MBA Windows 7 Ram

[zakg6]

Hi

I have installed windows 7 64 bit on my 2011 macbook air, everything worked fine.

But I have a gadget on my desktop that measures ram and cpu usage, and it says that I always have over 1GB of ram used, even if I've just restarted, is this normal?

Also I've heard that older windows versions could use a usb key to add more ram to a system, is this still possible in windows 7? since I sometimes use applications that cause the computer to constantly make a lot of noise and I'd prefer if it just kept silent

Or any other suggestions to run more demanding programs more smoothly would be welcome

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Zak

 

[simsaladimbamba]

With Windows 7 that sounds about normal, Mac OS X also uses 1 GB or more RAM right after startup.
And while it may be possible to use a USB flash memory thumb drive as additional RAM, it would be slow, very slow, as current DDR3 RAM has speeds of several GB/s, in your case around 10 GB/s. A USB flash memory thumb drive offers maybe 20 MB/s, that is 500 times slower than RAM, and almost ten times slower than your internal SSD to which RAM gets copied if there is not enough RAM (paging out, swapping), thus such USB flash memory thumb drive as RAM procedure is more than impractical.
And if your machine gets loud, it does mean the fan spins faster, which means more heat is inside the machine, which comes from more power being used to make the CPU work more. It has nothing to do with RAM.

 

[zakg6]

oh i see, thanks for the quick reply! 10Gb/s thats incredible...

I guess i'll just have to live with the occasional bit of fan noise

Just thought of something else, what is dedicated video ram? apparently I have 64MB and some games require like 512 MB, can I still play these games and does this affect anything apart from gaming?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

oh i see, thanks for the quick reply! 10Gb/s thats incredible...

GB/s = Gb/s, just for clarification, as the B stands for Byte and the b for bit, and 1 Byte is 8 bit, thus 10 GB/s is 80 Gb/s.

I guess i'll just have to live with the occasional bit of fan noise

Fan noise is normal during CPU intensive tasks.

Just thought of something else, what is dedicated video ram? apparently I have 64MB and some games require like 512 MB, can I still play these games and does this affect anything apart from gaming?

Dedicated video RAM belongs to a dedicated graphics card (dGPU), which only the 15" and 17" MBPs have (the AMD ones in the 2011 models) and the iMacs and Mac Pros (and the 2011 Mac mini as a BTO option).
The 11" and 13" MBAs and the 13" MBP (all 2011 models) have an integrated graphics processor (IGP), meaning the video RAM they use is taken from the actual RAM in your MBA. Currently it takes 384 MB from the 2 GB or 4 GB RAM you have.
A dGPU is an extra card on the logic board, which has its own RAM. The IGP is integrated into the chipset/CPU of the computer, thus it has no dedicated card/chip on the logic board for it, thus it has to take video RAM from the main RAM.

In short, playing games with the Intel 3000 HD is not the best idea, especially ones, that require a dedicated GPU. It may work with some games and with some others, but you probably have to set the settings to below low.

 

[zakg6]

ah that makes sense, doesn't bother me tho, bought this laptop for everyday use and it more than delivers, amazing what they fit in these

anyways thanks again for your replies, have a nice day