How do i know how much memory (real ram, not virtual page) is available for my app/game? Lets imagine i''m doing a rather basic chess program (which by the way i am and the player only has 24Mb of Ram and an old 3Dfx Voodoo... With OpenGL driver emulators and stuff my game will run... Now, when I allocate my data pool, if the system is already using 12Mb, i''m left with 12Mb of Ram, if I use 20Mb, there will be paging to disk, right? So, using this valuable information, I can program the core engine, so that it tries to use only the (real) ram, with zero to-hard-drive paging... I hope i made my case understandable, Seasons Greetings,

[Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams][]
"Research is what I''m doing when I don''t know what I''m doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

...You'll use virtual memory.

Virtual memory is only noticeably slower, I find, for full 3D graphics like Quake/UT.

I don't know a way to check myself, but I'm not sure you'll find a big deal.

Unless, of course, it's a real old clunker HD on ATA-33 or something...

Edited by - Anonymouse Poster on January 2, 2002 3:10:31 PM

Are you saying that HD=RAM in speed?!?
No, try again...

[Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams][]
"Research is what I''m doing when I don''t know what I''m doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

I''m sure the AP wasn''t suggesting HD==RAM, but for most purposes you probably aren''t going to notice too badly for a modern disk subsystem (espcially if the OS is using plenty o'' RAM for disk caching, which is where most of that OS RAM usage probably goes to). Also, idle apps get paged out first (or technically, "idle" *pages* get paged out first), so if you are writing a game, chances are you''ll be using your memory enough to keep it in RAM. Of course as Jim_Ross pointed out, this will never be guaranteed. If your game is doing excessive paging on a system with only 24MB of RAM, then either redesign the game to use less RAM, or make your minimum RAM reqs 32/64/etc.

Design of your memory layout is also critical (if you want to keep paging to a minimum). Maybe it''s okay that part of your game is paged to disk. If you design it so that things that are used together end up in the same physical pages, then you wont end up thrashing virtual memory as much as you would if things were spread all over the place.

-Brannon

I would like to know how to do this sort of thing (may it just be for curiousity) in any OS. You can easily acquire this information using the Windows API (I''m sorry but I don''t recall the actual functions at the moment of writing.)
I do not know how to get this information under say, Mac OS 9 or X, Linux/Unix etc and would appreciate any informative reply on this topic.

--
Pelle "Muusu" Lindstrand
pelle.lindstrand@swipnet.se

What you''re after is the GlobalMemoryStatus() and GlobalMemoryStatusEx() Windows API calls.


Unfortunately though, calls like VirtualProtect() and VirtualLock() will only truely commit physical RAM on NT based kernels so knowing how much physical RAM there is only useful as general guide, for example for making sure a machine meets the minimum specifications for your game.

About all you can do is manual page touching to try and trick the Win9x kernel into making certain pages stay commited.


--
Simon O''''Connor
Creative Asylum Ltd
www.creative-asylum.com