Vista Ultimate Ram Question

[AiM]

According to one of the gadgets I have running on the toolbar, at idle, my computer with 2 GB of Ram would use ~800 mb of it on idle. Now I recently just got another extra stick of 2 GB Ram - total of 4 GB - but now it says my computer uses 1.4 GB of it on idle. The ****? I haven't done anything different except add an extra stick of Ram but suddenly it uses up 600 mb extra?

 

[PimpinPenguin]

That's just Vista. Vista takes alot of RAM if no other application requests for it. I have 3 gig and right now Vista taking 1.2GB of it. I think it uses that RAM for services like indexing and stuff. But don't worry as soon as something else wants the memory Vista will release it.

 

[Sedako]

This is actually a good thing. Why have all that idle RAM sitting there doing nothing when it could be used to make things load and run a bit faster? That's the principle behind Vista's memory management.

 

[kazsymonds]

Something to do with Numa i beleive.

 

[Przemek]

I confirm. Vista will use more RAM the more you've got. It's perfectly normal and shouldn't bother you - when an application demands memory, the system will release it. It won't move the SuperFetch cache and other buffers to the paging file, so it won't slow down.

The first thing that shocked me when I first ran Vista and had no idea how it's memory management works, was the Free memory displayed by the Task Manager, below the RAM Usage meter. It may shock you Usually, it's between 0 and 50MB

The system's RAM usage can get as low as ~250MBs - I ran a few memory intensive applications and quit them nearly simultaneously. The RAM usage meter stayed at ~250MBs for a few seconds, then it started rebuilding the Superfetch cache and restoring some stuff from the pagefile. The cool thing about Vista is the fact that it won't slow down to a crawl like XP would.

 

[AtomicSpark]

Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Vista's motto.

 

[bodhi]

im pretty sure vista doesn't actually use/support any more than 3.2ish GB of RAM by the way (i forget the exact amount, its around 3gb). so youve got a large chunk of that last GB on the module doing nothing. unless youve got the 64bit version?

the system properties window may register you have 4gb though it wont ever use it.

(im pretty sure i read something in the Vista SP1 release saying it would now show that a computer had 4gb RAM although there is no change of how much windows will actually use. if it is 64-bit ultimate you have then you can go right up to a fairly hefty 128GB of RAM)

 

[kazsymonds]

im pretty sure vista doesn't actually use/support any more than 3.2ish GB of RAM by the way (i forget the exact amount, its around 3gb). so youve got a large chunk of that last GB on the module doing nothing. unless youve got the 64bit version?

the system properties window may register you have 4gb though it wont ever use it.

(im pretty sure i read something in the Vista SP1 release saying it would now show that a computer had 4gb RAM although there is no change of how much windows will actually use. if it is 64-bit ultimate you have then you can go right up to a fairly hefty 128GB of RAM)

Wrong, the only vista that supports less than 4gb is the 'starter' 32 bit version.

Per http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.aspx?qid=3743

 

[Blackthorn]

Read about SuperFetch.

 

[bodhi]

Wrong, the only vista that supports less than 4gb is the 'starter' 32 bit version.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

The reduction in available system memory depends on the devices that are installed in the computer. However, to avoid potential driver compatibility issues, the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista limit the total available memory to 3.12 GB

this is what was thinking of. 4Gb is a mathematical limit for a 32-bit OS system (not nessecarily windows) and even if your system doesnt fully need the near 800mb of RAM that gets 'hidden away' so to speak out of your 4gb installed RAM, the OS will do it for you regardless.

essentially due to the way memory addressing works there is RAM used by the system for devices but its never available to the user for applications and the like. e.g. 256mb of RAM for an on-board GFX card gets eaten up before you even think about looking through your porn.

 

[AiM]

Ah, thanks for all the info.

im pretty sure vista doesn't actually use/support any more than 3.2ish GB of RAM by the way (i forget the exact amount, its around 3gb). so youve got a large chunk of that last GB on the module doing nothing. unless youve got the 64bit version?

the system properties window may register you have 4gb though it wont ever use it.

(im pretty sure i read something in the Vista SP1 release saying it would now show that a computer had 4gb RAM although there is no change of how much windows will actually use. if it is 64-bit ultimate you have then you can go right up to a fairly hefty 128GB of RAM)

I do have 64 bit Vista, more specifically, Vista Ultimate.

 

[Asus]

I had the same thing happen under XP but that was going from 1GB to 2GB...

This is actually a good thing. Why have all that idle RAM sitting there doing nothing when it could be used to make things load and run a bit faster? That's the principle behind Vista's memory management.

Yep

 

[Krynn72]

This explains why I get a "low memory error" when starting Mount&Blade, but it runs perfectly anyways.

 

[Przemek]

...shouldn't have any "low memory" warnings on Vista, no matter how much memory it takes for Superfetch and stuff.

Vista _releases_ memory when needed, this means the caches don't get copied to the paging file, they are just discarded. When you quit a program, the Superfetch cache is rebuilt, based on tiny superfetch files stored in your Windows folder.