Free RAM, It’s Benefits
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Why is it beneficial to have freer RAM?
I’m sure that you would have, at some point, experienced a sudden or a gradual slowness of your computer while you were engaged in an important task. Opening a new application consumes quite some time and you probably get mad at that as well. Internet surfing becomes a nightmare as the new browser windows or tabs, take ages to open up. Games either get stuck half way or become extremely slow. The movie that you are watching suddenly becomes a slide show as it starts showing you frame by frame.
All above symptoms are the signs of less free RAM available to your computer. The applications simply do not have enough RAM to continue with what they usually do because your computer system is running with less RAM. They struggle to operate in the ‘normal’ way while competing with one another for your computer’s memory. As a result of this competition, you will experience all or more of the observations mentioned above.
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What is RAM, Anyway?
The resources of your computer always come with a price. There are two primary resources in a computer which require prompt upgrading; hard disk space and RAM. If you need more disk space for storing your favorite music or movies, you can simply add an extra hard disk which comes with a cost. If you require more RAM; you could either add more RAM or free up what you already have. As we have already discussed, adding more RAM is not always a practical solution due to technical limitations and the cost involved. Therefore, freeing more memory is one of the best solutions for your computer.
Almost all applications running in your computer consume precious memory from your system. Therefore, you should always be cautious about who consumes more memory or in other words, who are the ‘memory hogs’. If some insignificant application is taking more memory than what it should consume, ‘uninstalling’ is the best way to go about it. But unfortunately, sometimes we need all these badly designed applications for our daily work.
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What can I do to get more RAM?
You and your friends may come up with many fixes for these slow responses:
1. Restarting the computer is one of the most favored options as it really frees the RAM, so you can open only the application you want to work with after the reboot. But this is not a feasible option all the time. First of all, it consumes time, then you’ve got to open the files to continue what you have been doing, and finally, it is not a proper solution for the problem you have.
2. Surprisingly, Adding more RAM is among the least desired solutions for RAM shortage as RAM is one of those computer resources that come with a high price tag. As an example, if you are interested in upgrading the existing 1 GB RAM to 2 GB RAM by adding a 1 GB memory module, the average cost ranges from $25 to $200. If you are lucky enough to have a common type of DDR or DDR2 RAM, then the cost will be at the lower end. However, especially if you use certain notebooks such as Fujitsu Micro Series, then your cost will be at the high end of the price range.
In addition to that, when upgrading memory types on older computers such as SDRAM, which is no longer in production, many other parts of the computer needs to be upgraded as well and these include a new; motherboard, power supply, CPU, and nowadays possibly even a PCI graphics card too. So at the end of the day, depending on what you choose to buy, the cost can be as high as $500. What’s more? Sometimes, you cannot simply add more RAM to your computer as it does not support it. Motherboards have physical expansion slots limits, while operating systems have memory limits as well.
This mini white paper from Hewlett Packard helps explain the theoretical vs. true memory limits. For example Windows XP 32-Bit can theoretically support the full 4 GBs of RAM; however your hardware is going to allocate some of the address space to the PCI bus, the video adapter memory address space, and other resources. So, if your graphics card has 256 MBs of RAM, your maximum memory available to Windows is going to at most be 3.75 GBs, because Windows has to use 256 MBs of that address space to address your graphics card memory. It’ll actually be lower than the 3.75 GBs because there are other hardware resources that need address space as well. The paper also mentions something interesting about 64-bit computers. Basically, depending on the hardware, you might be limited to 4GB of RAM even if you install 64-bit Windows Vista!
3. Keep reading this article to understand more about our Alternative Cost-Effective Solution designed to free more RAM and make your system perform as fast as it should. (Enough Reading! Skip to Solution…)
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What about the so called Virtual Memory?
Let’s have a look at how your computer system looses free memory and why applications take more time to respond then they normally do. When software applications are launched, they are loaded in to RAM. The CPU works directly with the RAM and any memory reads / writes is a solid state operation where no mechanical devices are involved. As long as RAM has enough space, the applications will reside in RAM, allowing users to access their applications and files, as normal.
Once the RAM becomes over loaded, the computer starts ‘paging to Virtual Memory’ or in other words, saving the application’s information onto the hard disk, which is many times slower when compared to RAM. Now if you try to access an application where its information has been paged, it will take a longer time for the computer to let you use the application. In the case that you launch a new application, then the computer will have to page a part of the existing memory to the hard disk and make some space for the new application to launch, which again is a time consuming process.
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RAM vs. Virtual Memory
When RAM and virtual hard disk memory are compared, RAM is much faster in read/write operations. Plus, the hard disk is not designed for accessing bits and pieces of memory. Therefore, reading and writing to the hard disk constantly for frequently used bits and pieces of information can only be compared to using an elephant to pluck grass off your lawn.
That is why; having enough free memory for applications becomes the key to avoiding your system, swapping information between the hard disk and RAM, at a constant basis. This process not only makes your computer much slower than it is supposed to be but also, reduces the lifetime of the hard disk.
We thought of carrying out our own experiment to measure the effect that RAM has on software applications, in comparison with paging files onto the hardisk.
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Our Load-Time Experiment
The scenario we followed was a common sense setup. Five commonly used applications were measured for their startup time under three RAM conditions; 75% Free Memory, 50% Free Memory, and 0% Free Memory. The average startup times were measured accurately using specifically designed, while the condition of the computer system was static for all three tests.
Computer System Specification:
Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (32-Bit)
Processor: AMD Sempron 1.8 GHz
Hard Disk: 640GB, 7200RPM, 16MB Cache, SATA2
Physical Memory: 2 GBs DDR2 800 MHz
Experiment Results
(Download Official Experiment Data Sheet – Microsoft Excel Format)
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1. If you look at the 0% Free Memory Scenario (indicated in red) for all five applications, it has taken the longest load times.
2. When it comes to 50% Free Memory Scenario (indicated in orange), it has taken the second longest load time irrespective of the application.
3. When it comes To 75% Free Memory Scenario (indicated in green), it has taken the least amount of time to load all five applications.
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The Observation
So what does experiment show us?
In a nutshell, when you have more free memory, you get your applications will load much faster. You do your work faster and you get more productivity. You get rid of all the unpleasant experiences caused by less free memory.
Our statistics suggest that the applications will load two times to four times faster when you have 50% or more, free memory in your system. Therefore, freeing your memory from ‘memory hogs’ and ‘memory garbage’ is a surefire way to enhance your computing experience.
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Our Alternative Cost-Effective Solution
Fresh RAM is Reohix’s solution for all those who suffer with limited or no free RAM. When you are in the middle of some important task and you can’t get anything done due to memory shortage; going out and buying RAM is not a sane option. At this point, you should have some way of freeing up memory and making room for important applications to load up and run smoothly as they should. Although opening Windows Task Manager and closing the unwanted applications is an option, Reohix has developed a far smarter solution for this common problem.
A Close Look At Fresh RAM
Fresh RAM is not a sweeper which does its work once the drama is finished. Instead, it actively monitors the memory utilization of the applications and optimizes runtime. Therefore, it acts as the operating system’s assistant on managing and optimizing memory. Fresh RAM employs effective memory utilization by utilizing some state of the art, complex memory optimization algorithms. Users can simply launch Fresh RAM before they start with their heavy duty work such as multimedia editing or playing their favorite games and Fresh RAM will take care of everything else.
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A Closer Look At Fresh RAM
Fresh RAM optimizes the memory usage of Windows and other applications by analyzing memory usage patterns through complex algorithms. Thanks to analysis in relation to applications and their usage, Fresh RAM makes sure that applications or the game that you are playing will get the maximum RAM possible, when required. Fresh RAM takes a proactive approach when it comes to memory optimizations by optimizing memory usage when applications are first allocated memory.
Fresh RAM manipulates Microsoft Window’s paging mechanism by identifying any unused memory that is marked as ‘in use’ and pages it manually onto the hard disk. This process creates free RAM for any software applications that you are going to use. In addition to core memory optimizations, there are many other system tweaks offered for Windows XP platforms that enhance the system performance even further.
If you feel that you may not need Fresh RAM as you have many GBs of memory, you are certainly mistaken. Fresh RAM can be used under any memory configuration that is experiencing a lack of free RAM available to Windows and other software applications. Although you may have a few GBs of RAM, memory intensive applications such as video editing software and the latest computer games, may consume all of it, in no time. Therefore, having Fresh RAM installed in your computer will always help you to have more free RAM when you most need it!
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A Final Word
RAM is one of the main players when it comes to computer performance. If RAM is optimally used, you will feel the same way about performance as you did on the very first day that you bought your computer. So, allow Fresh RAM to play the hard part of this drama while you enjoy the best computing experience you have ever had!