Why is Vista using 1.6Gb of ram when Idle?!?

[Joeyboy]

I just want to know what it's doing with 40% of my ram!(I have 4GB)

I mean when I play Supreme Commander on an 8 player 81x81 map it seems to crash after the first hour. My memory usage is almost 100% at that point and I was thinking maybe that's got something to do with it. Vista already allocating not far off half my memory it self doesn't help things. Why does it use so much RAM?

 

[Kharn]

Hey joey please go through osiris guide.

 

[Joeyboy]

oh your saying it's a virus?

Someone else I know has the same problem with Vista using that much of their RAM, maybe I should tell them to check their PC out too.

Someone told me though it's because Vista has some software which makes apps open faster, something fetch I think, that stores free RAM away to be used for other things or something.

It would seem this persons explanation I have just found would make sense, and it seems supreme commander has some kind of well known problem for freezing on the 81x81 maps.

"Windows Vista is much more aggressive about caching things in the background. It will use around half of the available RAM to do so, so if you through another gigabyte of RAM in there, you'd see around a gig of that used during idle periods. From what i've heard, Linux and Unix have done this for years.

When another program requests memory, Vista will happily give it what it needs at the expense of caching, so that idle memory usage won't affect your programs and games. So don't fret. If anything, be glad that the memory you paid for is constantly being used instead of just sitting there."


Does that make sense to anyone or is this person talking rubbish and it's some kind of infection in my PC which is making me lose RAM?

 

[Kharn]

Well it is a possibillity mate, let's discount that before we move on.

 

[Joeyboy]

Well it is a possibillity mate, let's discount that before we move on.

do I run through the entire 84 page guide and all the programs he mentions? Some parts of the guide seem to make the assumption you have a virus which has almost destroyed your computer, as in you can barely boot it or operate the desktop.

 

[Lexluethar]

That is a 'feature' that vista does offer. Mine on a consistent basis uses about 55% of my 2 gb, so around 1.1 GB. But yes

As saxon said the best bet would be to do some spyware / virus removal first. This will be the first step. Then look at other applications within Vista that could be eating up memory (AV, Outlook, performance monitoring software, etc).

Vista also comes with a good monitoring tool in 'Reliability and Performance Monitor' found in your admin tools. This will break out a lot of the software that may be eating up your memory.

 

[Joeyboy]

That is a 'feature' that vista does offer. Mine on a consistent basis uses about 55% of my 2 gb, so around 1.1 GB. But yes

As saxon said the best bet would be to do some spyware / virus removal first. This will be the first step. Then look at other applications within Vista that could be eating up memory (AV, Outlook, performance monitoring software, etc).

Vista also comes with a good monitoring tool in 'Reliability and Performance Monitor' found in your admin tools. This will break out a lot of the software that may be eating up your memory.

Yikes well I'm glad it isn't using 55%.

I should have time next week to go through that guide and see if anything comes up. At the moment I just scan with the latest AVG free, then I also have something called spybot search and destroy, I think it does spyware only or something.

 

[Lexluethar]

Two of the best programs IMO to use right now.

But honestly unless you are using 100% of your RAM there is nothing to worry about. THat is what RAM is there for, to be used. If you never use more than say 80% of your RAM you essentially are wasting your money because you could have gotten away with purchasing less RAM. I would not push it to where you are always around 95% usage during game play, but honestly there is nothing wrong with 60 to 80 percent usage (total usage including games and OS).

That is a big misconception about RAM, people have some stigma of not using their RAM, when in reality it is not a bad thing.

 

[KSoD]

What else do you have running? I mean to say that your PC is using 40% of your RAM at idle doesnt tell us anything. Cause for all we know you could be running 5 instances of video players and music apps which would cause much of the problem.

So we also need to know what you have running by default at boot.

 

[indyeah]

My suspicion is that Microsoft is underemphasizing the hardware requirements one needs to really enjoy Vista. Along with more than the minimum suggested memory, you'd do well to buy the hottest graphics card you can afford.