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    Has anyone used RAMRush?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by JWBlue, Sep 20, 2010.

  1. JWBlue

    JWBlue Notebook Deity

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  2. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    The real question is are there ANY worth anything at all. These sorts of apps are snake oil written by folks who THINK they know more about memory management than the folks who wrote the operating system. I have seen these apps since the days of Windows 3.1 and none of them have been woirth using.

    Gary
     
  3. Pirx

    Pirx Notebook Virtuoso

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    Yes, and the answer is always and invariably a resounding "No". That kind of stuff is a waste even just thinking about.
     
  4. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Back in the HIMEM days (win 3.1) these kinds of apps were actually kinda helpful. All they really do is allocate a ton of memory, then release it all, forcing all running apps to the pagefile.

    With current memory managers, Windows (and any modern x86 OS) will do that for you and do it better and smarter than any 3r party program, so there's no need for a program to do it. Don't waste your money.
     
  5. JWBlue

    JWBlue Notebook Deity

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    If it matters, it is a free program.
     
  6. Pirx

    Pirx Notebook Virtuoso

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    It doesn't matter. Windows' own memory management works just fine. Third-party memory "optimizers" like the one you mention will usually make things worse, at best, or even lead to nasty crashes and compatibility issues at their worst.
     
  7. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    Free and useless? Maybe worse.

    Windows (anything newer than XP anyway) uses a random address space allocation for a series of very good reasons, mostly anti-malware. AFAIK, 'ram optimizers' defeat this and push address modules right next to each other right where some of the more sophisticated malware treats can find them.
     
  8. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    Yes you are right, there were cases where these things did help a bit "back in the day". There was actually a weird situation in Win3.1 that was causing one of my clients (the local phone company) to get these messages about being out of memory when in reality there was lots of memory available. It had something to do (my memory is fuzzy) with a small segment of memory that had to be allocated for each running app and it had to be in an upper memory region. Some dll was loading there and caused all subsequent apps to throw this out of memory error. I and some folks on Compuserve (tells you how long ago this was) spent a couple of weeks figuring this out. It was a fun exercise. I then wrote an app that ran at boot time to chop up this upper region into small chunks such that a dll could not load there but this small segment needed for each app could fit.

    Thankfully those days are long gone and we no longer need this sort of nonsense.

    Gary