Urgent Help Please: RAM Upgrade Seems to Slow Things Down

infobull

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I have a Dell 650 workstation with a Xeon 2.8ghz chip, 512 RAM with a Matrox 128mb quad card. It was running ok with 2 monitors connected but slowish when having the IG binary bets pages up. I noticed the IG page downloads a lot of data when refreshing and uses quite a lot of memory.

I recently upgraded the RAM from 512mb to 1.5gb and have now hooked up 4 monitors, but the IG site seems to lock up quite often when I have other applications running at the same time(I never had this lockup problem before the RAM upgrade before on 2 monitors even when running slowly). IG Support told me to use the Sun Java instead of the Microsoft Java, but it seemed worse as the CPU somehow allocated almost 95-100% of the CPU time to the IG page, it runs like a treat but leaves no memory for the other sites. I have since switched back to the Microsoft Java which doesn't allocate all the CPU memory to IG but it locks up from time to time so I have to re-boot which is annoying.

It seems a lot better before the US opens, but I think it slows down after 2:30pm when the refreshing frequency increases dramatically.

I have tried to play with the virtual memory setting, defragmentation and deleting of the temp internet files to no avail. I cannot believe such a high spec system can be so slow, so it must be something quite simple or obvious to tweak.

I have also heard the IG site is not very stable but I don't think it should affect my PC's multi-tasking even if one site bombs out, so could it be the Java setting?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Infobull
 
Have you looked a processes and applications in task manager to see what is using the CPU?

I've never seen anything running with Sun Java that takes that much processor time. Of course it could be a badly written app.

Again look what is using the memory as you have a huge amount for normal stuff.

What OS are you running?

JonnyT
 
I've had big problems recently and my searching for answers brought up a lot of RAM questions. I'm no expert but bad RAM appears to have been my problem.
I suggest that you check that the new RAM is compatible.
Good luck
 
I run a 1.8ghz with 512mb RAM and don't have any probs with IG at all (I use binary bets a lot).
Suggest maybe your memory is dodgy.
 
I run a Windows XP Athlon XP 2000 with 512MB and about 10 applications including IB and IG and don't have these problems. In fact CPU usage is circa 10% at most except when running heavy scans.

1. Which OS are you using?: it must be Win 2k or XP.. if it W98 it cannot use 1.5GB memory
2. Isolate each application: one must be incorrectly set up and using lots of memory.. Just add one at a time or run them all and delete one at a time See what happens to memory usage.

3. Have you both Javas enabled? Only one must be..
 
This may help.

Look in display properties/settings/advanced and turn hardware accelleration DOWN.

This speeds up screen writing times.

John
 
You should only have one enabled..

IE 6
Tools
Internet Options
Advanced

I have Java (Sun) ticked
and
Microsoft VM

all boxes UNticked.


If you have both ticked you have a conflict
 
Nasty problem . W98 limit for ram is 512Mb, but reading between the lines, I think you don't have this.
Another USB ADSL problem? Whatever it is, it's gonna be a pain to sort. 512M will support the toughest of demands in XP. More is only required in photo manipulation or video recording. The demands of trading platforms/charting is minimal. Check your system idle % allocation. should be 90%+ most of the time. As a chart tick comes in, you'll see it blip down to 70 or 80.
I have a particular ( non trading , mutlimedia) application , that when run on a CPU faster than 2Gig, the system idle goes to 0%, the application goes to 99% and the whole thing hangs for several seconds. Then the app returns to 70-90%, and idle runs at 10-30% and all is fine. This happens totally at random. Replace the CPU with a 1.7 gig and it runs 24/7 without a glitch. :)
Figure that one out!
 
Re Java. I've got Sun for IB and VM for Downdata(you might know them as Updata) . They mention this and say VM needn't be default. Use Java Sun is checked.
More than that I don't know.
 
Infobull

Run Athlon 2000/512 MB no problems - CPU and memory to spare even with IG, Updata and Return to Castle Wolfenstein together. But keep an eye on memory usage with IG. Great software but occasionally I've found usage simply builds up. Maybe a dynamic memory thing. Normally 30MB but has been up to 250MB plus before I've noticed and restarted the web page. IG had not heard this from other users so I put it down to some quirk on my system.

Good luck
 
and do you run
1. a virus checker
2. Ad-aware of spy- seek and destroy
regularly

You may have either viruses or a series of bots tracking your internet usage
 
on Win XP, defrag is never needed, UNLESS by some quirk/desire, your file system is FAT32. Right click on the C drive, properties, it will tell you if it is FAT32 or NTFS.
 
FAT32 is 33% quicker than NTFS

For the Corporates I deal with I will always but always use NTFS for its recovery and security benefits but for Home use I use FAT32 and good image software such as Ghost or Drive Image.

JonnyT
 
I don't get you there CM. I've got XPHome and NTFS and have to defrag regularly. I thought everyone had to defrag, otherwise it just chokes up. Well mine does. I've just analysed and I've got 746 fragmented files and/or directories and 5934 excess fragments.
 
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