how to conserve ram, 512meg 95% filled up

sirius57 · 03-16-2008, 01:52 PM

I installed a second 256meg memory module and found that in some ways, performance seems to suffer. After booting, I noticed with the suse ram utility that it gets filled up very fast before I open any programs. I am left with about 5meg of free ram. The swap file is completely empty. Is there a way to free up more ram so the pc runs faster? The box is a p-4, suse 10.1, 512 meg ram, nvidia tnt2 video card with 32meg ram.

serafean · 03-16-2008, 02:15 PM

Hi, you should check what its full of : application data, or disk cache (top or ksysinfo/ksysguard might very well tell you this info). Disk cache is of lower priority than Application data, and is not mandatory to have in RAM, thus if an application needs RAM, some of the disk cache is flushed (to the swap or completely, not sure which). The one way you can free up RAM is closing useless applications, stopping useless services...

Quote:

performance seems to suffer

You mean it runs slower? That would be very strange.

Serfafean

sirius57 · 03-17-2008, 08:28 PM

I tried ksysguard in a terminal but ksysinfo would not work. How do I know what to shut down and what not to shut down?

jan-portugal · 03-19-2008, 06:49 PM

Open a terminal and simply write top
That'll give you an overview

reddazz · 03-19-2008, 07:02 PM

If swap is not being used, then it seems like your apps have sufficient ram. It highly likely that some of the used ram is just cached and is available for apps to use when needed. There is a good guide at the Gentoo Wiki that explains in detail how Linux manages your memory.

sirius57 · 03-21-2008, 07:51 PM

It looks like the problem was solved by upgrading the video card. I had an nvidia tnt2 with 32meg ram and swapped it for a geforce fx5200 with 128 meg ram. I noticed right away that the hesitation was gone and movement was more fluid. The card is compatable with agp 4x and agp 8x slots. I found the wiki on memory management interesting.