Memory usage

[stealthninja2]

Hello, I'm new to the site and so far it's been really good. I hope I could get some help. I have 8GB of ram installed on my system. The performance tab says that only 1.5 is in use. Can I higher it to get more performance and is it a good idea? Also Will lowering virtual memory raise the amount of physical memory being used?

Thank You!

[jason2074]

Do not worry about system performance if your not having any lagging problem unless there is a need for a particular program.
You might wanna read here how it works --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging
*Right-click My Computer icon,Properties, on General tab, what is the current RAM specified?

[stealthninja2]

Thanks for the reply. It says installed memory (RAM) is 8.00 GB.

[Allan]

I agree that having 6.5 Gb free is odd. What OS are you using? And in the Processes tab of Task Manager, how many processes are loaded?

[BC_Programmer]

The performance tab says that only 1.5 is in use

Since Vista and 7 do not have a "performance tab" I think we can discount those two as your OS;

on the other hand, XP doesn't have a "performance" tab, that I can find; the closest is the dialog you get when you open System properties, switch to the "Advanced" tab, and click the "performance" button, where it tells you the total paging file size for all drives; For windows XP, the maximum "default" size is 1.5 times the amount of installed RAM; so if the system had 1GB of memory when Windows was initially installed, then you would still have the virtual memory set to 1.5GB.

IF you could explain exactly where this "performance" tab is, that might help; the last consumer version of windows to have a "Performance" tab was windows 9x, and I'd be surprised if that would boot with 8GB of memory, and it certainly wouldn't recognize all of it.

[Allan]

He's referring the the performance tab in task manager

[BC_Programmer]

He's referring the the performance tab in task manager

oooh.. duh.


Hmm, for Vista or 7 that would be odd; usually Superfetch gobbles up any and all unused memory.

If Superfetch is disabled, however- then that memory will no doubt display as free memory.

stealthninja2: disabling/reducing Virtual Memory will not make more physical memory used. In fact, virtual memory is only used when an application specifically says "I want this to be in the pagefile, not in physical memory" which it usually does for a good reason, or when physical memory is getting tight and some of the data in physical RAM is swapped to the pagefile to allow another application (generally the foreground application) to use that memory. In fact, disabling Virtual Memory is a bad idea because it basically throws a monkey wrench in the works- without a pagefile, the virtual Memory manager has to work with memory in far larger chunks (it's been a while, I forget the particulars of why, but it involves the processor's support for Virtual Paging or something); and this, in general, greatly decreases memory throughput on the part of the memory manager (since most RAM accesses and writes are not multiples of 64K).

[stealthninja2]

I have an x4 945 phenom quad core. I just want the best performance from my ram possible.

Thank You

[patio]

Then talk to your RAM...
Tell it it needs to perform at it's highest expectations....anything less is un acceptable.

[Broni]

What Windows version is it?
64-bit, or 32-bit?