Free software to stop services in Vista

[Sek_Hakuna]

Check this out

http://alacritypc.kensalter.com/

I use this to stop running services and defrag the memory before launching Trainz. It will free up about 700 mb on my system. Once the monitored application has closed the software will turn those services on again.

Here is an important tip for Alacrity use. Set Alacrity to "Pause" after monitored programs have stopped. This is important for games that use a frontend.

Randy

 

[johnwhelan]

We ran some benchmarks with software that stopped services on machines with 3 gigs of memory and Trainz actually ran slower. This was on a couple of different machines with plenty of main memory. If you have a gig or less then it appeared to help.

So given the price of memory these days I'd just add memory to the computer.

Cheerio John

 

[Sek_Hakuna]

I've got 2 gig of ram on my system. Vista 64bit tweaked out a bit still uses around a gig leaving 1 gig or less for gaming. When I run Alacrity it shows 1.7 gig of ram free to use.

Perhaps in the benchmarks some neccessary services were stopped. Just throwing that out there.

AFAIK and correct me please if I'm wrong, 32 bit OS cannot see anything past 2 gig of ram. 64bit has no problems. I think there is a tweak or software for the 32 bit OS to enable more than 2 gig of ram.

Has anyone tested the settings in options for the amount of ram for textures? I currently have mine set for 2 meg but have not done any comparison testing.

Randy

 

[johnwhelan]

I've got 2 gig of ram on my system. Vista 64bit tweaked out a bit still uses around a gig leaving 1 gig or less for gaming. When I run Alacrity it shows 1.7 gig of ram free to use.

Perhaps in the benchmarks some neccessary services were stopped. Just throwing that out there.

AFAIK and correct me please if I'm wrong, 32 bit OS cannot see anything past 2 gig of ram. 64bit has no problems. I think there is a tweak or software for the 32 bit OS to enable more than 2 gig of ram.

Has anyone tested the settings in options for the amount of ram for textures? I currently have mine set for 2 meg but have not done any comparison testing.

Randy

32 bit Vista can access 4 (3.5) gigs of memory directly. Programs running in normal 32 bit mode can access 2 gigs of memory. It is possible to write a 32 bit program that can access up to 4 gigs of memory under some circumstances.

The only reason to go to 64 bit Vista would be to access more than 4 (3.5) gigs of memory but there is an overhead associated with this. In simple terms each address uses 64 bits rather than 32 bits so the program instructions are longer, take longer to load and longer to execute. Also the drivers are not quite so robust and optimised since fewer people run 64 bit Vista.

I would strongly recommend you add another two gigs of memory to your system, however that does depend on the motherboard some are optimised for 3 gigs and 6 gigs in the same manner as dual channel. You could probably improve performance by installing 32 bit Vista or 32 bit Windows 7 if you have them lying around.

Cheerio John

 

[Sek_Hakuna]

I'm waiting for Windows 7 to appear. I'll be adding more ram and a new vid card at the same time.

I really dislike OS upgrades.

Thanks for the info BTW.

Randy