Free RAM

fezbombmatt · 17 May 2013

This is what i am seeing.

fezbombmatt · 17 May 2013

I don't see a problem here. Half of your RAM is available RAM, so you are in good shape. The 'In Use' is a bit high but that could be because of the programs you have running. The Hardware Reserved could be your on-board graphics or some other device that needs some real RAM.

Ive never had this on any machine i built before, i wondered why just for future really.

I have a general interest in know about these things.

LMiller7 · 17 May 2013

Along side that, as my memory on this PC seems to go to 0 free sometimes. I assume that this will increase the amount of Page Filing too. While the PC feels quick still atm. Would i be recommended to install some extra RAM? Or wouldnt it matter.

Having low or zero free memory is completely normal and will not impair performance. Windows was designed to work this way. The ideal would be for free memory to be zero at all times but we are not there yet. Free memory is wasted memory and Windows always tries to avoid waste.

The memory labeled as "Standby" should be high. It can be assigned to any process just like free memory but in the meantime it acts as a kind of cache. This is better than free memory.

Solarstarshines · 17 May 2013

fezbombmatt said:

This is what i am seeing.

That is because some of your Hardware Video acceleration needs it to run smooth you are not going to have every mb of ram available it just doesn't work that way
No matter what you do your resources will use that little amount

There is nothing wrong with your setup adding more Ram will not make a difference as stated unless you are doing something intense I run 16gb and don't even get close to even using 3gb

I Video encode play games and have a multi network set up only way i'll get the full function out of my ram is to create Virtual machines with in my machine

Your set up will only allow so much look at my screen shot i'm using nothing pretty much and just wasting ram persay

UsernameIssues · 17 May 2013

fezbombmatt said:

...........Ive never had this on any machine i built before, i wondered why just for future really.

I have a general interest in know about these things.

I've not seen* the "(x.xxGB Usable)" RAM thing either on a 64bit OS and an "i" series CPU with its built-in GPU. Does this computer have another video card added?

*not that I've been looking for it.

bobafetthotmail · 17 May 2013

You can place there browser cache and temporary files, that does speed up the browser.

But yeah, get a SSD. Even a crappy one is better than the best HDD as far as response times go.

More ram is useful if you want to play with virtual machines though. That is, if you want to have Windows 7, Mac Osx, and Linux Ubuntu going at the same time.

Along side that, as my memory on this PC seems to go to 0 free sometimes. I assume that this will increase the amount of Page Filing too.

The number you should look at is the "Available".
Win7 does preload as much as possible into RAM, trying to guess what you will need more, to improve responsiveness.
In case more RAM is needed by something else, some of that preloaded stuff is deleted to make space.

So, even if you have 0 Free you can have more than 4 gigs Available.

All my other PC's i built have never said a usable amount. Is that something wrong?

The short version of the article above:
It is likely because that PC has a 32-bit version of Windows (Control Panel --> System to see if it is 32 bit or 64 bit). It cannot see more than 3.2-3.9 GB of RAM.
It's just a software limit (in the more distant past it was also a hardware limit), all ways to sidestep that without using a 64 bit windows version tend to suck.

Technically even 64-bit version does have a maximum amount of usable RAM, but it's a ridiculously huge number.

Britton30 · 17 May 2013

fezbombmatt said:

Well just for starters, under MSCONFIG the maximum memory is not ticked. And i have BIOS settings all auto. What else can cause unusable RAM

Having more installed than you need.

UsernameIssues · 17 May 2013

bobafetthotmail said:

~~~
short version of the article above:
It is likely because that PC has a 32-bit version of Windows (Control Panel --> System to see if it is 32 bit or 64 bit). It cannot see more than 3.2-3.9 GB of RAM.
It's just a software limit (in the more distant past it was also a hardware limit), all ways to sidestep that without using a 64 bit windows version tend to suck.

Technically even 64-bit version does have a maximum amount of usable RAM, but it's a ridiculously huge number.

Look at the screenshot in this post
Free RAM
The OP is seeing this on a 64bit OS with i3 CPU.
Have you ever seen the "usable RAM" statement on a 64bit OS?

BoseRoHS · 18 May 2013

Utilizing an SSD to host the OS, then Superfetch is totally useless and serves no point (more than enough research has been done *legit sources all over the web* to back that up). Disable it on SSD, you're losing performance with it enabled.

If you're looking into RAMDrive, I'd suggest upgrading to 16GB of memory then RAMDrive would be a worthwhile investment, better yet 32GB would be better or even 64GB of memory.

Best thing I love about RAMDrive is installing an application or scratchdisk and after boot that information is still there and it's performance is beyond SSD. Hopefully, soon, HDD and SSD will be a thing of the past and everything is RAM!~

logicearth · 19 May 2013

Just like to add. Hardware Reserved is just that, Hardware Reserved. There is nothing in Windows to change that, memory is reserved BEFORE Windows boots up. Windows has no control over that. That is why it is labeled Hardware Reserved.

I have a new system, 64 bit, i7 3930k with 16 GBs of RAM, 4GB of VRAM on my GTX 690. I have 84 MBs set as Hardware Reserved. You get the "(x.xx GB usable) bit when Hardware Reserved is over a certain limit.