I recently increased the RAM in my PC from 512 Mb to 2 Gb. Shoulda been great, right? Instead, I found that my CPU was being hammered, often--and I mean really often--showing 100% usage for extended periods. Not what I expected, especially since I don't recall ever using more than about 30% of physical RAM.

Then it occurred to me to check the virtual memory settings. This is typically supposed to be about 150% of physical RAM. Well, it was--when I had 512 Mb. Now it was about 1/3 of my RAM.

To check and/or change performance settings in Windows XP, right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties". Click on the "Advanced" tab--then do it again. For my purposes (music workstation), the best settings were "Processor scheduling: Background services" and "Memory Usage: System cache".

Since setting up my PC I had also learned that the pagefile should be on another drive than the one on which your OS resides. So I clicked on "Virtual memory: Change", put it on D:\ and used the recommended setting shown; in my case, 3070 Gb. (More is Not A Bad Thing.) You can also let Windows set it for you, but it didn't seem to be giving me enough. After you do this you will have to restart your machine for the change to take effect.

If your defrag utility will let you do this, as Norton SpeedDisk used to, have it put the pagefile on the physical outer edge of the drive, which rotates faster and therefore yields better throughput. Every little bit helps. And of course, defrag often.

My CPU still peaks out at 100% at times, but for much shorter periods. Otherwise it tends to max out at about 65%, and then only for short periods. And I have to have a LOT of things going on to make that happen. Much better now.

Happy musicmaking,

R.

Last edited by Ryszard; 04/01/09 04:48 PM.