Ram Usage way too high, not showing up properly in task manager

I had 2gb of ram and upgraded to 8gb recently. I really saw the performance at first but then it dropped off to where it was before pretty quickly. Right now my task manager performance tab shows 5.7 GB of ram being used, while adding up everything manually in the "processes" tab (and rounding up) shows 1.29 GB being used. I downloaded and ran a hidden process revealer (Process Revealer Free Edition 1.0 - Free hidden malware detector) which showed 0 hidden processes. This is also without any antivirus software running, as I know that can suck up RAM (although I just ran the windows antivirus scan with no results, and I'm running spybot S&D now). I'll deactivate all startup programs and reboot after the antivirus scan to see if that helps, but what could be causing this? I can't think of anything aside from a rootkit - definitely not good news.

whs said:

1. Did you click "Show processes from all users" 2. Did you account for the workspaces of those processes
3. Look into Resource Monitor > Memory tab. That will give you a better picture.

1. yes
2. what are the workspaces of the processes? that's something that's hard to google without knowing more.
3. thanks, that has more info but I still don't see how it could add up to 5+ gb of ram.