why does gb-pvr take up so much memory?

[glitch]

I have gbpvr.exe (61 megs), gbpvrRecordingService.exe (60 megs), and GBPVRTray.exe (35 megs !) running and I wondered why those applications are taking up so much memory? The numbers I quote are with a few recordings scheduled but with nothing playing and nothing currently being recorded. A better question is, why does a task bar tray icon app take up 35 megabytes? The memory numbers are the Mem Usage and VM Size numbers from Windows Task Manager and then summed. Oh, and gbpvr.exe sometimes jumps to 130 megs as it did while writing this. Memory jumps to 155 megs when I decide to watch live TV.

[sub]

Thats just the way it is these days I'm afraid. .NET is a quite a memory hog.

Using your example of GBPVRTray.exe - its probably 200 lines of code, the program itself doesnt really allocate much in the way of memory (a dozen or so text strings), but uses .NET to create a window and to make remote calls (retrieving a few strings every 5 seconds or so from the recording service)... instantly we're up to 35MB.

To be fair though, its not very easy to see how that VM's memory is used. Much of it is actually shared with other .NET processes.

[glitch]

hi sub,

I forgot you programmed it in .NET. I wonder if Java would be better or worse? At least gbpvr doesn't seem to suffer any performance problems but it would be nice if .NET wasn't such a hog but, then again, it is from MS so we shouldn't expect anything less. And I realize that the values I quoted also include other files too and not just your code (like the .NET overhead for one thing) and so with just using Task Manager it isn't possible to know just how much gbpvr uses itself.

[sub]

From past experience, I'd guess Java would have been more or less the same.

It could have used much less memory by writing it in C++, but then my original goal for the project wouldnt have been fulfilled (learning .NET and C#)

[Carlito]

.NET will hold on to memory if it needs it but gladly frees it up when it is needed. The numbers you are looking at in Task Manager are not really reflective to the amount of memory a .NET program needs. The program will anticipate the amount of memory needed and hold it, but again if another program or resource needs memory .NET will gladly give it up.

[JDeSimone]

What are we talking here? Less than 160meg total? This at a time that I wouldn't even consider building a PC and not putting 2-4gig of ram in it. Of course I am from a time of pc's with 48k total memory that cost $500.00 and 80k floppy drives. that were $450.00 each.

[nbarsley]

I only have 128mb of ram in my gbpvr
The menu runs a little slow but everything works perfectly fine.

[BoomerBrian]

That is the price you pay for "RAD" (Rapid Application Development). You are at the mercy of all of the developers that wrote all of these libraries. At least memory is cheap.

I am just now learning .NET but I think for this type of application .NET is the way to go. I am a JAVA developer. JAVA has it's own issues.

[Carlito]

JAVA has it's own issues.

Yep, nothing like creating a non-portable version of java and calling it C# :p

From developing in .NET for quite a few years now (since the first beta) I consider it to be a very stable coding environment. I used to code primarily for *nix systems as well as web development on many different platforms, and every language I have used has their own set of problems/quirks. .Net, IMHO, is one of the better ones.

*prepares for the ensuing re-talliations *

[BoomerBrian]

Yep, nothing like creating a non-portable version of java and calling it C# :p

From developing in .NET for quite a few years now (since the first beta) I consider it to be a very stable coding environment. I used to code primarily for *nix systems as well as web development on many different platforms, and every language I have used has their own set of problems/quirks. .Net, IMHO, is one of the better ones.

*prepares for the ensuing re-talliations *

No retaliation from me. We chose JAVA at work simply because we wanted all applications to be web based and we liked the J2EE standard. JAVA has come a long way the last few years. The problem is keeping up with all of the new technologies that come out like Spring, JSF, Hibernate, etc... We use Oracle JDeveloper IDE and it has become a really nice IDE.

I have programmed in the past with VB6 and Borland Delphi,C++. I really liked Borlands IDEs. I really hated Visual C++. The IDE I thought sucked. The learning curve was too steep. I used VB and when I tried Visual C++ I was like "WTF". Borlands looked the same. Wheter I used Delphi or C++ the controls and IDE looked the same. However from what I have seen with .NET the little that I have used is that they have standardized the IDE.

My belief is that you can skin a cat multiple ways. Choose the technology that will get you there. Whether it be .Net or JAVA. They both exist for a reason. Because both have their own quarks and issues.