W7 64bit and Memory Usage

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Ducman69

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So I have a laptop w/ 16GB of memory, because, well, there was a recent deal on slickdeals where they were virtually giving away DDR3 so why not.

What I am curious about though is that I had understood that since Vista, Windows would try to utilize as much of the memory as possible, prefetching frequently used programs and putting them into memory at bootup and not releasing it until more memory was needed.

However, checking task manager, it appears W7 isn't using much memory at all. Perhaps 1.5GB of the available 16GB.

Ideas?
 
Is this a new laptop? If so, and assuming no 'tweaks' have been made, it takes a little while for Superfetch to really kick in after analyzing what you use the most.
 
In the performance tab of Task Manager, it should show a value for "cached" RAM - what does that show? RAM that is being used for caching will still show as available to the system, so depending on what you are using to check free RAM, you may be getting a bad reading.
 
Check the memory usage after you have beat on the laptop for a bit with programs and regular activity. It's not going to dump the entire OS into memory or anything. It's pretty smart about what it consumes (at least it seems that way).
 
Ducman69 said:
Perhaps 1.5GB of the available 16GB.

Ideas?
Click to expand...

And you're complaining? I used to have 4gb thinking that was more than enough, but had to buy an extra 8gb just to surf the internet Win7 is so dm bloated.
 
Answer: don't worry about what it's using or isn't using. It's using as much as it needs to, it's as simple as that.
 
Forceman said:
In the performance tab of Task Manager, it should show a value for "cached" RAM - what does that show? RAM that is being used for caching will still show as available to the system, so depending on what you are using to check free RAM, you may be getting a bad reading.
Click to expand...
434MB cached.

So about 14GB free, a waste of good RAM, IMO. Be nice if it loaded the whole OS and common programs into memory as far as I'm concerned.
 
hedron said:
And you're complaining? I used to have 4gb thinking that was more than enough, but had to buy an extra 8gb just to surf the internet Win7 is so dm bloated.
Click to expand...

W7 runs fine on 2GB physical, and less than 1GB on a VM. Stop talking out of your ass.
 
Ducman69 said:
434MB cached.

So about 14GB free, a waste of good RAM, IMO. Be nice if it loaded the whole OS and common programs into memory as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...
How can the system cache 16GB worth of data, based on your habits, if you just installed it? Give it time to learn what you do every day. Windows 7 takes longer to 'learn' than Vista did in regards to cacheing. Keep in mind that if you're not doing anything more than browsing the web, typing up documents, and playing an occasional game or two, there is not much to cache. 16GB is so overkill I can't begin to explain it.
 
bigdogchris said:
How can the system cache 16GB worth of data, based on your habits, if you just installed it? Give it time to learn what you do every day. Windows 7 takes longer to 'learn' than Vista did in regards to cacheing. Keep in mind that if you're not doing anything more than browsing the web, typing up documents, and playing an occasional game or two, there is not much to cache. 16GB is so overkill I can't begin to explain it.
Click to expand...

This is correct. My Windows 7 desktop with 16GB RAM still hasn't "learned my habits" because it's had insufficient training. And when I use it, I'm using about at most one of five different memory intensive programs (games or CAD). Not much to "learn" there.

When I hit "render" the RAM gets "used" but there's not really much reason to cache things.
 
There is a reason to cache as much as possible. DDR3 still makes the fastest SSDs look like snails.
 
Yes, but if it doesn't know what to cache, it's not just going to blindly load things. My desktop has 9800MB "Free" right now because of this very issue. Which isn't really an issue at all--it's working as designed. If the user doesn't make use of the memory the OS can't learn to follow.
 
If it bothers you that much... why not use some of the free space for a RAM drive? Then you can decide exactly what you want to speed up.
 
hedron said:
And you're complaining? I used to have 4gb thinking that was more than enough, but had to buy an extra 8gb just to surf the internet Win7 is so dm bloated.
Click to expand...

lol, get real. :rolleyes:
8GB to surf the 'net, talk about bullshit.

@OP: 16GB will be good though, especially if you go to run VMs or start doing some heavy duty multimedia production on that system.
 
hedron said:
And you're complaining? I used to have 4gb thinking that was more than enough, but had to buy an extra 8gb just to surf the internet Win7 is so dm bloated.
Click to expand...

disregard anything the above poster states........his post just proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he has NO IDEA what he is talking about.....
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
disregard anything the above poster states........his post just proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he has NO IDEA what he is talking about.....
Click to expand...

Yeah, not to say Win 7 isn't a little bloated compared to other OSes, it still has a lot of great features however and background functionality.
If it's really a problem, just disable some of the startup programs.

Average use for Win7, assuming web browsing, videos, and e-mail apps, is between 1-1.5GB of memory taken up.
Multitasking will normally cause around 2-2.5GB to be used.

It isn't until video editing, massive multitasking, and running VMs are used, will Win7 start to eat more than 3GB of system memory.


However, needing 8GB of system memory to simply use a web browser is total BS, no OS is that bloated.
 
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