Performance Enhancement

Hello Everyone.

I was looking around for a tips thread, but decided on this...
Anyway, a nice feature to eliminate that flip on the start screen and more...

Win + X > System >
Advanced System Settings >
Advanced (Tab) >
Performance Group >
Settings... >
Visual Effects (tab)

Select "best performance" (then custom) and then tick "Smooth edges of screen fonts"
You could see a performance improvement when accessing folders and when using Internet Explorer while at least maintaining a minimal quality appearance.

Thanks. This works fine on my laptop.

Some, self proclaimed experts, will tell you that such improvements will avail you very little.

But I say, if you get only 1% increase in performance, that's more than you had before. Eh?

I do many such small improvements to Windows, with 1% here and 2% there, and pretty soon I have 10% or more improvement.
Since laptops run at a huge disadvantage anyway, getting every little bit you can is GOOD.

You can get another huge improvement (more than just 1%) by telling the OS to upload its Kernel to ram on boot-up.
By default the Kernel, an important part of the OS, will remain on the hard drive, where it may be accessed thousands of times a day, by Windows. If it's loaded into ram, Windows speeds up greatly.

There is a good write-up on that tweak, Here:
Load Windows Kernel directly into Ram | Windows Secrets Lounge

I've been doing this for years, with great success. It worked well in XP and still works in Windows 8 and 8.1.

Also, you can take a huge load off of ram and your CPU, by limiting the number of Windows "Services" that run constantly in the background. I found good info on just what services that can be disabled or put into Manual mode, on the "Black Viper" web site.
I then compiled a batch file, to do the changes for me. Making the changes manually, could easily take me a half hour or more.
While running the batch file, takes only a few seconds.

Good Luck, and Happy Computing!
TM

Thank You TechnoMage. Thanks for the tip about OS uploading its Kernel to ram on boot-up. However, beeing a "very modest pc user", I feel this is a tweak that I do not dare yet to try. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to "administrator Brink" and his outstanding "Tutorial index Windows 8". I am new here at EightForums and really enjoy to read and learn thanks to you guys!

This may seem like a stupid question, but what kind of performance increase would I see running the kernal in DDR3 1600 memory vs my SataIII 840 Pro SSD?

You can get another huge improvement (more than just 1%) by telling the OS to upload its Kernel to ram on boot-up.
By default the Kernel, an important part of the OS, will remain on the hard drive, where it may be accessed thousands of times a day, by Windows. If it's loaded into ram, Windows speeds up greatly.

Click to expand...

That setting has been misrepresented endlessly on the Internet. Actually most of the kernel is in non-paged memory that will always remain in RAM. The setting refers to the "Executive" which is something different. Paging here is by default no different than for any other pageable data. If data is frequently accessed it will remain in RAM. If it is infrequently used it will remain on disk where it belongs and leave the valuable RAM for more important purposes. Also, this paging is not all or nothing but in relatively small blocks.

What the setting actually does is force even rarely used data to perpetually remain in RAM, even if it is only used only once, even if the memory is better used for some other purpose. Under normal circumstances this is a bad thing. Any performance gains I suspect are due to the placebo effect.

Edit: The memory saved by disabling services is more apparent than real. On bootup the savings may seem quite significant. But that is only because there is no currently no better use for the memory. When adequate memory is available the memory manager will let processes (including system services) use pretty much whatever memory they want. But when memory is needed for other applications that used by inactive system services will be trimmed back, drastically is necessary.

On the other hand, the risks of disabling services that were thought to be unneeded, but are, are very real. I know this from personal experience. Many people have got themselves into serious trouble by following Black Vipers advice.

Every service has a "dependancies " tab within Properties so you can tell some reprecutions of shutting it down.

Nice post, I.Miller7. I recall having the same discussion in another forum. The "placebo" effect which you mention, is even more widespread than you intimate. I was once a dedicated "customiser", but have found, since Windows 7, that most of the performance tweaks are more on the mind than on the motherboard! With the way services are used now, most particularly in Windows 8, Black Vipers honest efforts are, as you say, more visual, and possibly more damaging, than of real use.