Author: William Penn
Date: 22:34:08 10/14/02
Go up one level in this thread
On October 12, 2002 at 11:19:27, Terry Ripple wrote: >On October 12, 2002 at 10:49:40, William Penn wrote: > >>On October 12, 2002 at 09:07:14, Terry Ripple wrote: >> >>>On October 12, 2002 at 07:08:12, William Penn wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>I've been studying this for awhile, and I'm now fairly sure that Fritz7 has a >>>>memory drain with W98se. If I monitor the free physical RAM with the W98 System >>>>Monitor while Fritz7 is running in infinite calculation mode with 128MB hash >>>>table on a 500MHz Celeron processor, 256MB RAM system, it gradually ticks down >>>>towards zero. Eventually it arrives at zero and then the computer becomes very >>>>sluggish and perhaps crashes. The rate of memory drain is about 2MB per minute. >>>>So it depends on how much free physical memory you have to start. If you have a >>>>lot, and you don't run Fritz7 for very long, it might not tick down to zero. But >>>>for those who run Fritz7 for long periods, it may become a serious problem. >>>> >>>>I think I've found a temporary solution. Of course the Fritz7 programmers need >>>>to fix this serious bug, but in the meantime... >>>> >>>>I'm testing a special little utility which boosts the free physical RAM by a >>>>preset amount every x minutes. It is somewhat arbitrary what settings to use, >>>>but I'm boosting to a minimum of 32MB RAM every 4 minutes. That means the free >>>>memory ticks down to about 24MB, then gets boosted back to 32MB, then ticks down >>>>to about 24MB, then gets boosted back to 32MB, ad infinitum in 4 minute cycles. >>>>There are several such utilities available, and I've only tried this one, which >>>>seems OK for this simple task. It's very simple and easy to understand & use. >>>>It's called "CyberLat RAM Cleaner" which can be downloaded at: >>>>http://www.cyberlatino.com.mx/ >>>>Yes, much of that website is in Spanish because the author lives in Mexico, but >>>>this software utility is written in English. >>>> >>>>The other consideration with W95/W98/W98se/WinMe is of course system resources, >>>>which are quite limited with those op systems. (WinNT/2000/XP don't have that >>>>problem.) But Fritz7 is not too greedy in that regard, and that's not the >>>>problem here. The problem is definitely a memory drain. Some might call it a >>>>memory leak. >>>>WP >>>-------------- >>> >>>One of the very best utilities for boosting your Ram is called "Rambooster" and >>>the latest version is 1.6. This is a free ram booster that has very good reviews >>>and has been around for several years! One of the good things about this utility >>>is that it can run using less than 1 mb from your resources and hardly robs any >>>of your CPU power according to the programmer! >>> >>>Do a search in Google for "Rambooster" and the programmer's name is J.Pajula! >>>It's been offered on CNET.com, but don't know if it is still available for >>>download from this site. If you are interested in this utility and you have no >>>luck finding it, send me an email and i will be happy to send it to you as it's >>>quite a small download of only about 950 Kb. >>> >>>Regards, >>> Terry > acesbrew@hotmail.com >> >>Thanks. I have a list of a half-dozen RAM boosters, including that one. The one >>I chose to try first seems to be working OK: CyberLat RAM Booster. I'm happy >>with it. Thanks anyway... >>WP >-------------- > >Be sure you check out how much of the resources and CPU power it uses because >according to the programmer of "Rambooster", several of the other boosters take >more from the resources than they actually give back!! > >Terry CyberLat RAM Cleaner uses about 0.2% of processor time, and about 3% of system resources on my W98se. That's pretty low, but I should really compare with your Rambooster when I can find the time. After 3 days, I'm still happy with CyberLat RAM Cleaner. I probably don't need it unless I'm pushing everything to the limit, and still want to multitask yet another program despite resources being less than 20% free, and the processor idle time being 0%, and the chess analysis program is constantly accessing a lot of tablebase data -- so the hard drive is getting a maximum workout!? In that situation, free physical RAM falls to zero and stays there, so a moderate RAM boost helps the new upstart program find some memory to get going. Or at least that's how it seems. If I'm not multitasking other stuff, then it doesn't seem to do any harm to let the RAM go to zero. The system gets very sluggish but doesn't crash just for that reason. It's the introduction of other software onto the sluggish system that can cause a problem. Maybe it's a timing problem of some kind. WP
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.