Optimal performance is the goal of most computer users and the ways in which it is attained are very diverse. Some prefer CPU tweaks, others memory boosting methods, overclocking is widely applied for various components, depending on each user's knowledge and experience in working with PCs. The easiest way of managing and getting the most out of your computer is to use tools that can do the job for you, instead of having to learn all the intricacies of manually setting up the parameters for any of the components installed on your system. Such applications come in different flavors, of which perhaps the most common and often used are those dealing with the system RAM.

Enter MEMORyAL, a tool that was designed in order to help you squeeze every ounce of juice out of your computer's memory and put it to work for you. Easy to install and operate, this utility packs some interesting features and requires no financial effort as it is free. So far so good, so it's time to take a closer look under the hood to see what this software is all about.

The first thing you’ll notice about MEMORyAL is its simple interface. It has no fancy buttons, no eye-candy effects and this is a good thing for a tool designed to free up RAM and not clog it some more; you have your other software programs that can do that easily. This utility was obviously designed with simplicity and practicality in mind so you'll find only the necessary functions to keep your system going smoothly and at a high pace insofar as the memory is concerned. Besides the optimization features there are also quite a few monitoring options you can activate and use to stay well informed on how the PC is performing.

The main function of this software is to enable you to immediately release the memory and obtain a larger amount of free RAM. This can be done in two ways: by using the slider in the upper left corner of the main window or by simply pressing the button that will set loose the maximum quantity of available system memory. This procedure takes a few seconds to complete and it will give you the impression that it freezes your computer, though it's not the case at all, on the contrary.

In fact, the result of this action is the most important and you'll be surprised (I know I was) when you'll see the amount of RAM freed by MEMORyAL. Even on my Vista system it did an amazing job clearing almost 20 percent (17 to be exact) of the system memory. Nonetheless, it is rather redundant to use this kind of apps on Vista, where the built-in SuperFetch feature manages and optimizes the memory thus allowing your programs to load and launch faster than on any other previous Windows OS.

The other useful features that are bundled in this utility are related to monitoring the CPU and disk speed testing. The software can show you the current processor usage in percents, its accessible speed in megaflops as well as the memory speed for both writing and reading. MEMORyAL will also allow you to view the write and read speed for a specific drive you select, to perform a memory test and even get detailed CPU and BIOS information. This tool offers some useful shortcuts to Disk Cleanup, Disk Checkup and Disk Defragmentation that will come in very handy whenever you need to perform maintenance tasks on your local drives and disks.

There is only one last thing to be mentioned and it relates to the resource consumption. Well, besides the pretty good job it does in releasing your RAM, MEMORyAL actually consumes some system resources while running with all the monitoring functions activated, loading your processor quite a bit. I always expected that this particular sort of tools would use the least possible amount of memory and CPU for their own usage and focus on optimizing these resources for other applications that are of greater importance to the user.

The Good

Perhaps the best thing about this application is the high rate of success for releasing system RAM. It operates quickly and effectively. As simple as that, no annoying dialogs, confirmations, warnings, you simply choose the amount of memory to be freed and get the result on the spot.


The Bad

The first major drawback of this piece of software is its simple and unattractive interface that has all the functions and buttons stacked into a single and rather small window. Another minus is the pretty high resource usage when running with all the functions activated.

The Truth

Having seen MEMORyAL at work, I think it's safe to say that this freeware tool does a good job in cleaning your RAM so you can use your computer's memory at full potential and, at the same time, it tries to compensate through functionality what it cannot offer in terms of good looks. This is by no means a bad thing, but many users could be driven away by the simplicity of the interface and therefore they won't be able to enjoy a quite good memory optimizer and monitor.

So, all things considered, my advice is to give it a try and you'll see that the utility, even if it's not the best looking of the lot, gets the job done well and this is the most important thing after all.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: