[Mike B]

rdamurphy, on 11 September 2014 - 04:24 PM, said:

Just curious ... What happens with LAA enabled with a 64 bit computer with only 2GB of RAM?

I suspect that it would attempt to give ORTS-LAA 4GB of virtual memory, but if you tried to use it Windows would thrash the swapfile so badly that the computer would become unusable. Non-LAA would do it to, though perhaps not quite as badly. "Thrash" seems to occur when a program tries to use more virtual memory than about 3/4 of the real RAM all at once (for RAM < 4-6 GB) - at that point you're probably starting to squeeze the stuff Windows has to keep in-RAM for operation. The process memory allocation figures you normally see in the Windows Task Manager are virtual memory, not real. The "Performance" tab will tell you (in different ways for different Windows versions) how much physical RAM is in use for the system as a whole.

I had a work laptop that when delivered had Win7 Pro 64-bit and 2GB RAM. It worked generally OK for email, browsing, Word, and light Excel use. Dreamweaver could get a little choppy. Attempting to use my graphics program (ACD Canvas+GIS) was an exercise in futility - Real Work with it involved map projects with multiple layers (CADD or GIS-like), fair-sized publication files, or image processing, or sometimes all 3 at once, and quickly used up available RAM forcing excessive swapfile use. There were times when I couldn't even get Windows to kill the program - there was so much thrashing going on that the system became unresponsive. Simply shutting down the computer sometimes took 4-5 minutes. I was later able to get the RAM upgraded to 8GB after which there were no more hangups. Why they got 2GB ... who knows ... low bid I suppose.

All the recommendations I've seen are that you don't use 64-bit Windows unless you have at least 4GB of RAM, even though you can theoretically boot it in 2GB. Oh yes, "thrashing" in this context is the system spending so much time swapping things between real RAM and the swapfile on disk that nothing else gets done. You can largely eliminate the problem by using a SSD for the swapfile rather than a conventional hard disk, but if you have the money to do that then why are you messing about with a computer that has 2GB RAM?

[James Ross]

Mike B, on 11 September 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

I suspect that it would attempt to give ORTS-LAA 4GB of virtual memory, but if you tried to use it Windows would thrash the swapfile so badly that the computer would become unusable. Non-LAA would do it to, though perhaps not quite as badly. "Thrash" seems to occur when a program tries to use more virtual memory than about 3/4 of the real RAM all at once (for RAM < 4-6 GB) - at that point you're probably starting to squeeze the stuff Windows has to keep in-RAM for operation. The process memory allocation figures you normally see in the Windows Task Manager are virtual memory, not real. The "Performance" tab will tell you (in different ways for different Windows versions) how much physical RAM is in use for the system as a whole.

Yeah, LAA lets OR allocate more but it won't do that just because you selected LAA, only if you crank the settings up. If the amount OR has allocated (LAA or not) exceeds the RAM not being used to keep Windows running, you'll get swapping and performance will likely tank.

In the future, we could make the performance tuner spot this problem and turn things down automatically.

[rdamurphy]

I'm running Windows 8.1.1 on an old Thinkpad T60, Core2Duo, 2G - and not upgradeable.

But... Win64 8.1.1 works perfectly. And it's much faster and much cooler than the WinXP that the laptop originally shipped with.

BTW, I bought the laptop off of Craigslist for $60...

Robert

[Mike B]

Old Thinkpad! Love it. Had one of those (an X-series) at work many years ago, and it was one of the easiest-to-use, bulletproof machines I've ever had. Case took several bangs but nothing ever broke (can't say the same for the HP that replaced it). Low-end Intel graphics, so that might be an issue for ORTS in addition to memory usage.

Win7 (no experience with 8 except in a phone) feels snappier in old hardware than XP. Things may not actually run faster in 7-8 (same old hardware, after all), but they seem to start up faster and (in my experience with Pentium-D/2G and Pentium Dual-Core E6300/4G) seem more stable. Driver availability for old hardware is probably the limiting factor for using Win7-8, and 64-bit can make it harder to find some drivers. MS' generic drivers will probably work, but at some performance and feature cost.

[rdamurphy]

Mine has Radeon 256M graphics, and a 720P HD screen, and runs MSTS/OR like a boss! It does have a couple of cracks in the case, including where the PMCIA cards go in, but the screen and keyboard are perfect.

I love being able to log in with my fingerprint!

Win 8 Is WAAAYYY faster than Win7. My main machine, the i7 at 4.4G with 16GB, and an SSD boots from BIOS beep to desktop in under 6 seconds. The old laptop is almost "instant." Probably about the same amount of time.

I have my main machine dual booted with Win7/8.1.1, and Win8x is so much faster than Win7, that Win7 almost reminds me of booting into my 223MMX with Windows98...

Robert

[atsf37l]

James Ross, on 10 September 2014 - 01:26 PM, said:

"Use large address aware binaries" enables Open Rails to use 4GB of virtual address space....

Thanks James. Very helpful. And I agree to those being promoted as well. :oldstry:

[RTP]

I really agree.
Please do it.

Regards.

[James Ross]

In X2499 I have promoted all three options to non-experimental, and "Use large address aware binaries" is now default-on after support in this thread. The other two remain default-off.