How much RAM does .Net need?

[Felecha]

I use a Dell Dimension 8300 2.8GHz, 256mb RAM. That's the way it came, out of the box, when the company bought it for me to use in development. I've been just one year on the job, fresh out of school. I do VB.Net for a handful of applications, mostly Windows Forms apps, a couple of SErvices, too. Often I have more than one open and working on them.

 

I worry that 256 is really not enough. One of the apps is now a 1.2mb executable, almost 20000 lines of code. Literally hundreds of controls from the toolbox, multiple tab controls and subtabs and sub-subtabs.

 

At times it feels like it's getting slower and slower. If I've been doing lots of back and forth between the Designer and the code, and running in Debug to see how it's going, after a while it gets to where it can take as much as a minute, with the WaitCursor there, to go from one to the other. At that point it never gets better and I sometimes just give up and close down and reboot, which helps again for a while. It's like something has gone off into the weeds and got lost and spinning its wheels. Screens come up and fill in really slowly, one button at a time. It can take more than 5 minutes to shut down all my apps, 2 minutes or more for the StartButton/ShutDown routine to get to the point that a new reboot starts. Very frustrating.

[mutant]

You are referring to Visual Studio .NET right? The minimum memory req. depends on what OS you are running. WinXP Pro minimum is 160mb, WinXP Home is 96mb, Win2000 Pro is 96mb, Win2003 is 160mb. While those numbers might be helpful, I can easily say from experience having the minimal hardware will bring you an experience which will leave much to desire. You have an amount of memory that meets those requirements but not by much. I would recommend upgrading your memory, not only for VS.NET (with such a big project), but for the sake of overall improvement in your computer's performance.

[Jay1b]

My computer crawled with 256mb, runs quite nicely with 512mb though.

 

Heres a few other things that could also effect it.

*Check your swap file settings,

*Scan for Viruses

*Scan for Trojans + Spyware - Ad-aware is very good and free.

*Change ur desktop background to none, just have a nice colour.

*Check for other processes that start on bootup, ie: that install of SQL server u once played with, but havent used in 6 months.

 

All those things can and will effect ur comp's performance.

[Felecha]

Yes, I'm running VS .Net. And it's XP Pro

 

I searched the forum and found something I didn't know about - increasing the pagefile size, which I did, and will see how that helps. I bumped it from 384 to 768. I don't know what's a reasonable size. The hard drive has tons of space.

[Jay1b]

Your swap/page file should be at 150% of your actual RAM. So 384Mb is right in your case.

 

If you have something like PartitionMagic, it may be worth creating a separate partition purely to hold your swap/page file, this will give you a LITTLE performance increase - but not much to be honest! If you do this, allow extra space incase you increase your RAM at a later date.

[Felecha]

Why is 150% the right amount? It seems like, if I really don't have enough ram it would help to have a larger pagefile. Seems odd that if I do add ram, say I double it, I should then need MORE pagefile space?

[Jay1b]

150% ie 384mb for 256mb actual RAM is the most efficient, this is the optimal amount. Anything over this and the effect is a negative one. On average that is - obviously that depends upon what type of applications your using.

 

Do you understand how cache works? If so this will explain why 150% is the optimal amount.

[Felecha]

I have a general sense of cache - a separate memory area where frequently fetched data is held, so it's available there for faster access if it's what an app calls for. And there is management of it - things get moved in or out according to algorithms that aim to optimize performance by having the best chance of having the desired data in there. The CPU has a cache, and I believe there are others.

 

As far as swapping or paging, I have been under the impression that the same idea is in play with RAM. The memory management routines keep data in RAM that is in current or most recent use. If it needs to bring in more data and RAM is full, the least recently used data gets swapped out to disk, but marked there for quick retrieval if it gets called for again.

 

Right there you have the whole of my understanding. So how does the 150% represent an optimum amount? I'm always very interested in things like that.

[snarfblam]

I have a gig of ram. It seems to me that when i reduced my pagefile to a much smaller amount... 350 megs... my computer got faster. Until i began writing programs and i had 12 IE windows open and studio and photoshop and 3 instances of paint and 2 explorer windows... and ran out of pagefile space. But windows is recommending me 766 megs. thats closer to two thirds than it is to three halves (150%). Not sure what my point is.

[Nerseus]

I have a P4 3ghz at work with 1gig of memory and it runs pretty good. At home I have a P4 1.7ghz with 1.5 gig of memory and it seems to run at the same speed - very nice.

 

Prior to this setup, my work machine had only 512 meg memory. The increas in memory had a noticible improvement.

 

Based on this limited info, I'd say that an increase from 512 to 1 gig makes a difference, at least for large WinForm projects. It might be possible that the increase of 1gig to 1.5gig also has an improvement as my slower processor with more memory seems the same speed.

 

-ner

[laredo512]

I agree with Nerseus.

 

When working with development suites such as VS.NET, Photoshop etc... as a computer reseller I must say the minimum requirements are 1GB of ram or more.

 

MS and all other companies label such low requirements to convince you to buy the product even if your machine is up to date, but lacking sufficient RAM to enjoy using the product properly.

 

When in development, 1 to 2GB of RAM, high speed processor, 8MB cache HDD or better, and a really good video card (at least 32MB) will get you to love using your computer. ;)

[Jay1b]

I am just repeating what i have read elsewhere here, so i assume its right.

 

The swapfile isnt used until the RAM is full, as the RAM is much much faster. When stuff is entered into the swapfile the computer will not then relocate this to the RAM when space becomes available, therefore your computer will always read it from the swapfile until its cast out of 'memory' then next time its cast back into 'memory'. If your swapfile is huge then the RAM wont be updated with the more frequently used information as much as it would do as if it was small. So your RAM could potentially be storing rarely used stuff and your swapfile could be containing the more frequently used stuff. Which would obviously be unefficient. This would explain Marble_Eaters findings.

 

As i say i read that somewhere a few years ago, so i cant remember it exactly - it may of also been for older versions of Windows.

 

Hope thats clear?

[PlausiblyDamp]

Windows will actually use the swapfile if if there is still free RAM in your system