Configure RAM To Improve System Performance

Learn how to use RAM optimistically  to get highest performance by just configuring you system setting very easily. This is one of the best software tips for managing OS in your system.

In last article we have seen how to handle shut-down time issues for windows and how to speed up the display of menus. Likewise we are going to configure RAM setting to boost PC performance.

FREE YOUR RAM AND IMPROVE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

If you have 1-2GB of RAM, I recommend the following performance optimizations for Windows (mostly XP)

1. Disable Virtual Memory (swap drive)

Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Performance [Settings] -> Advanced tab -> Virtual Memory [Change]
Select "No Paging file"

2. Set the TEMP and TMP environment variables to [another Drive]:\

Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> [Environment Variables]
Edit Variables TEMP and TMP. 

3. Set the Internet Explorer (or Firefox Cache) to the another Drive [called RAM drive]

Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Options -> Browsing History [Settings]
Click the [Move Folder] button, and assign the temp folder to your RAM drive.
Change the disk space to be slightly less than the capacity of the RAM drive.
(Firefox is a bit more involved, requires editing of one of the config files)

• NoteSpecially, placing temporary files there will mean they can be read from and written to a lot faster than even main disk, so background operations should be a lot faster. The downside is that you lose a chunk of your main memory, but for something like a netbook where you're not running any memory-intensive programs, going from 2GB RAM to 1.5GB isn't going to be an enormous hit.

As for preventing data loss

When you computer sleeps, the contents of your RAM are still stored into it, so no occurrence of data lost. When you hibernate your PC, RAM is saved to disc, so here also no data is lost. But in case if power is cut without warning, you would lose the contents of your RAM, and thus the contents of the RAM disc i.e. another drive too.
Worst case scenario: you would lose your browser cache (i.e. saved images and pages to make common page loads appear a bit faster), but the rest of your profile, being stored on the main disk proper, would be intact.

You can check by following test

1. Start any application, say Excel. Open some large documents.
2. Now go to Windows Task Manager and click Processes tab and sort the list in descending order on Mem Usage. You will notice that excel will be somewhere at the top, using multiple MBs of memory.
3. Now switch to excel and simply minimize it (Don’t use the Minimize All Windows option of the task bar).
4. Now go back to the Windows Task Manager and see where excel is listed. Most probably you will not find it at the top. You will typically have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find excel. Now check out the amount of RAM it is using. Surprised? The memory utilization has reduced by a huge amount.
5. Minimize each application that you are currently not working on by clicking on the Minimize button.

You can increase the amount of available RAM by a substantial margin. Depending upon the number and type of applications you use together, the difference can be as much as 50 percent of extra RAM.
In any multitasking system, minimizing an application means that it won’t be utilized by the user right now. Therefore, the OS automatically makes the application use virtual memory & keeps bare minimum amounts of the code in physical RAM.