High memory usage

[iMike]

I don't know why but my system seems to be using an abnormally high amount of memory, from the second it boots into windows the task manager shows that it is using 4GB of ram.

[Englander]

I don't know why but my system seems to be using an abnormally high amount of memory, from the second it boots into windows the task manager shows that it is using 4GB of ram.

If you look in Task Manager and sort the processes my memory usage, what is using the most memory?

[pipTheGeek]

Windows 7 does attempt to use all your physical RAM all the time. It preloads stuff that it thinks you might need. It will give it back to make room if required.
You only need to worry if the PC is paging. If you open resource monitor (available from task manager, don't know if it is available somewhere directly) and look at the "Hard Faults/sec" next to memory. If that is 0 then don't worry about the memory usage.

[blueball]

Windows 7 does attempt to use all your physical RAM all the time. It preloads stuff that it thinks you might need. It will give it back to make room if required.
You only need to worry if the PC is paging. If you open resource monitor (available from task manager, don't know if it is available somewhere directly) and look at the "Hard Faults/sec" next to memory. If that is 0 then don't worry about the memory usage.

err, No!

I boot up Win 7 64 bit and only 1.8Gb is used, it doesn't use it all.

[ehhhhhhh]

mine uses 4.02GB when browsing, how much ram do you have?

Browsers can eat up a lot of ram if you have lots of tabs open.

[blueball]

OK, here goes,

Win 7 64 bit,

8GB RAM

19 applications running in system tray,
Windows Media Centre running watching the football in a window
Firefox open with 5 tabs to different websites.

Total memory used 2072Mb

[iMike]

Just re-installed Windows 7, it now uses 1.8GB-ish upon startup.
Not sure what was the problem to be totally honest.

[ladcrooks]

' Just re-installed Windows 7, it now uses 1.8GB-ish upon startup. Not sure what was the problem to be totally honest. '

glasses maybe, joking!

i myself use avast, and therefore turn off defender as not needed in ' services ' I also turn off indexing and superfetch. Some tweaks you can do with win7 worth it or not?

taken from tech website ' We do not recommend disabling SuperFetch in Windows 7, but if you are a gamer who needs slightly more memory or just an advanced user who doesn’t need SuperFetch, then you can disable it. '

[ehhhhhhh]

' Just re-installed Windows 7, it now uses 1.8GB-ish upon startup. Not sure what was the problem to be totally honest. '

glasses maybe, joking!

i myself use avast, and therefore turn off defender as not needed in ' services ' I also turn off indexing and superfetch. Some tweaks you can do with win7 worth it or not?

taken from tech website ' We do not recommend disabling SuperFetch in Windows 7, but if you are a gamer who needs slightly more memory or just an advanced user who doesn’t need SuperFetch, then you can disable it. '

last time when I used avast it made my PC really slow. I found MS security essentials much faster.

[jim]

' Just re-installed Windows 7, it now uses 1.8GB-ish upon startup. Not sure what was the problem to be totally honest. '

glasses maybe, joking!

i myself use avast, and therefore turn off defender as not needed in ' services ' I also turn off indexing and superfetch. Some tweaks you can do with win7 worth it or not?

taken from tech website ' We do not recommend disabling SuperFetch in Windows 7, but if you are a gamer who needs slightly more memory or just an advanced user who doesn’t need SuperFetch, then you can disable it. '

Tip: Tips on how to tweak Windows are pointless.

Disabling indexing and superfetch really doesn't achieve anything - MS put them there for a reason, and can even make things worse.

If you want to save memory, use fewer programs, or buy some more. Disabling parts of Windows really doesn't achieve much.

[Samwood]

Tip: Tips on how to tweak Windows are pointless.

Disabling indexing and superfetch really doesn't achieve anything - MS put them there for a reason, and can even make things worse.

If you want to save memory, use fewer programs, or buy some more. Disabling parts of Windows really doesn't achieve much.

@snootyjim - I see by your system specs that your using an SSD, you should disable indexing as it will reduce the amount of writes on your SSD which will improve reliability and slow down the inevitable performance degradation that SSDs experience over time.
While i'm at it - you should also disable auto-defragmentation (and never do a manual defrag) for the same reason.
With the SSDs extremely low latencies these are completely pointless anyway, and as I said cause increased degradation.

But your right about the windows tweaks being pointless - the only 2 I would recommend are to disable 'Aero glass' (to improve GPU performance) and disable 'boot GUI' (to improve boot times).

[Samwood]

mine uses 4.02GB when browsing, how much ram do you have?

Browsers can eat up a lot of ram if you have lots of tabs open.

Which browser are you using? Do you have a lot of extensions/add-ons running? If your using chrome you can see how much each extension uses [spanner -> tools -> task manager], you might be surprised how much memory seemingly-'small' extensions use.

p.s. sorry for the double post

[jim]

@snootyjim - I see by your system specs that your using an SSD, you should disable indexing as it will reduce the amount of writes on your SSD which will improve reliability and slow down the inevitable performance degradation that SSDs experience over time.
While i'm at it - you should also disable auto-defragmentation (and never do a manual defrag) for the same reason.
With the SSDs extremely low latencies these are completely pointless anyway, and as I said cause increased degradation.

But your right about the windows tweaks being pointless - the only 2 I would recommend are to disable 'Aero glass' (to improve GPU performance) and disable 'boot GUI' (to improve boot times).

Windows already sets itself up appropriately if you're installing on an SSD.

Disabling Aero would only improve GPU performance if you're using heavy graphics load in windowed applications, and as for boot times... I boot once a month and with an SSD I barely notice the time it takes.

[Samwood]

Windows already sets itself up appropriately if you're installing on an SSD.

Disabling Aero would only improve GPU performance if you're using heavy graphics load in windowed applications, and as for boot times... I boot once a month and with an SSD I barely notice the time it takes.

Ah ok, I wasnt sure if it was Windows or Samsungs SSD Magician suite that made those changes to my PC (all I knew is when I went to disable them it was already done).

Aero runs 24/7 when enabled. So even in a full-screen game it will still have a, very minor, affect on performance. Even if its only actively applied to the taskbar.

[kalniel]

err, No!

I boot up Win 7 64 bit and only 1.8Gb is used, it doesn't use it all.

It varies according to your usage. When I had 6gb ram win 7 used all of it (mostly for caching, which is cool). When I upgraded to 12gb I found windows suddenly only used about 2gb, including caching, which was not so cool. However now it's learned my usage again the caching amount has increased and it also seems to cache ahead if I launch programs with high I/O.

All in all, the high usage is a good thing, but you might not meet the conditions for windows to cache ahead at that period of time.