My Windows 10 LTSC (1809) doesn't seem to have Superfetch... Is it normal?

Man · July 9, 2020

Man · July 9, 2020

34 minutes ago, Benji said:

Since the update to 1809, Microsoft removed the separate Superfetch service and integrated into the SysMain service. If you want to edit it, you'll have to edit it in the registry under the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

0=Disabled

1=Improves starting of apps

2=Improves system boot

3=Improves both (standard setting on regular Windows versions)

Just wanted to disable it (among other services) as I'm running the OS on an HDD.

Thanks!

Man · July 9, 2020

1 hour ago, Benji said:

I'm sure you mean SSD, on an HDD you'll want to keep it enabled as it will work even slower than it already does when SuperFetch is still enabled .

Love to have helped

In my experience, Superfetch brings the system to a crawl, eats a TON of RAM and has no long term benefit. Does nothing but spools up the disk for around 15 to 30 seconds whenever I start or exist a program. But when disabled, the system runs as fast as a lightweight Linux distro.

No exaggeration!

GoodBytes · July 9, 2020

1 hour ago, Man said:

In my experience, Superfetch brings the system to a crawl, eats a TON of RAM and has no long term benefit. Does nothing but spools up the disk for around 15 to 30 seconds whenever I start or exist a program. But when disabled, the system runs as fast as a lightweight Linux distro.

No exaggeration!

SuperFetch purpose is to preload part of applications before you do based on your usage.

The RAM it consumes is not reserved. The moment you need it, it shrinks dynamically. I have already done tests here ages ago, showing the RAM increase as you load the RAM continuously, and at a certain point, despite opening the same program, but instances of it, the overall RAM usage stop growing as much, and eventually stalls in growth. In some cases you might see it reduce, contrary to expected.

Introduced back in Vista, it was one of the features that many people miss understood, and thaught "Oh look how much Vista takes as RAM compare to XP!". That was of course, not really true. Yes the OS consumed more RAM than XP, of course, but not as much in reality, it was just Super Fetch being there, doing its thing.

Also, RAM is meant to be used. Empty RAM is wasted money. In an ideal perfect world, you want RAM usage to be 100% all the time. The more things are on RAM, is the more system is fast and responsive. CPUs in our laptops, desktop and tablets only has visibility on RAM and only works with it directly. Reduction in responsiveness (beside CPU performance being limited factor), is due to data fetch time from secondary storage (HDD or SSD) to RAM.

As a result, SuperFetch benefits both SSD and RAM. As the fastest SSD in RAID 0, doesn't come close to RAM speed. Last I check, the fastest M.2 NVMe SSD on PCIE4.0 you can get at the consumer level, matches the fastest DDR2 speed in single channel (that I could find on the consumer market), if my calculations are correct. If not, it floats around there.

HDD activity when you lose a program, is normally due to pagefile swapping. This happens when you are out of RAM (or just about), and the OS is swamping things between disk and HDD/SSD. Depending on your age, you may recall back in the old days, in early 2000 with XP, when you quick a game, the HDD was under heavy load, and because we had single core CPUs and a CPU rendered interface (instead of GPU), the screen was black with Windows elements popping in, one at a time. This is page swamping. Low RAM does that. Which was a fact of reality back in the old days. 256MB which was typical, or 512MB which was only for the high-end gaming or workstation systems, both faced this.

If RAM is an issue, I would look at the second hand market for RAM. Or better yet, have a look at your local computer recycling center. Typically, companies send old computers (which they typically replace every 4-5 years), there. So you can find some nice really cheap system (no OS), and depending on your area, you might find some old 64 or 128GB SSDs there and DDR3 RAM, and being a recycling center, they are priced for real cheap, and coming from a business sector, from Dell's, HP, and so on branded computers, you know that the system was never overlocked. So the chances of wasting your money on something broken that look in great shape, is slim. The only downside, is that it might be far. Just something to consider for an ultra cheap upgrade or even system. An on top of this, you help give a second life of sorts on a system, reducing waste.