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Subject: Re: Two tips for Fritz6 (Junior6) users

Author: Francesco Di Tolla

Date: 03:48:27 03/22/00

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On March 21, 2000 at 03:28:09, Harald Faber wrote:

>On March 21, 2000 at 01:23:11, Jouni Uski wrote:
>
>>1. Hash size: even if Fritz displays maximum size, you can easily use bigger
>>   value. E.g. in my PC with 64MB Fritz says maximum is 32 MB, but I use 48MB
>>   in long games or analysis without problems like disk swapping
>
>Are you joking? How can this be possible? With Win95b and Fritz started I get
>only 24MB physical free RAM, so even 32MB hash makes Fritz swap. It might be the
>TB access but I have only 4MB CacheSize.

Win95 is somewhat "lazy" in freeing the memory. Yesterday I have upgraded to 256
MB of ram my PC to discover that with nothing opened (but icons in the tray) I
had 128 used by the OS. So I have the impression that simply windows tend to
take all the memory it can and to release it only when it is necessary.

I managed to run two engines with 96 MB each, so taking more than 1/2 of the
memory. But I think I can do even more.

It is natural to have that the OS swaps a bit at start, this is not the program
that swaps, it is the OS that removes from RAM what is not necessary. Of course
if you task switch to other apps, it might cause Fritz to swap as well, but
ususally the slowing at the beginning is due to other allocated portions of the
windows addressing space (which is much larger that the actual RAM) being under
swap process.

The best solution I have found in general is to open Junior, and before to start
a game with a lot of ram required, to use a little app called "freememory"
(http://www.meikel.com/freemem/) that actually allocates as much memory as I
tell it to do. I usually allocate an amount equal to the total RAM of the system
minus 20-30 MB. Thuis causes windows to get rid (=swap to disk) of all the
unused alloacted memory portions. Later I start the game and the engine finds
all the memory free it needs.


ciao
Franz

p.s. other nice tools are available at nonags.com under "monitors" section



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