Thoughts on 'RAM-Boosters?' Success or sham?

[patmosphere]

Software programs that claim to increase the performance speed of a computer by allocating more memory to RAM are quite common. The concept seems as if it would work but I'm curious: are these programs actually effective? and if so, how effective?

[Voixdelion]

My guess is that money is better spent on more RAM, though supposedly the USB flash drive alternative does help in a pinch...

[Architect]

I haven't managed to get OS X to use more than 12GB. Probably a bogus idea.

[instantkamera]

The concept does work, it's called "swap".

As for memory management, pretty sure any current OS does as good a job as can be expected, and a userland application that has sufficient rights to toy with virtual memory (see: "memory in general", as the term "VM" is more often than not confused with "swap") on the fly sounds like a terrible idea to me.

You want more physical ram? buy some.

[bladamson]

Scam-o.

If ya need more memory, get more physical ram.  If your mobo is maxed out, get a new mobo.

They're both relatively inexpensive, and you can't beat the real thing!

Mem:   8252348k total,  3651344k used,  4601004k free,   139396k buffers
Swap: 11716584k total,        0k used, 11716584k free,  2770096k cached

I think I've touched swap all of one time since I upgraded to 8G. :3

[instantkamera]

Scam-o.

If ya need more memory, get more physical ram.  If your mobo is maxed out, get a new mobo.

They're both relatively inexpensive, and you can't beat the real thing!

Mem:   8252348k total,  3651344k used,  4601004k free,   139396k buffers
Swap: 11716584k total,        0k used, 11716584k free,  2770096k cached

I think I've touched swap all of one time since I upgraded to 8G. :3

that bodes well for the 16G I have in the mail...

[Parak]

This reminds me of something..

Anyone else (except MW obviously) remember this?

[godly_music]

Windows has the page file, Linux has a swap partition. And any recent OS will handle RAM quite well. Programs that claim to free up RAM and increase performance are utter rubbish and in fact will eat up RAM unnecessarily while running in the background.

If you're an efficiency nut, then look at the footprint of your running programs and replace them with ones that are optimized in this regard.

[cbf123]

There is one circumstance where you might want to manually meddle.

If you have something that you want to remain in RAM but don't use often, you might want to put it in a ram-based filesystem.  If you let the OS manage it, the fact that it isn't used often will likely mean that it gets paged out of memory.

[instantkamera]

There is one circumstance where you might want to manually meddle.

If you have something that you want to remain in RAM but don't use often, you might want to put it in a ram-based filesystem.  If you let the OS manage it, the fact that it isn't used often will likely mean that it gets paged out of memory.

Im not saying there is no reason to tweak, just that the OS already gives you all the tools required for doing so. (at least, nix has tmpfs and ramdisks, it's my assumption that recent Windows' have similar).

[Ekaros]

I don't belive adding an other layer would make much different, likely the engineers who made OS know better...

[Lanx]

Software programs that claim to increase the performance speed of a computer by allocating more memory to RAM are quite common. The concept seems as if it would work but I'm curious: are these programs actually effective? and if so, how effective?

just bs now imo, if Microsoft and Apple and millions of Linux contributers can't create an operating system that isn't memory horrible, how can a $50 program do any better?

This reminds me of something..

Anyone else (except MW obviously) remember this?

not to be confused with QEMM, which was actually useful... needed much ram to play dos!

[Arc'xer]

Software programs that claim to increase the performance speed of a computer by allocating more memory to RAM are quite common. The concept seems as if it would work but I'm curious: are these programs actually effective? and if so, how effective?

Your operating system should handle and allocate ram as best possible. These RAM boosters are much like the commercials where they say we help fix your computer by installing software that makes it run like new.

The sheer fact is there comes a point, that software solutions do not help and you need new hardware. Unfortunately most people are quite computer illiterate and just think software and downloading helps. RAM for most computers is cheap and low quality, if you want good ram you gotta spend money on it. Just another reason building your own computer can be a better investment than pre-built.

You can pick and choose the ram you want, which company you want it from, and you can overclock the ram providing more bandwidth, less latency, and more speed.

[microsoft windows]

I tried some "ram boosting" programs but my computer didn't have enough RAM to run them.

[Findecanor]

There are "ram boosters" still? I thought that idea died out in '90s.