[PicoTorrent Is A High Performance Low Memory Usage BitTorrent Client

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Luther Lazaro

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Jun 13, 2024, 6:12:22 AM6/13/24

to noiportgistbear

Sol: Manually override the value and set it to 1000MB, this is the max safe value I have been using for years. Also uncheck the box for "Reduce memory use when not needed", otherwise the value we set would not be meaningful.

PicoTorrent is a high performance low memory usage BitTorrent client

Download Zip === https://t.co/T62TWklYM9

Then I realized that in 2.2.1, the option to disable Windows Disk Write Cache was still present, though I checked the boxes, I MUST USE ADMIN PRIVILEGE to open utorrent for them to work. Guess what? It finally works for me.

Recommending downgrading is NOT supported and hasn't been for 8 years. Running the current version of uTorrent as administrator will have the same effect as turning off the windows cache because uTorrent now attempts to do so without a way to not do it.

For the increase of cache size, the reason it helps is the downloading speed can be very high (50MB/s) in my case, 32MB cache is too low to be an effective buffer. 1GB can be too high, but it's just a worry free value to handle the high download burst.

Sadly making the client run as admin does not help. My system RAM usage still keeps creeping up even if the actual utorrent.exe proces does not use more RAM or the current cache keeps stable at a certain amount.

For less than 30 min of Downloading, the RAM that was released after the Download job was done was 1 290 MB! That is very bad as it slows down my PC when it starts reaching my RAM limit and starts paging.

The last build that still has the options to disable the windows disk caching is 3.1.3 build 27498 which i was using untill now and seems i will have to continue using since getting 1.2GB RAM used for a 30 min DL job is just unusable for me.

Those settings seem to help, but it is not perfect.I still get about 200-300MB RAM overhead fairly quick at which point it starts to stabilize(or at least increase very slowly) and then after a few min or so it drops back and the cycle starts again.So it is much better than the 1GB+ i used to get, but not as good as the older version that i used where the only RAM usage i got was write cache + read cache + client initial usage.

The only downside is that now the size of the torrent is not immediately taken into account when Windows calcualtes free disk space.It was nice that when adding multiple torrents i could instantly see how much space is going to be used by the new torrents and how much sapce i have left, but i keep more than enough free space so not a big problem.

There is one problem tho with the latest stable version.The UI hangs to Not Responding fairly easy.While downloading if i click between any of my other(stopped) torrents after a few clicks it freezes and hangs.Once i even had to kill the client from the Task Manager.

PS:It seems that the situation with RAM usage did not improve for the uploading jobs.Unlike the DL jobs where after a certain time the RAM gets released with UL jobs the RAM just keeps going up.I even tried the beta which didnt help either.Sadly the new versions are still not usable for me.

@splintax: Do you minimize to tray by clicking on the tray icon? If that's the case, it doesn't seem to free RAM that way. Any other way (closing with Alt+F4, the X on the top right hand corner, the taskbar item, etc) should clear the RAM. I sorta reported this a few months ago, but it might have gone unnoticed =T

When I first downloaded uTorrent, I thought it might have too. In theory, it is possible. It doesn't affect any other client, but uTorrent is so little and uses so little RAM, it might just be possible its algorithm would try and save RAM while the GUI is up by reducing something related to the BT process.

A problem with BitTorrent is that it is particularly finicky and its speed is dependent on countless factors including your luck of the day. The upshot is that it is almost impossible to prove that your slow speed is the fault of the client or even necessarily how you set it up. You may suspect and even generalize, but you can almost never prove.

Anyway, if you are convinced it might be a factor (like I still suspect), then set the update interval to maximum (10000ms). You will still see what happens quite well and I don't think it slows you down any at that rate. Also, turn Low CPU usage to False, especially while you've got it up. If you can afford to have it up maximized, you aren't doing anything important, and uTorrent doesn't drag you measurably even with it on False (as opposed to most other clients...)

Most of the time I keep utorrent in tray and I can move my mouse above it to show it's dl/uling, speed etc. And I found out if I open it and see the figures, dl speed is lower down and it doesn't climb up again. That's why I asked here.

I've found to my depression that your subjective perception is more practical than any statistics about CPU and RAM usage when it comes to BitTorrent clients. Azureus also claims low CPU usage in the Task Manager and RAM usage that is, while about 10 times higher than uTorrent, still only at the level of say Acrobat Reader, so it shouldn't be a lethal drag. Meanwhile, everything outside of Azureus slows to the speed of a snail.

What kind of computer are you having? I noticed this too when I first started with the high refresh rates and Low CPU Usage TRUE, but after taking update interval to 10s and making sure Low CPU Usage is FALSE with the thing maximized, there was no appreciable depression in speed. I got some of my best speeds in uTorrent while it was maximized.

Try that. I believe your problem is real too, but then I think I have a weak computer compared to some of the guys here. As I said, the problem is IMO that uTorrent is such a miser on your resources, so if you keep insisting on lots of screen updates, there isn't enough to go around. Just look at how little it takes and how much say Azureus with pretty much the same interfaces and displays take, and one may appreciate why Azureus seems unaffected no matter what the data updates you demand (Azureus simply grabs even more of your system, as if it hasn't fossilized your system already).

Oh yeah, if you have Logging on, turn it off. It is fun to see the stuff rolling up the screen, but I swear that logger slows me up, and IIRC they don't recommend you have the logger on all the time unless you have a problem in the FAQ too.

One more, stay away from that graph, I swear it does nothing positive to your speed. The best way is just to leave everything unselected when it is maximized and just watch the main display. Unless of course you need to peek into details, then go in, take your peek and make your adjustments, then deselect the torrent.

I can't imagine how Win95+IE4 runs in 486 system. Perhaps DX4-100 might give reasonable speed. I have a Cyrix 486SLC at home but never tried to install Win95 on that system, used Win3.1 and NetBSD twin OS.

Kazuaki Shimazaki: it was a testimonial by Smoovious, he was running w95 on a 486, but you can't really look at the GUI while it runs (it takes about 10 seconds per screen refresh). close it and it's pretty reasonable

The only uTorrent does when minimized is stop updating the GUI, Which decrases resource usage a bit. Might assist performance if your network is being bogged down by very high cpu\memory usage, but that would probably affect only very old and incapable machines.