Using heaps of ram

[win7jak]

Hi. I'm new to win7. A friend installed win7 pro 32bit a few days ago and I've been installing and refining programs. Mus say I was pleasantly surprised how fast it installed. Way faster that xp

A downside - I notice it is using an alarming amount of ram on startup and when all is stable - 600mb. That is before any apps have been started. Now that I have started Firefox and this forum we are up to 670mb.

This is verified in Task Manager.
Got any isea's on how to reduce this amount or is this the norm for win7 pro.

 

[cluberti]

You need to see if it is really *used*, of if Windows is just caching. Open resmon (start > resmon.exe) and switch to the memory tab - this will actually give you an accurate indication of used vs standby vs free. Windows 7 is not like XP, in that it'll precache all kinds of things it expects you to use in RAM (superfetch), and will learn over time the best way to do this. This cache can be removed (and will be by the memory manager) if other things need the RAM, of course, but Windows tries to do the best job it can to put things in RAM it expects you to use at some point, so if there's free RAM, it will cache things. Assuming you don't have a memory leak on a newly installed system, this is likely superfetch doing it's job and nothing to be alarmed about (this is a common post by folks new to Win7, by the way).

 

[logicearth]

Don't worry about memory usage. It takes care of itself. Until there is a high level of Page Fault activity and the computer is actually sufficating from lack of memory is when you start worrying about these things. However, when that time comes around I can tell you what will cause it. An application you installed, in most cases the security (antivirus) software you use.

 

[whs]

You are lucky - 600 MBs is on the low side. I am currently at 1.360 MBs and all I do is work on the Forum with IE. If I were you, I would not worry. What do you want to do with all the RAM - save it for a rainy day?? - LOL. The best place to see how RAM is being used is in the Resource Monitor > Memory tab. The color bar is very telling. Everything in blue (light or dark) on that bar is "available".

 

[Luckystar]

You are lucky - 600 MBs is on the low side. I am currently at 1.360 MBs and all I do is work on the Forum with IE. If I were you, I would not worry. What do you want to do with all the RAM - save it for a rainy day?? - LOL. The best place to see how RAM is being used is in the Resource Monitor > Memory tab. The color bar is very telling. Everything in blue (light or dark) on that bar is "available".

Ditto here too, I seem to use about the 1600mb (roughly) and i have firefox, itunes, steam, rainmeter and what not running. 600mb's i think a lot of people might be jealous of that low amount being used.

Lucky

 

[logicearth]

The idle amount of RAM depends on how much you have.
I have 2 GBs on mine and it rest around 600 MB.

 

[pparks1]

Unused RAM is wasted RAM. The key is that the RAM is "available" which means the OS can use it for other things like opening applications, etc. Looking at my box, with 8GB of RAM, there is only 700MB free...but 2.8GB is cached and 3.5GB is available. And the primary reason my RAM usage is so high is that I have Server 2008 running virtually.

 

[Maxxwire]

My Win 7 desktop used to run at around 600 MB of RAM too, but as I began to add and use more programs that amount grew and its now at 1.37 GB as I type this.

~Maxx~
.

 

[Solarstarshines]

This is my make -up

 

[win7jak]

Hey thanks everyone. I'm so pleased to hear from you all and to hear your comments and thoughts.

It still concerns me that the system will pre-allocate ram. Does that mean I dont have access to that ram other than for what "it" expects i will use it for?. I use the system for photography and video editing and I need heaps of ram for that. So whats the score about the pre allocation? Is it waiting to be used by any program that fires up or set aside for a program it expects to use it. What if the anticipated prog dosn't use the ram? Sorry to be a bore.

 

[Tews]

What specific problems are you actually having??

 

[whs]

If you are referring to the cache as "preallocated" RAM, then you are right. That cache (the dark blue in Process Monitor) is indeed always available. If one of your programs needs that RAM, the cache will be purged to the extent additional RAM is needed for an active program.

 

[cluberti]

Hey thanks everyone. I'm so pleased to hear from you all and to hear your comments and thoughts.

It still concerns me that the system will pre-allocate ram. Does that mean I dont have access to that ram other than for what "it" expects i will use it for?. I use the system for photography and video editing and I need heaps of ram for that. So whats the score about the pre allocation? Is it waiting to be used by any program that fires up or set aside for a program it expects to use it. What if the anticipated prog dosn't use the ram? Sorry to be a bore.

It's a cache, pure and simple. If you have other apps that need it, Windows will get out of the way and let your apps use the RAM - however, it is actively trying to learn how you use your system, so that it can actually cache what you do use regularly, in that cache. It isn't something you will ever need to worry about - superfetch cache is just that, a cache. It will only use memory for superfetch if there are no other demands for that memory - if there ever is a demand for it, superfetch gets out of the way (assuming the demand isn't for data actually in the superfetch cache, which over time should be less and less common a scenario).

 

[Keiichi25]

Yes, a friend of mine told me about this and I wasn't really too alarmed. She informed me in the case of the x64 side, the OS would take literally half of it and cache it. I actually was more concerned with how much in general was actually used and considered the Cached part as a silly Virtual Ram Disk being used as Virtual memory (Yes, it sounds silly, but when you think about it... Using RAM as a virtual disk, then in turn, using it as Virtual Ram...) Could be a hack way of trying to make use of the unused RAM and improve memory usage performance as virtual ram by writing to the virtual ram disk.

 

[whs]

You are much better off to let Suprfetch manage it. And the amount of the cached RAM depends on how many program instances yo had opened previously - so it is completely dynamic. There is no set number. Here is an example of what I consider optimal - all RAM is being used:

 

[Maxxwire]

As I understand the cached RAM is always available should the system need it and that the allocation is as transparent as if it were free.

~Maxx~
.

 

[Maxxwire]

Here is an example of what I consider optimal - all RAM is being used:

My Vista computer which has 3 GB of RAM does much the same thing as far as allocating RAM right down to the last few MB, but my Win 7 computer has 8 GB of RAM installed and since I'm running the same programs it caches about that same amount of RAM leaving 4-5 GB of RAM free.

~Maxx~

 

[whs]

Maxxwire, What you observe is normal. If you always run the same "pattern", the cache will be similar. It will only vary and grow when you start a great variety of programs and change the LOR (location of reference) all the time.
Check the cache in the morning after system start and then again at night before shutdown - you will already see a considerable difference in cache size (provided you have done many different things during the day - surfing all day with the IE will not show that pattern).

 

[Maxxwire]

Check the cache in the morning after system start and then again at night before shutdown - you will already see a considerable difference in cache size (provided you have done many different things during the day - surfing all day with the IE will not show that pattern).

I just took a screenshot and I'll check it again before I shut the computer down and note the difference. Please pardon me but I haven't used IE in years why will IE not show this pattern?

~Maxx~
.

 

[whs]

Check the cache in the morning after system start and then again at night before shutdown - you will already see a considerable difference in cache size (provided you have done many different things during the day - surfing all day with the IE will not show that pattern).

I just took a screenshot and I'll check it again before I shut the computer down and note the difference. Please pardon me but I haven't used IE in years why will IE not show this pattern?

~Maxx~
.

I just took IE to stand for a browser - any browser. It was not supposed to be IE specific.