Gaming on Vista using 2GB RAM

[bydesign]

I've been using Vista 64 since November. With a 8800 GTX so my gaming in Vista did start until the latter January. With the current drivers I have very few issues in the games that I play. I very rarely enter my XP and frankly hate going back to it. In fact everyone at the office that been on Vista loves after the get use to it. It's not the 2nd coming or anything but its a better OS than XP in terms of productivity.

As for DRM I haven't seen any issues at all. There is just simply nothing that I can't do in Vista that I could XP. If some of you have had problem I like to know so I can see it for myself. As for me DRM is just something that is over hyped scare rhetoric. I wish wasn't there but seem harmless from my prospective.

On to the Ram Vista run great with 2Gb of Ram. Adding an additional 2Gb make little to no difference in most application. A total waste of money for most people at this time.

Applications like Photoshop will use it and a handful of others. When gaming I rarely exceed 50% ram utilization and when I do it's around 65%. Pulling the out the additional ram makes to little to know difference in gaming.

With all due respect to Alsone his/her take on 2Gb being a bad idea is just not true in practice today. Some games may benefit but I would be have to see the performance results that it would make a significant performance difference. This is in the context of 2Gb vs. 4Gb.

 

[mad_murdock]

2GB on Vista is a bad idea for gaming.

My Vista use 1.3GB at desktop to run the OS and Kaspersky AV (which is very system light).

Fact is Vista loves ram.

Pretty much every OS loves RAM. Under both XP and Vista I can play Supreme Commander and play a Skirm against, the PC and get up to 95% memory usage. So does that mean that 2GB of ram is bad for XP as well ?

Vista like XP will use as much has it's gready little hands can get. If you want more than 4GB, you can run XP64 as well. Maybe a game like Crysis or one of the other will actually show a benefit from using 3+GB, but right now, I don't think you'll find any thing that shows Vista needing more than 2GB.

Granted, if you want to run 10 extra apps in the background while gaming you might want more, but the same applies to XP.

Maybe you just need to clean up, My Vista idles around 39-40 processes and uses around 500MB
http://images.filecloud.com/401970/vista_cpu.jpg

 

[Alsone]

With all due respect to Alsone his/her take on 2Gb being a bad idea is just not true in practice today. Some games may benefit but I would be have to see the performance results that it would make a significant performance difference. This is in the context of 2Gb vs. 4Gb.

With all due respect, take a look at the ACTUAL memory usuage of most modern games and you'll find that at HIGH graphical settings memory usuage exceeds 1Gb by a considerable amount eg. BF2 uses 1.3GB on High settings.

Have less than 2Gb and whilst it will play ostensibily OK, you will get short pauses and lag as the game loads information from the swap file. In BF2 most notably a 2-3 second laggy pause after joining the game, and slight pauses during the game. You won't see fps increases as memory has little to do with FPS but you will see a big drop in pauses and lag. The EA forums have been packed with posts about if for about 18 months and I was one of the very 1st people to bring it to everyone's attention and prove it conclusively.

There are now 1,000's of posts around the net about it and even the game's producer now agrees with me!! Just google BF2 and swap file. Here are just a couple of links including one to the producer interview:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=915171

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-27000.html

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/46796/

If you still don't believe me load up BF2, go into system logging and set up a custom graph to record peak memory usuage then play on High settings, I'll guarantee you'll have a peak of around 1.1-1.3GB. If you're not sure how to do that, thena simpler but arguably less accurate way is to start a game on the High settings then once playing alt tab out to task manager and check the available memory aginst the memory usuage!

There are lots of articles around that say for this very reason that 2Gb is the new 1Gb (they've been saying this for around a year now).

Newer games are likely to need even more, there are rumours that Crysis might have 2GB actually specified on the box for high settings.

Now with Vista, the goal posts have changed again as the system now steals over a GB for itself, 1.3GB on my system. Add that to a 2Gb game requirement and you you have a need for 3Gb plus. You can't get 4GB on 32 bit so thats why 64 bit is now the choice of most gamers switching to Vista.

As for not needing so much memory for other tasks, you're right. Any program that isn't memory intensive won't need 4Gb but at 2GB bare in mind that you only 700mbs free so for photoshopping or video work, you might seriously want to consider 4GB.

 

[Mondoman]

Just remember that Vista (like Win XP) does not use a fixed amount of RAM for "itself", but dynamically manages memory use. For example, if it always used 1.3GB of physical RAM for itself, it wouldn't run at all on a system with only 1GB installed RAM. Thus, in order to determine whether having 2GB instead of 3GB slows down current gameplay under Vista, actual measurements are the way to go, as with your BF2 measurements.

 

[notherdude]

With all due respect to Alsone his/her take on 2Gb being a bad idea is just not true in practice today. Some games may benefit but I would be have to see the performance results that it would make a significant performance difference. This is in the context of 2Gb vs. 4Gb.

With all due respect, take a look at the ACTUAL memory usuage of most modern games and you'll find that at HIGH graphical settings memory usuage exceeds 1Gb by a considerable amount eg. BF2 uses 1.3GB on High settings.

Have less than 2Gb and whilst it will play ostensibily OK, you will get short pauses and lag as the game loads information from the swap file. In BF2 most notably a 2-3 second laggy pause after joining the game, and slight pauses during the game. You won't see fps increases as memory has little to do with FPS but you will see a big drop in pauses and lag. The EA forums have been packed with posts about if for about 18 months and I was one of the very 1st people to bring it to everyone's attention and prove it conclusively.

There are now 1,000's of posts around the net about it and even the game's producer now agrees with me!! Just google BF2 and swap file. Here are just a couple of links including one to the producer interview:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=915171

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-27000.html

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/46796/

If you still don't believe me load up BF2, go into system logging and set up a custom graph to record peak memory usuage then play on High settings, I'll guarantee you'll have a peak of around 1.1-1.3GB. If you're not sure how to do that, thena simpler but arguably less accurate way is to start a game on the High settings then once playing alt tab out to task manager and check the available memory aginst the memory usuage!

There are lots of articles around that say for this very reason that 2Gb is the new 1Gb (they've been saying this for around a year now).

Newer games are likely to need even more, there are rumours that Crysis might have 2GB actually specified on the box for high settings.

Now with Vista, the goal posts have changed again as the system now steals over a GB for itself, 1.3GB on my system. Add that to a 2Gb game requirement and you you have a need for 3Gb plus. You can't get 4GB on 32 bit so thats why 64 bit is now the choice of most gamers switching to Vista.

As for not needing so much memory for other tasks, you're right. Any program that isn't memory intensive won't need 4Gb but at 2GB bare in mind that you only 700mbs free so for photoshopping or video work, you might seriously want to consider 4GB.

You can't get 4GB on 32 bit

On Vista you say? I thought unlike XP, which will see 4 gig but only seems to use about 3 of it, Vista 32 bit could actually use the full 4 meg. Is this not true?

My Vista install only seems to use about 721 meg when idling. And I thought this was dynamic anyway.

I'm not disputing that 2 gig helps on certain games with the lag, that makes sense, but I'm not so sure I buy what you say about needing more on Vista , so far not one bit of lag for me at 2gig, smooth as could be.

 

[Mondoman]

...

You can't get 4GB on 32 bit

On Vista you say? I thought unlike XP, which will see 4 gig but only seems to use about 3 of it, Vista 32 bit could actually use the full 4 meg. Is this not true?
Nope. Both 32-bit XP and 32-bit Vista are limited to 4GB of memory addresses; since hardware components and add-in cards use some of those addresses, physical memory can only be assigned the addresses that are left over. The OS can only "see" and use what it can address, hence the 3-3.5GB practical limit on visible/usable physical memory under 32bit XP and 32bit Vista.

 

[notherdude]

...

You can't get 4GB on 32 bit

On Vista you say? I thought unlike XP, which will see 4 gig but only seems to use about 3 of it, Vista 32 bit could actually use the full 4 meg. Is this not true?
Nope. Both 32-bit XP and 32-bit Vista are limited to 4GB of memory addresses; since hardware components and add-in cards use some of those addresses, physical memory can only be assigned the addresses that are left over. The OS can only "see" and use what it can address, hence the 3-3.5GB practical limit on visible/usable physical memory under 32bit XP and 32bit Vista.

OK, I guess I was misinformed. So you lose the same amount on XP and Vista 32 bit?

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

The reason why Vista uses so much more RAM is because it caches things differently from XP. I found it ran nice and smooth on my machine, 2GB PC-6400, X2 3800+, and X1900XT. Games ran great, I actually thought WoW ran smoother under Vista than XP. Go figure.

If you want a lighter Vista installation, use VLite and trim out most of the fat you don't need, then create a new image and reburn it. I hear it's possible to get Vista to fit on a 700MB CD. Get rid of any drivers you don't need, the UAC, Readyboost, Superfetch, things like that. The interface of VLite shows you which parts of the Vista image take the most space, so you can just delete them. You can even make unattended installations with it, just like the XP version of this program. It works great.

 

[picho]

Here are some good articles on DRM specifically as it applies to Vista.


I think this is the most informative article so far.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

here are some others

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/28/vista_drm_analysis/

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hdcp-vista.ars

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=25124

Read up boys and girls, If you were wondering why Vista is so much slower than XP, the answer is in these articles.

I love these links. The register one is the best of all because they claim it's a vulnerability for a malware app to prevent you from watching protected content XD. I also like your comment about the protected path DRM slowing down the whole system all the time. Way to spread the FUD 😛

 

[bLAKEpERKINS]

2gb is fine, althought as the kernel dynamicaly takes up memory and any extra will do good.

 

[petevsdrm]

Here are some good articles on DRM specifically as it applies to Vista.


I think this is the most informative article so far.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

here are some others

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/28/vista_drm_analysis/

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hdcp-vista.ars

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=25124

Read up boys and girls, If you were wondering why Vista is so much slower than XP, the answer is in these articles.

I love these links. The register one is the best of all because they claim it's a vulnerability for a malware app to prevent you from watching protected content XD. I also like your comment about the protected path DRM slowing down the whole system all the time. Way to spread the FUD 😛

FUD? I only spread the truth.

I guess all of these journalists are also spreading FUD.

I'll tell you what, why don't you run out and find a positive review of the DRM situation in Vista, then post it here.

Everybody knows how irritating and useless this stuff is, but hey if you like it that's kewl too. I just want an option to remove it from MY operating system.

If you had read those links, you would know that it does slow the whole system down all the time, because it is constantly checking for "premium" content, which uses up quite a few clock cycles.

But don't mind me, I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[RetiredChief]

The beef with DRM - Prvented ATI from develoving support for there All-in-wonder line. Understand they will be discontinuing them. I don't care about the FPS, But I, and many others are stuck using only halve of their Graphics care. I do have vista on a dual boot configuration. Guess I will not be booting to it very often - all my programs work fine under XP.

 

[RetiredChief]

sorry for my typing errors - should re-read befor hitting the "send " button also as you could probably quess - spelling is not my fortay

 

[niz]

OK, can anyone summurize their gripes with Vitsa?

Game performance sucks compared to XP. crossposting links probably isn't allowed here but HardOCP has just done some good comparative benchmarks on the problem, for example NFS Carbon, same hw and setup on xp and vista:
75 FPS under XP.... 45 FPS under Vista.

XP windows directory uses about 2GB of HD space, Vista uses 11.5GB.
(OK HD space isn't that expensive but still WTF is it doing?)

Vista eats ram. Right after bootup even before I run anything nearly 40% of my 2GB is gone. Thats 800MB just to run the OS!!

On just about every action, Vista has these really annoying dialogs popping up asking if you're really sure if you really want to do what you're trying to do.

The Auto-arrange icons thing is all screwed up under vista.

The disk defrag under vista is terrible.. you can't just defrag a single drive you have to defrag the whole system. It doesn't even tell you what drive its working on. Also you can't see any defrag progress like you can under XP.

Anyway I decided vista is a piece of sh1t and went back to XP. After switching back its amazing how fast XP feels in comparison.

 

[Mondoman]

...
Vista eats ram. Right after bootup even before I run anything nearly 40% of my 2GB is gone. Thats 800MB just to run the OS!!

To be fair, using some available RAM while no other software wants that RAM isn't really a drawback. The key question is how much RAM is available to apps, and how quickly.

...On just about every action, Vista has these really annoying dialogs popping up asking if you're really sure if you really want to do what you're trying to do.

I had heard about this before getting my Vista-preloaded notebook (it's even in the clever Mac ads), and was worried that this might in fact be very annoying. It turns out to be a non-issue (on my notebook at least), just popping up every now and then when something like an installer is about to run, to verify that I know about it and approve of it. I like that, because ( :!: ) I *do* download stuff every now and then. I'm also using the preloaded Norton Internet Security, so maybe I'm being shielded from a horde of such popups that would have appeared w/o it, but I doubt that.

... After switching back its amazing how fast XP feels in comparison.

In my case, I would be switching back from the T7200 to an Athlon XP-M 3000+, so Vista can be a dead snail and still be faster than my old system...

 

[AKJ]

Seems like there's just too many "gripes" for me... Im gona definitely stick with XP until Vista SP1 comes out (at least). Judging by what everyone has said, i would most likely get irritated with Vista and re-install XP anyway... Thanks guys!

 

[Alsone]

2gb is fine.

Don't make statements you can't back up.

In XP BF2 on high settings uses around 1.3GB of memory and yet you want ot advise him to install 2GB for gaming when Vista itself can use up to 1.3GB at desktop?

Thats just a prescription for swap file usuage and bad advice as that equals lag and pauses as game info is swapped between the memory and scratch disc.

Game performance sucks compared to XP. crossposting links probably isn't allowed here but HardOCP has just done some good comparative benchmarks on the problem, for example NFS Carbon, same hw and setup on xp and vista:
75 FPS under XP.... 45 FPS under Vista.

True but Vista graphics drivers suck, so much that there's allegedly a group action lawsuit forming in the US against Nvidia for their driver support. I'd expect to see gains rapidly and all the time as the drivers improve. On most games Vista is currently only a little bit behind XP. NFS carbon is the exception rather than the rule.

XP windows directory uses about 2GB of HD space, Vista uses 11.5GB.
(OK HD space isn't that expensive but still WTF is it doing?)

Can't comment on the exact figures but who cares? I got 500GB of HD (2x250GB in RAID 0) for less than £150. Hard drives are cheap. You can pick up a single 400GB hard drive for around £90. If you can afford Vista you can afford a decent hard drive!

Vista eats ram. Right after bootup even before I run anything nearly 40% of my 2GB is gone. Thats 800MB just to run the OS!!

True I have 4GB and my Vista Ultimate uses 28-30% at desktop = around 1.3GB.

On just about every action, Vista has these really annoying dialogs popping up asking if you're really sure if you really want to do what you're trying to do.

Doesn't bother me as used to them but you can turn them off in the Control Panel. Better to have a dialogue than something malicious writing to the system unknown to you.

The Auto-arrange icons thing is all screwed up under vista.

Minor bug. The sidebar icons change places every few boots, no big deal.

The disk defrag under vista is terrible.. you can't just defrag a single drive you have to defrag the whole system. It doesn't even tell you what drive its working on. Also you can't see any defrag progress like you can under XP.

Agreed!. This is the result of many so called professional users and IT journalists complaining about the graphical display in XP.

Personally I also liked that as:

a) you could see progress in both visual bars and percentage and
b) you knew if the system had hung.

Under Vista it just runs, its very slow, a 2 minute defrag on xp takes about 15-20 mins on Vista, obviously bugged and there's no visual indiction of progress so you don't know if its working or hung.

Anyway I decided vista is a piece of sh1t and went back to XP. After switching back its amazing how fast XP feels in comparison.

Thats probably just your system. It does need a powerhouse of a pc to get the best out of it. Vista felt slower than XP to me on my standard E6600. On XP I had a 4800+ X2, a fast but much less powerful processor. Only when I overclocked my E6600 from 2.4Ghz to 3.0 ghz (E6800) level did Vista really come alive (thats a 5.3 Vista Index score to 5.7 Vista index score on the cpu). So you need a highish level pc to get the best out of it.

I doubt waiting for SP1 is going to change anything on the performance side, thats just the result of having so much more code in Vista. All SP1 is going to fix will be the bugs, hopefully the defrag and possibly the graphics performance a little. Also that the bugs are minor irritations. Vista is more stable than XP.

I have to say I wouldn't go back. I love Vista 64.

 

[petevsdrm]

True but Vista graphics drivers suck, so much that there's allegedly a group action lawsuit forming in the US against Nvidia for their driver support. I'd expect to see gains rapidly and all the time as the drivers improve. On most games Vista is currently only a little bit behind XP. NFS carbon is the exception rather than the rule.

I agree with you there. The majority of problems that I experienced during my install were due to drivers, not due to Vista itself. Drivers are constantly being worked on, so really it's a temporary problem.

Anyway I decided vista is a piece of sh1t and went back to XP. After switching back its amazing how fast XP feels in comparison.

Thats probably just your system. It does need a powerhouse of a pc to get the best out of it. Vista felt slower than XP to me on my standard E6600. On XP I had a 4800+ X2, a fast but much less powerful processor. Only when I overclocked my E6600 from 2.4Ghz to 3.0 ghz (E6800) level did Vista really come alive (thats a 5.3 Vista Index score to 5.7 Vista index score on the cpu). So you need a highish level pc to get the best out of it.

I don't see your point there. Vista "needs a powerhouse of a PC" doesn't sound like an advert for a good OS. I don't think blaming his system is the answer, rather blaming the bloated OS that runs slow on relatively cutting-edge hardware would seem more fair. I am not saying you would see a difference going back to your old system, but putting XP on your new system may surprise you with how much faster it is.

I doubt waiting for SP1 is going to change anything on the performance side, thats just the result of having so much more code in Vista. All SP1 is going to fix will be the bugs, hopefully the defrag and possibly the graphics performance a little. Also that the bugs are minor irritations. Vista is more stable than XP.

I have to say I wouldn't go back. I love Vista 64.

I hope you are wrong, but I fear you are right. :lol: At least if they get the drivers and bugs worked out, it will be a decent operating system if you've got the "horsepower" to run it. I will be migrating to Vista once crysis comes out for sure.

I am sure you can see from my handle that I am pretty rabid about DRM, but kind of like the driver problem, it is only temporary :twisted: . DRM is not really a good reason not to make the switch. Just something people should be aware of, so hopefully the trend doesn't become worse than it already is.

 

[bLAKEpERKINS]

okay i said 2gb is fine that is because 1gb is fine in xp, and 2gb in vista is around the same as ~1gb in xp i have noticed.

As for your hole theory about vista using 1.3gb... you really need to look into vistas memory management. it will use a MAX of ~1GB but that is only when you have 2+ (that is from memory, but i know that it stops using as much, percentage wise, when you get to 3 & 4 gb)

Depending on the games you play you might even receive no performance lose at all, at for example Savage. in xp i was getting an avg of 100fps, guess what? in vista (same system) i get an avg of 100fps.

that being said most cpus are good enough, (i got a 3800 x2) the only real problem i have with vista is that ATI, even thought they say they support the mobility x1700, they don't.

 

[bydesign]

Alsone just because BF2 is coded poorly doesn't make running 2Gb in Vista a bad idea. I have run 2Gb and 4Gb it makes little to no difference in most apps and games. I run all my games at 1600x1200 with everything maxed out. You're making a blanket statement that is more or less limited to a single app. Have you actually tried for yourself? Do you run Vista and for how long?

 

[Alsone]

I'm not advocating that it makes a noticible performance difference. You won't notice any more fps for more memory. The difference more memory makes is it stops the swap file kicking in and that stops slight momentary pauses in the game when data is transferred from disc to memory.

Its not just me who's noticed the memory demands either, here's an article from The Inquirer: "Vista Gamers need 2GB + of memory".

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=30503

Crysis already promises to require huge memory resources for users on High settings, I've heard 2Gb as recommended level. If thats true, then 2Gb simply isn't going to cut it on a Vista gaming machine.

 

[bLAKEpERKINS]

okay... you do know that more ram is always better (except thous few execptions), and i am sure crysis will run fine on 1GB IF you have a good GPU, that being said there aren't any offical crysis benchmarks yet so i wouldn't know.

The hole upgrading your memory thing is not a real upgrade, yes the performance increase is slightly noticable, but the performance is only slight in terms of the potential performance boosts that can be achived by upgrading another item (CPU, GPU etc).

good to see your the one responsible for that trash still being on the internet, mabye look at a more reliable source that isn't full of 5hit half the time.

also in that article they are using the beta therefore it is not reliable, as there where many changes in the next versions. and another thing about that article, i have FEAR and i run it on my 1 GB system, both before and after my install of vista, performance was about the same/not realy noticable.

i think ppl have just decided that it is kewl or 1337 to bag vista. i say if you can do better then do so other wise shut up. (i mean everyone that is baging vista) Yes ther are a few flaws that could have been better but considering it is arround 6 months on the retail market, it is a 5hit load better then xp was when it was 6 months on the market.

 

[brick88]

i average about 700-800 mb of ram in vista idle. i see no real difference in how my games play. 2gb is more than sufficient. probably gonna get 2 sticks of 512mb memory in the future if crysis calls for it but im fine running all my games.

EDIT: I love Vista and probably won't go back to xp unless something catastrophic occurs. Honestly, it gets so much bad press and people say how horrible of an os it is when they have never even used it. its not horrible at all. im easily amused so i find the aero feature to be the best thing ever. and im lookin to upgrade to ultimate becuz dreamscene looks pretty cool.

 

[Battou]

2GB on Vista is a bad idea for gaming.

My Vista use 1.3GB at desktop to run the OS and Kaspersky AV (which is very system light).

Fact is Vista loves ram.

As new games now require in excess of 1GB (read installed 2GB) to run at high graphical settings, you should be looking towards installing 4GB of memory and you can only do that on the 64 bit version, which is why most gamers are now going for Vista 64. (Put 4GB in the 32 bit version and you'll only report @ 3GB which not only potenially leaves you marginal on free memory, but also means you've wasted 1 stick).

PS if you're wondeing why I don't advocate 3GB, its because on most boards you lose dual channel if you run 3 modules or 2 unevenly sized modules. Identical pairs are always the best option.

You've got a memory leak somewhere bud. my comp with vista only uses 300-500 mb of ram max with just the OS and Avast running.

 

[Alsone]

Blake I'm not going to get into an argument with you over this. Its not sh*t, look around the internet and there are plenty of tech sites that support the fact that many games need 2Gb of memory on XP, even EA's chief designer allegedly admits it on video that BF2 runs better with 2GB (I put the vidoe link in a post above), and BF2's memory leak was plugged some time ago. The symptom of a memory leak is not high usuage but usuage that increases steadily over time.

I also used to play for one of the top gaming teams in the World who were one of the runners up in the BF2 World Championships and have won many league titles, I'll let you figure out who. Suffice to say, I know a bit about gaming.

As I said above its nothing to do with performance its to do with pauses and swop files.

You want to play and get lag pauses, which are caused by your own system and not server lag, then go ahead, don't let me stop you gaming on 1-2Gb on Vista.

The fact is the guy asked for advice on the best memory level for Vista gaming and the widespread opinion is that 4Gb is the level most should be aiming at for best performance.

I'm merely telling him that.

And again on the subject, an interview with ID software about Quake Wars:

http://www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=articles/ttimo2006/

we are hitting the limits where we need to address more than two gigabytes of memory at the same time for a single process. That's really one of the main advantages, but I don't expect any of our games anytime soon to require a machine that has more than 4GB of RAM, that would be stretching it.

Minimum requirement is 512mb but again its what I've said about high settings. The higher the settings the more info that has to be loaded into the memory and even game designers are acknowledging that 2Gb simply isn't enough.

Battou, I'd like to see Vista only using 500mb of ram with standard settings ie. everything including superprefetching turned on. Of course, it will also depend on which version you have. If you have basic or home then it will use less because they are feature stripped versions. I run Ultimate which is why my usuage may be a higher than some other versions and on the subject of memory leaks, your system can't have memory leaks its software that has memory leaks so short of Vista having one, there is no leak.