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WinXP - 256 MB RAM enough for gaming?

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laja

Member
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Joined
Sep 29, 2001
Location
Budapest, Hungary
Hi,

I just did a clean install of WinXP after a fatal Win98 crash, and I have the following problem:

Even with several services disabled and nothing running in the background, I get frequent disk access and jerkiness in Jedi Knight 2. I've checked the Windows task manager, and my page file grows to 402 MB (!!*) during gameplay. Cacheman is installed, the disk is defragmented, and no program loads automatically. I have also deleted all spyware except for those required for Kazaa. No virus, either.

My hardware: P4 1.7 Ghz at 1963 Mhz, Abit TH7-II, 256 MB RDRAM running at 460 Mhz, 30 GB 7200 rpm HDD.

So is it possible that WinXP needs more than 256 MB to run (some) games smoothly? THanks.
 
WinXP is a RAM hog. I would say 256MB is the minimum. You will notice significant improvement in speed by upgrading to 384 or 512MB RAM.
 
I agree , although i run most of my stuff well i notice some slow redraws and refreshes after some 3d games eg. RTCW.

I have a frien with almost the identical rig who just upgraded to 512 and i can see the difference . I want to do the same but the ram I bought for $60 now costs near $100 if ur lucky . :(
 
I ran with 256 until I got my second stick and I was hitting the page file routinely and running out of physical memory. With 512 I've set the swapfile to zero and all my games run fine.
 
laja said:
Hi,

I just did a clean install of WinXP after a fatal Win98 crash, and I have the following problem:

Even with several services disabled and nothing running in the background, I get frequent disk access and jerkiness in Jedi Knight 2. I've checked the Windows task manager, and my page file grows to 402 MB (!!*) during gameplay. Cacheman is installed, the disk is defragmented, and no program loads automatically. I have also deleted all spyware except for those required for Kazaa. No virus, either.

My hardware: P4 1.7 Ghz at 1963 Mhz, Abit TH7-II, 256 MB RDRAM running at 460 Mhz, 30 GB 7200 rpm HDD.

So is it possible that WinXP needs more than 256 MB to run (some) games smoothly? THanks.
Click to expand...
I ran jedi knight 2 with 128 mb of ram and noticed the movies are real jerky..I then put 256 mb of ram and it was smooth as butter..what video card are you useing? You can try setting your agp aperture size higher this should help..
 
I have 2 solutions:

#1 Increase your ICON cache through Reg or find a utility that can: WinXP has a default of 1024 icons cache size. Once you exeed this 1024k, all the icons have to be rebuilt.

My friends File Server (where he download all the crap from internet) is suffering the same disk trashing. He has 384mb ram, I suspect WinXP is rebuilding icons constantly. After he find an utility to increase the icons cache size to 4mb. All the HD trashing stops.

#2 download CustomizerXP. It has a very efficient Memery Manager. I'm runnin WinXP also with 256mb. However, I'm still have 147mb free as I'm tying this messag to you right now.

Without the memory tweak from CustomizerXP, I only have about 60mb free memory.

#3 also there is a REG Tweak to force WinXP to unload Unused DLL from the memory.... Do some search and find this
 
WindowsXP likes to eat RAM. Personally, I'd go w/ no less than 512MB if I were going to run it.

Putting in another 128MB stick should clear your games up a bit, however.
 
Peter007 said:
#2 download CustomizerXP. It has a very efficient Memery Manager. I'm runnin WinXP also with 256mb. However, I'm still have 147mb free as I'm tying this messag to you right now.

Without the memory tweak from CustomizerXP, I only have about 60mb free memory.
Click to expand...

Nice i have exactly 60 free right now. Looks like i'm getting that program!

Thanks!
 
When i had 256Mb of ram, i had "not enough memory" in quake 3. After upgrading to 768Mb all is fine, lol. Get at least another 128Mb in there and you should be ok.
 
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