP, as regards to page-interleave and
XP's less than 4gb's use of avaialable memory ? ...if you see what I
mean ?

regards, Richard




Asus M3N78
Phenom II X4 3.2ghz cpu
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix

XP Home edition (32 bit)
Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit -- slow

*******

When more than 4GB of RAM is involved,
that would require moving to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

The 2GB should have been enough to make it work.
Especially if WinXP was OK performance-wise.

I would not expect "a miracle to happen", with 2x4GB installed.

A typical modern Windows, with large RAM install, will
have about 1GB "spoken for". Leaving your other 1GB
for your usage. As the available RAM drops, so does
the "spoken for" amount. When I run Windows 7 in a VM,
with only 1GB assigned to it, it still runs snappy.
The "spoken for" amount is 306MB.

http://imageshack.us/a/img30/322/al0.gif

My laptop, with 3GB installed... Notice how
the laptop is currently wasting cycles, in idle!

http://imageshack.us/a/img32/6517/3lh.gif

Your problem is, what cruft has been turned on in the
new OS.

The new OSes seem to be a bit sensitive to the amount
of services installed by modern software. I installed
just a webcam package and a printer package on my
Windows 7 laptop, and noticed an immediate sluggish
behavior. And that only added a few services.

If you can manage to set up a Virtual Machine environment
while running WinXP, give one of these guest machines a try, and
see how snappy it is.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

Select

"Windows"
"Virtual PC for Windows 7" or "VirtualBox on Windows"

and you'll see various downloads offered. These are
guest machines for a virtual environment. I selected
"Virtual PC for Windows 7" and with a little effort,
got the guest machine running in VPC2007. But, if you try VirtualBox
from Oracle (free) as a host, the virtual machine is likely
to be better supported. I still can't get shared folders
working to my satisfaction (VPC2007 implementation issue).

In any case, when I ran the IE10 - Win7

WindowsVPC.part01.exe
WindowsVPC.part02.rar
WindowsVPC.part03.rar
WindowsVPC.part04.rar

as a virtual machine, I found it behaved better than my
Windows 7 laptop (which is slow). And my virtual machine
environment, is limited to a single core on VPC2007. So that
tells me, that the guest OS is "tuned" and has some
important "cruft" turned off. Perhaps just disabling Aero
would help ? Or turning off indexing ?

You need to find a tuning article for Windows 7, like
how to run Windows 7 on a Netbook, to get some idea
how to make it behave itself. I don't think more RAM
is going to help, if it is already behaving like a pig.

You should be doing the normal benchmarking stuff.

1) HDTune disk benchmark - check for normal looking curve.
Not jammed in PIO mode and a flat line.
2) Task Manager - check for run-away processes.
3) Resource Manager (Hard faults per second, below 100).
4) SuperPI benchmark has normal run-time. The new OS should
not cause any disadvantage. I'm not up on multi-core
benchmarks, but you'll need to find one of those and test
both OSes.
5) Run your favorite video benchmarks. Specperf would suck
on both OSes. 3DMark2001SE might be fun, but of limited value
from a technical perspective. You need to see BITBLT or similar
2D desktop results as well (in case 2D acceleration is disabled).
The only fun bench for that, is too old (1997 or so?).

That's not an exhaustive list, just a "shoot from the hip".

*******

On an AMD system, you have options in the BIOS for
"ganged" or "non-ganged" operation of the dual channel
memory. The BIOS would normally select the non-ganged
by default, as that's a better match for usage patterns
on a quad core. "Ganged" is for a single core processor.
Your motherboard has "DCT Unganged Mode" with options
of "Auto" or "Always", so you don't have that much
choice in the matter. It should already be well-prepared
for quad core, by being unganged. In "Auto", it should
know you have a quad core, and do the right thing.

Also, make sure the RAM is actually installed on two different
channels. If you put both sticks on the same channel, that
would not be nearly as good. You could try CPUZ and see
what it says. Since I have no modern AMD systems here,
I don't know if it would report "unganged" "dual channel"
or not.

OK, found an example here. Yes, CPUZ can report "unganged".
CPUZ is available from cpuid.com . Use the "no-install" version.

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/5703/01h8.jpg

Paul

Many thanks,

I should have mentioned that it's mainly program load times are slow, also
W7 Control Panel | Device Manager | Add/Remove programs etc. are sluggish to
appear (subsequent loads faster (when some parts are still cached)), and
have been meaning to inspect hd performance - as you suggest with HD Tune.
....I think I'll try to work through theeldergeeks or blackviper running
services list to fine-tune as you suggest but, VERY time consuming, and a
bit hit and miss regarding which service is dependant on another service and
"may" be required etc. !
....can't move to 64 bit version, that would destroy my entire software
library, which would cost a small unaffordable fortune to update and/or
replace !

To get page-interleave working 2x modules have to be on the same channel, I
always thought. and channel interleave kicks in when 4x modules are fitted
?

Anyway, thanks for the many useful pointers, I'l be spending some time
working through them, after adding in 2x1gb on other two memeory slots, very
soon :-)

regards, Richard