RAM Usage

just curious, i use the cpu and ram monitor gadget and while my cpu usage jumps around as i expect it to depending on what im doin the ram meter is always between 40 and 50 percent. got any ideas as to why this occurs? I have 3gb of ram and wouldnt mind using all of it.

Well I don't think Windows is going to use all 3GB until you start loading up lots of applications, or a game, or something like that.

Load as many apps as you can and then show us a screenshot when your RAM appears full

I have attached 2 screenshots. one with no apps running and one with many apps open. as you can see i could not use all of my ram even with the various apps open

If it bothers you that you aren't using all of your RAM, you could remove a stick of it and then maybe all of the remaining RAM would be used.

Hello,

Check "Process" of task manager to find out which process (xxxx.exe) is using memory.
Then search internet what is that process (xxxx.exe).

BR.

Yeah, I think I'm going to file this under "Not an issue".

Click to expand...

Wanna use lots of RAM? Get a 3d modeling program and make a crazy high poly scene, a fluid simulation, or a 1,000,000 particle effect. That'll use up your RAM . Also, have Crysis open at the same time . Also, if you have all of your RAM used, it makes your computer feel really laggy. When I'm baking a fluid simulation at high resolution, my computer isn't usable, and that's no fun. Just be happy that your comp doesn't use all that RAM.

I recommend editing a 4 terabyte video. Or better yet, take over the digital animation process at Pixar. That'll eat up all of your memory.

ok i get it its a non issue. i just thought that i could make my computer run faster if i could use a higher percentage of my ram for the everyday things i use it for

Everyone's Windows 7 uses approx. 80-90% of available physical memory, provided that everyone didn't tweak their Superfetch service off.

You can see that in Resource Monitor, the Memory tab. There's a nice graph there.

You are looking in the wrong places. Look into task manager > performance tab and see how much physical memory is free - probably very little. It's all used for caching. If you pump up your RAM with programs, you will see a considerable performance degradation. You could easily try that out by installing a virtual partition (e.g. with vBox) to which you allocate half of your RAM.

Use Process Monitor for more info too.

You can check which process is using more memory from task manager and then you can solve your problem.

ashley said:

You can check which process is using more memory from task manager and then you can solve your problem.

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ashley,

That's the thing, there is no problem. The original poster wants to use more memory on purpose, not less.

Teerex said:

Everyone's Windows 7 uses approx. 80-90% of available physical memory, provided that everyone didn't tweak their Superfetch service off.

You can see that in Resource Monitor, the Memory tab. There's a nice graph there.

Click to expand...

Teerex - curious about your comment since I did turn superfetch off (actually set to boot only aka reg "2") because it was thrashing my drive. I'm at a nice 25% allocation of physical ram, which is what I would expect with 4 gb. That is, expect from XP, but I'm a noob with 7. Thoughts about the value of superfetch relative to constant thrashing?

Grinch80 said:

Teerex said:

Everyone's Windows 7 uses approx. 80-90% of available physical memory, provided that everyone didn't tweak their Superfetch service off.

You can see that in Resource Monitor, the Memory tab. There's a nice graph there.

Click to expand...

Teerex - curious about your comment since I did turn superfetch off (actually set to boot only aka reg "2") because it was thrashing my drive. I'm at a nice 25% allocation of physical ram, which is what I would expect with 4 gb. That is, expect from XP, but I'm a noob with 7. Thoughts about the value of superfetch relative to constant thrashing?

Click to expand...

Superfetch is a good thing. Without it, your overall experience will be somewhat slower because the RAM will be less efficiently utilised. Therefore, disabling superfetch is a bad thing.

"Constant thrashing" sounds abnormal. If you use a 3rd-party disk defragger, it's possible that the "thrashing" is caused by the defragger's mangling of the on-disk layout (it's not prefetch-aware, so it lays out the file fragments in a way which may look pretty, but is in fact slower). That's a guess of course, and you might want to investigate the thrashing rather than disable superfetch.

H2SO4 said:

"Constant thrashing" sounds abnormal. If you use a 3rd-party disk defragger, it's possible that the "thrashing" is caused by the defragger's mangling of the on-disk layout (it's not prefetch-aware, so it lays out the file fragments in a way which may look pretty, but is in fact slower). That's a guess of course, and you might want to investigate the thrashing rather than disable superfetch.

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Ahh, yes, I've been using Defraggler. So is the recommended course to enable Superfetch and use 7's built in defrag tool? I assume this tool is Superfetch aware? I do know that once Superfetch was disabled, my thrashing stopped. But maybe I put myself in this situation by using Defraggler which made Superfetch work all the more harder to fix things Defraggler might have messed up.

Grinch80 said:

Ahh, yes, I've been using Defraggler. So is the recommended course to enable Superfetch and use 7's built in defrag tool?

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It's definitely recommended to leave Superfetch enabled. There wouldn't be any "official" MS recommendations regarding 3rd-party defragmenters, but it's a bad idea to use one which interferes with prefetch optimisation. Some background info is in this post:

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/26489-windows-7-defrag-vs-diskeeper-2.html#post286338

Grinch80 said:

I assume this tool is Superfetch aware?

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The built-in defragger? It's prefetch aware, and that in turn helps Superfetch for reasons that will become more obvious based on the info in the linked post.

Short version: the in-built defragger organises files according to prefetch heuristics, and that layout may look very, very strange to a non-prefetch-aware 3rd-party defragger which has its own definition of "good layout". The 3rd-party defragger may destroy the prefetch-optimised layout, thus making it more painful and slow for superfetch to page that content into RAM.

Grinch80 said:

I do know that once Superfetch was disabled, my thrashing stopped. But maybe I put myself in this situation by using Defraggler which made Superfetch work all the more harder to fix things Defraggler might have messed up.

Click to expand...

The "thrashing" certainly sounds excessive. My guess that it might be linked to the use of a 3rd-party defragger is just that - a guess. If you let the in-built defragger do its thing instead of "defraggler", and that still doesn't help mitigate the disk activity, you may wish to consider starting your own thread on the topic of "excessive disk utilisation when Superfetch is enabled", or something along those lines.

H2SO4 - great info, many thanks.

First post here. I can not figure out how to start a new thread, so I am piggy backing on here. Would someone, please, point me in the right direction.

My situation is that I run windows 7 64bit on a 32GB RAM, 3.0 GHz Xeon quad-core machine with RAID 0, striped, 10,000 RPM drives. I thought 64bit OSs were capable of using "lots" of RAM. I have tried to push things by running two dozen you tube videos, a WMP video and AVG full scan at max speed all running at once and the max RAM usage I get is 12% compared to RAM usage of 8% - 10% (depending on how long my machine has been on) with no apps open. What gives????????????