Failing Graphic Card Question

[Samwolf]

No haven't test the HD. Any utility you can recommend?

[Machinist]

Mem Turbo is a memory optimization utility (I won't go into the debate of the effectiveness or usefulness of a utility like that). MemTest actually test your physical RAM to see if there's any problems.

Exactly... Mem Turbo doesn't test, though defrags memory and deep scrubs unused programs freeing more RAM. I always use it before lauching TS2012 (no need to restart computer) to start playing with the best amount of free RAM possible, because if we are already playing the "optimize" feature doesn't work good. When game crashes it is usefull and effcient to free more RAM, for example.

[arizonachris]

No haven't test the HD. Any utility you can recommend?

Depends on the maker of the drive. Seagate or Maxtor you can use Seatools, Western Digital use Data Lifeguard.

[Hawk]

Exactly... Mem Turbo doesn't test, though defrags memory and deep scrubs unused programs freeing more RAM. I always use it before lauching TS2012 (no need to restart computer) to start playing with the best amount of free RAM possible, because if we are already playing the "optimize" feature doesn't work good. When game crashes it is usefull and effcient to free more RAM, for example.

Well, I said I wasn't going to go into the debate about memory optimization utilities, but.....

Most experts agree that those kind of utilities had their day back in the Win 95 and 98 OS's, but since the release of XP, they really don't serve a purpose anymore.

http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks11.htm

http://www.tweakhound.com/windows7/tweaking/14.html

Here's an article written back in 2003.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/int ... ation-hoax

It appears to be the major consensus of experts is that adjusting your page file is the best optimization you can do.
Most of what I've read say to adjust the page file on C to a min. of 5 MB and a max of 50 MB, then - on a second physical hard drive, create a new partition equal to 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM installed, plus 10 MB, although there a lot of discussion about that 1.5 when it comes to having more than 2 GB of physical RAM installed.

You can do a search on page file (or virtual memory - they're one in the same) settings and see what you come up with, but here's one for Win7 that says to set the page file on C to 300 MB, if you have more than 2 GB of physical memory (RAM) installed. Here's another that says something a little different, but still mentions a second physical hard drive (not a separate partition on the same physical hard drive as the OS)
There's a few sites out there that discuss this, but the bottom lime is that it seems that those optimization utilities are no longer as usefull as they once were.

I used to use MemTurbo myself. Then I moved to Cacheman XP, which I still use but I no longer use the optimization options. I only use it now for the display of processor and memory usage.

cacheman.jpg

The yellow numbers are the percentage of processor usage and the green number is the amount of used memory.

Edit 1: Full Disclosure: I have not tried any of the page file settings myself yet, for a couple of different reasons, but right now I just let Windows handle it, although I do plan on partitioning a second hard drive and moving the page file to it, as described in a couple of articles.

[Samwolf]

Depends on the maker of the drive. Seagate or Maxtor you can use Seatools, Western Digital use Data Lifeguard.

Thanks, I have a WD drive.

[arizonachris]

Here you go, Sam: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

[Samwolf]

Here you go, Sam: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

Thanks, HD tests fine. I'm pretty sure it's my GPU now, that or the MB is going but I'm only having problems with 3D applications. Time to put in my nVidea card.

[Machinist]

Well, I said I wasn't going to go into the debate about memory optimization utilities, but.....

I used to use MemTurbo myself. Then I moved to Cacheman XP, which I still use but I no longer use the optimization options. I only use it now for the display of processor and memory usage.

Edit 1: Full Disclosure: I have not tried any of the page file settings myself yet, for a couple of different reasons, but right now I just let Windows handle it, although I do plan on partitioning a second hard drive and moving the page file to it, as described in a couple of articles.

No problem, Hawk, all dicussion are welcome.

I gone into the articles linked, and mostly are around 2003, talking about XP, Windows NT and "hard disk" (cached) memory. Currently we are running Windows 7, and the year is almost 2012, beyond that the most indicated article is bad rated (40% among 1900 reviewrs, may be relevant, may be not). Since then many things have changed, I guess. All this kind of tweaking are for owners of low/medium machines, because if you have a good pc it will perform better then a bad one tweaked. Being most of time a owner of low/medium machines from time to time I've been digging in this tweakings, but not lately anymore.

I use some features (not all) of the tool (not repeating the name, otherwise someone will say I'm doing merchandize) because has been useful (even that aparently useful) to me. For example, before it I couldn't play Siebergbahn route without "save, exit, restart and continue" features (using 2MG RAM), but with the tool I got. Currently I have 3MB RAM and playing many heavy routes keeping free at lest 0.8MB. The reffered tool is awarded by C.Net as five stars, so doesn't look like being a false/ilusionist product. Anyway, I'm aware now... thank you.

[Hawk]

Currently we are running Windows 7, and the year is almost 2012,

That's why I linked to a couple Win 7 articles. Memory management allegedly is improving with each new OS, hence making those utilities less beneficial.