question about gaming

[cujo]

i've got the g15 keyboard and so most of the time when i'm gaming i keep the cpu/ram usage display up. i notice when i alt-tab that my ram usage drops huge and then i alt-tab back in it takes so long for it to load in again.

is there any way to prevent the ram from unloading the game data on alt-tab? i mean i've got 2gigs and i really haven't noticed a huge difference, if any, going from 1 to 2gigs (except in games where hitching no longer happens). i was expecting instantaneous alt-tabbing due to having plenty of ram for windows to be able to maintain my games in ram completely.

now i've read lots of tweak guides and tried many things including attempting to completely get rid of my pagefile(thinking that was the problem) all to no avail. so i'm just asking here as this is probably the most advanced forum i'm part of and hopefully someone will have answers.

btw, the main game i play is cs and i'm alt-tabbing usually to talk on irc or while i'm waiting around for a scrim to start.

thanks in advanced for any help. i tried searching the forums but it's not really a very easy question to search about.

[nn_step]

Just buy more Ram or use a lightier OS

[cujo]

Just buy more Ram or use a lightier OS

did you even read what i wrote?

i want to know how to stop games from unloading out of ram on alt-tab. i have 2gigs. it shouldn't be necessary.

[[XC] MarioMaster]

i think it depends on the game, some of mine take forever to restore, some are instant

[Soulburner]

It probably depends on the game and/or the OS. In XP I don't seem to have that problem with my 2gb.

[cujo]

nfs:mw is a lot quicker than source for sure. but it also uses less ram. i think it more has to do with how windows allocates and re-allocates it's ram. the more you use the more it dumps. it seems to always drop to about 30% usage.