This question may be somewhat tangential, but here it is any way. I'm running Vista 64b on 4GB. It usually runs 4 wu's concurrently. I see that the physical memory use displayed in the task manager is split between, say, 1454 MB cache and 53 MB free; the rest presumably is for the various processes loaded including the seti work.

I know that the Vista cache was improved over XP to use up more of the available free memory. I could increase the memory to a max of 8GB. Should I bother?

At issue is whether the system would be more responsive with more memory or not. I use on-board video. At times I notice that both the video and the network/browser tasks seem sluggish, and I have some evidence this is due to the seti wu's being processed. Conversely, I don't want to spend the money if doubling the memory is not going to improve things at least a little bit.

I'm running also Vista 64bit (4G mem) with separate video (Nvida 9600GT).
Normally mem used are 1.5G to 2.5G

My guess is that "shared mem" between CPU and GPU are your issue.
I think a cheap GPU is an better solution than more ram , it depends on the price off mem and the GPU-card.

B.regards Lazy

I have been running Vista 64-bit on a dual AMD quad-core machine with 3 GT240s; my video is occasionally sluggish also (running optimized CPU and GPU apps). That's 11 apps running at once.

I also have 4GB of memory. More memory won't help, as the amount of memory used by the apps is small relative to 4GB; I rarely get above 2GB in use while all the above are running. (Task Manager shows Physical Memory Usage on Performance tab as less than 2GB all the time).

I agree with Lazydude - a cheap Graphics card will work much better for you.

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I thought was that if I could cache more of the disk, then that part of the sluggishness would subside. Also, I don't understand the GPU shared memory model very well, but wouldn't more memory help that part as well? (Maybe not)

every MB of memory you dedicate to the shared video, takes 1 MB out of the available system memory. And 4GB goes fast.

Rule of thumb: try to keep 50% of physical memory unused. Stuff will be coming in and out of it frequently.. and much more than that windoze likes to revert to
"disk" memory, which will slow you to a crawl.

Honestly, if your motherboard has an available slot, the nvidia 9600gt should give you a BIG boost in performance. I would recommend setting it to suspend GPU process while in use, with a 1-5 minute time period.

They are not a high end card any more. Should be able to find a deal.

And of course windoze is always happy to abuse any memory you do install in it
;)