Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far.

mkk · Mar 25, 2009, 06:51 AM

When trying out the official beta I noticed that Superfetch was much less aggressive early on, but not until now after having run build 7057 for ten days or so have I started to look more closely at it. Not only has it been less present early after a start, it's much less active overall and for what little I've read about it I've seen some indications to the same general behavior. I'm curious if someone else has made some discoveries or has an experience to share.

For instance under Vista I'm used to heavy disk access early on and some 10-15min after a boot (depending on other activities) most of my 8GB of RAM has been filled with cached data from apps and games and probably a lot more. Now it's much less, maybe not even 500MB. It's been clearly positive for game loading performance early on after a bootup, which is what I'm missing the most.

With all the complaints about drive access in Vista I fully expected some tweaking of Superfetch to be done, but hope that in the end it isn't weakened as much as I've experienced so far. A hint on Microsofts Technet saying that Superfetch has been "enhanced" but that details are yet to be published is the only tangeable information I've found so far.

Judas · Mar 25, 2009, 03:45 PM

they really should present us a setting of various stages for it.. cause i had also noticed that while quite a number of things are very fast.... some of the loading of programs take a little longer and that there is little to no use of the available 4/8/12gb of ram present on the machine vs vista.

There should be a laptop setting and various levels for desktops being aggressive, normal, passive.

jandarsun8 · Mar 25, 2009, 06:56 PM

I haven't played around with Win 7 as much as I'd like to especially since the ATI drivers don't officially support the x1950 card I have for it but in XP there was a reg setting you could use in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
On the right side look for a key named: EnablePrefetcher
This decides if and how prefetch runs, here are the value and what they do:
0: Disable
1: Prefetch when an application runs
2: Prefetch on startup or bootup
3: Always Prefetch

Wondering if this would help in Win 7 at all?

Judas · Mar 25, 2009, 07:39 PM

the x1k series works very well with win7 provided you only get WDDM1.0 support via the Vista Official drivers installed in win7.

But i'm definitely going to fire up win7 when i get a chance and see if those options are available or do anything

jandarsun8 · Mar 25, 2009, 08:38 PM

hmm, I'll have to try that. I've been reluctant to try any drivers other then the default ones after blowing out two x850 pro cards during Vista beta testing.

Was just a suggestion on the Reg tweeks though as I have no clue how they'll act under Win 7 or if the option is even in there someplace.

IvanV · Mar 25, 2009, 10:09 PM

Hm... I did have a feeling that lower memory usage compared to Vista's was achieved by more or less disabling superfetch. That was on build 7000 and I have no evidence to support it, but it's the impression I got from using the system.

mkk · Apr 13, 2009, 05:17 PM

A small update.

On a build 7000(official beta) installation I see Superfetch act much more actively. It doesn't begin to preload much of anything not related to the startup until about six minutes after login, but then it loads up several gigabytes of data within a few minutes much like Vista so there it seems quite alright. If this behavior is more indicative of the final product (though I bet they are still tweaking Superfetch), I would feel good about it.

With the more recent builds up to and including 7068 that I'm primarily using now, it's like that at least on this installation there's very little being preloaded at any time, and it's especially hurting loading times in games. When I get my hands on a 7100+ build I'll install that fresh on the side as the third OS. What are multiple drives for...

XXpoker69XX · May 16, 2009, 04:21 PM

Superfetch is basically doing nothing in Windows 7. Vista loads most programs into memory at startup and uses almost all of available memory for this. Windows 7 isn't doing this. I noticed that right away. Didn't Microsoft say that Windows 7 is supposed to be faster? hmmmm.... I checked the registry settings; superfetch & prefetch both have a setting of 3 (cache everything). Doesnt look like this is the case. I'm a bit disappointed with this.

Judas · May 16, 2009, 04:51 PM

which build are you using.. rc?

my build has cached about 800mb

viru · Dec 15, 2009, 07:05 AM

want to disable Superfetch in Windows 7

then follow the tutorial in beloww link

Windows XP free software,tips,tricks: How to disable Superfetch in Windows 7?

Judas · Dec 15, 2009, 03:54 PM

don't want to disable it..

i want to make it even more agressive then it currently is

OldBuzzard · Dec 15, 2009, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

don't want to disable it..

i want to make it even more agressive then it currently is

QFT!

I have WIN 7 Pro installed, and with 8GB memory I'm seeing 4984 free

That's 4Gb of WASTED memory.

I hope someone figures out a way to make Superfetch a lot more aggressive in 7. It would have been nice if they would have put a 'slider' like they did for UAC so that we could set Superfetch to be more or less aggressive.

Chaos · Dec 15, 2009, 05:56 PM

Send that specific request to M$ and tell them to make you the focus of one of the new comercials so you can fly somewhere warm to recieve the special Win 7 PC they build for you

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldBuzzard

QFT!

I have WIN 7 Pro installed, and with 8GB memory I'm seeing 4984 free

That's 4Gb of WASTED memory.

I hope someone figures out a way to make Superfetch a lot more aggressive in 7. It would have been nice if they would have put a 'slider' like they did for UAC so that we could set Superfetch to be more or less aggressive.

OldBuzzard · Dec 16, 2009, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaos

Send that specific request to M$ and tell them to make you the focus of one of the new comercials so you can fly somewhere warm to recieve the special Win 7 PC they build for you

I doubt that MS would want a 64 yr old curmudgeon as a 'spokesman'

However, it sure would be nice to see something like that in 7's SP1

Judas · Dec 16, 2009, 03:37 PM

when the beta testing was going on over a year ago... i actually sent in several suggestions and asked for fixes... some of which were actually done (obviously enough people asked for them) but the adjustable superfetch wasn't one of them.

Mar 25, 2009, 06:51 AM	#1
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,495 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. When trying out the official beta I noticed that Superfetch was much less aggressive early on, but not until now after having run build 7057 for ten days or so have I started to look more closely at it. Not only has it been less present early after a start, it's much less active overall and for what little I've read about it I've seen some indications to the same general behavior. I'm curious if someone else has made some discoveries or has an experience to share. For instance under Vista I'm used to heavy disk access early on and some 10-15min after a boot (depending on other activities) most of my 8GB of RAM has been filled with cached data from apps and games and probably a lot more. Now it's much less, maybe not even 500MB. It's been clearly positive for game loading performance early on after a bootup, which is what I'm missing the most. With all the complaints about drive access in Vista I fully expected some tweaking of Superfetch to be done, but hope that in the end it isn't weakened as much as I've experienced so far. A hint on Microsofts Technet saying that Superfetch has been "enhanced" but that details are yet to be published is the only tangeable information I've found so far.

Mar 25, 2009, 06:56 PM	#3
jandarsun8 HardwareHeaven Addict Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: MN, US Posts: 323 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. I haven't played around with Win 7 as much as I'd like to especially since the ATI drivers don't officially support the x1950 card I have for it but in XP there was a reg setting you could use in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters On the right side look for a key named: EnablePrefetcher This decides if and how prefetch runs, here are the value and what they do: 0: Disable 1: Prefetch when an application runs 2: Prefetch on startup or bootup 3: Always Prefetch Wondering if this would help in Win 7 at all? __________________

Mar 25, 2009, 08:38 PM	#5
jandarsun8 HardwareHeaven Addict Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: MN, US Posts: 323 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. hmm, I'll have to try that. I've been reluctant to try any drivers other then the default ones after blowing out two x850 pro cards during Vista beta testing. Was just a suggestion on the Reg tweeks though as I have no clue how they'll act under Win 7 or if the option is even in there someplace. __________________

Mar 25, 2009, 10:09 PM	#6
IvanV HH Assassin Guild Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,919 Rep Power: 336 System Specs	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. Hm... I did have a feeling that lower memory usage compared to Vista's was achieved by more or less disabling superfetch. That was on build 7000 and I have no evidence to support it, but it's the impression I got from using the system. __________________ If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

Apr 13, 2009, 05:17 PM	Thread Starter #7
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,495 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. A small update. On a build 7000(official beta) installation I see Superfetch act much more actively. It doesn't begin to preload much of anything not related to the startup until about six minutes after login, but then it loads up several gigabytes of data within a few minutes much like Vista so there it seems quite alright. If this behavior is more indicative of the final product (though I bet they are still tweaking Superfetch), I would feel good about it. With the more recent builds up to and including 7068 that I'm primarily using now, it's like that at least on this installation there's very little being preloaded at any time, and it's especially hurting loading times in games. When I get my hands on a 7100+ build I'll install that fresh on the side as the third OS. What are multiple drives for...

May 16, 2009, 04:21 PM	#8
XXpoker69XX DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. Superfetch is basically doing nothing in Windows 7. Vista loads most programs into memory at startup and uses almost all of available memory for this. Windows 7 isn't doing this. I noticed that right away. Didn't Microsoft say that Windows 7 is supposed to be faster? hmmmm.... I checked the registry settings; superfetch & prefetch both have a setting of 3 (cache everything). Doesnt look like this is the case. I'm a bit disappointed with this.

Dec 15, 2009, 07:05 AM	#10
viru DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Re: Experiences of Superfetch in Windows 7 so far. want to disable Superfetch in Windows 7 then follow the tutorial in beloww link Windows XP free software,tips,tricks: How to disable Superfetch in Windows 7?