Program Conflict FYI

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Profile mlcudd
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Message 100222 - Posted: 17 Apr 2005, 14:43:40 UTC

Hi All,
I recently have been running Boinc projects leaving the Client in memory while switching projects, as a poster on another thread suggested to spped up crunching times. However my crunching time for all projects was actually increased by doing this because I also run a program called FreeRam XP pro 1.40 that cleans up ram. After discontinuing the Free Ram program my crunching times returned to their previous position. I have since switched back to not leaving my WU's in memory and still use the Free Ram.

Respectfully,

Rocky
www.boincsynergy.com


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Message 100226 - Posted: 17 Apr 2005, 14:51:13 UTC

Where you get the FreeRAM XP from.. I use cacheman, but I think it doesn't do anything...
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Message 100231 - Posted: 17 Apr 2005, 15:01:40 UTC

A thnig that I hate of this little free-ram utilities is that everytime you tell them to free ram, your start menu takes a decade to open!
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Message 100571 - Posted: 17 Apr 2005, 22:26:34 UTC

Hi Miniziper,
Here is the link to use the Free Ram program. It is free ware, and it works great. Good luck!
respectfully,

Rocky

http://www.yourwaresolutions.com
www.boincsynergy.com


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Message 100643 - Posted: 18 Apr 2005, 1:54:00 UTC

Got it, while its a pretty darn nice application (not as good as Linux RAM management, but oh well, its windows) I don't think it will boost SETI's performance... But I'll keep it anyways, In fact, I need this little booster.
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Message 100650 - Posted: 18 Apr 2005, 2:08:31 UTC - in response to Message 100222.  

> Hi All,
> I recently have been running Boinc projects leaving the Client in memory
> while switching projects, as a poster on another thread suggested to spped up
> crunching times. However my crunching time for all projects was actually
> increased by doing this because I also run a program called FreeRam XP pro
> 1.40 that cleans up ram. After discontinuing the Free Ram program my crunching
> times returned to their previous position. I have since switched back to not
> leaving my WU's in memory and still use the Free Ram.
>

I had something similar happen in terms of increased CPU time on another computer I recently added to BOINC but it was a conflict between Seti and Einstein. I just removed Einstein and all seems to be working normal again for SETI but with both BOINC 4.19 and 4.25, the SETI and Einstein CPU cycles were moving up together which created some ridiculously high processing times. Only one was crunching at any given time but both timers continued to run at the same time and would report the erroneous times.

Funny thing was that the second computer is much faster than my regular computer but WU's were taking much longer to process due to the timer issue.



To truly explore, one must keep an open mind...
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Message 100689 - Posted: 18 Apr 2005, 4:18:10 UTC

XP more or less makes the RAM freeing utilities redundant. Unlike some of the older Win OS's, XP is good about giving up RAM (flushing cached .dlls etc...) when an application needs it. There is no need to have large portions of 'free' RAM hanging about on your system.
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Message 100691 - Posted: 18 Apr 2005, 4:29:52 UTC - in response to Message 100689.  

> XP more or less makes the RAM freeing utilities redundant. Unlike some of the
> older Win OS's, XP is good about giving up RAM (flushing cached .dlls etc...)
> when an application needs it. There is no need to have large portions of
> 'free' RAM hanging about on your system.
>
Thank You Heffed,
I did not have any idea about that. I appreciate the info. is there a setting in XP for that, because with 512 memory in both my boxes. They seem to always have about 30% available until I use the free ram.

Respectfully,

Rocky
www.boincsynergy.com


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Message 100761 - Posted: 18 Apr 2005, 12:30:48 UTC - in response to Message 100689.  

> XP more or less makes the RAM freeing utilities redundant.

That was even the case for Win95.
Win 0-3.x actually benefited from some of the memory optimisers that were around at the time, but since Win95 every reivew i've seen has found that at best the current bunch do nothing, at worst they bog things down even more.
Grant
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Message 101097 - Posted: 19 Apr 2005, 5:41:29 UTC - in response to Message 100691.  

> Thank You Heffed,
> I did not have any idea about that. I appreciate the info. is there a
> setting in XP for that, because with 512 memory in both my boxes. They seem to
> always have about 30% available until I use the free ram.

Nope. It's all automatic.

Like I said, there really is no need to have large amounts of 'free' RAM sitting on your system. 30% available doesn't mean that's all the RAM you have available if you need it. That's just the chunk that doesn't currently have anything loaded/cached in it. If you are running an application that needs more than the 30% reported as free, it can easily grab whatever else it needs. (assuming all your RAM isn't tied up with active programs) The OS will flush inactive .dlls or parts of programs it had cached to give the application requesting more the RAM it wants.

Optimizing RAM can actully hinder performance as MiniZiper has noticed. He mentions the start menu opening slowly. This is because you've flushed your RAM, and these things must now be re-loaded. The optimizer is basically fighting with the OS. The OS has a better idea of what you may need quickly than the optimizer. It tries to intelligently manage the items it keeps cached.

Also, most RAM optimizers are memory resident, (they have a neat little real time meter or something, or 'optimise' your RAM at given intervals) so you've got another little app sitting there eating CPU cycles. (as you noticed with your first post in this thread)

@Grant(SSSF) Yes, it's gradually been getting better with each OS release, but with Win2000/XP, the OS really does a fairly adequate job of memory management.

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Message boards : Number crunching : Program Conflict FYI


 
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