I'm not complaining that my RAM is being used but...

...this is a little high no?



Got to be a leak somewhere but where! I don't have any out of the ordinary 3rd party apps, I don't have any spyware either (weekly scans by routine with trend online, mse, malwarebytes and spybot) and my PC is running as fast as it has ever done too.

Normal idle usage sits at about 3GB while just browsing and watching movies.

Anyone notice something like this before?

Ha, nice to see it being used for a change

It's possible that it's superfetch or something internal though instead of a memory leak, it's been at just over 5G B for ages by the looks of it and uptime is over 5 days (done lots of Lightrooming, Photoshopping and a bit of gaming).

Meh!

The "Memory (Private Working Set)" column in Task Manager isn't a particularly useful counter to look at if you're interested in the true physical memory demands of processes because it only represents the private pages which are currently in the working set and does not include shareable pages nor how much of a processes private data isn't in the working set but is still in physical memory occupying space i.e. on the modified page list. You can configure Task Manager to display the total working set of processes (private plus shareable pages) by adding the "Memory - Working Set" column by going to "View" in the menu bar and then selecting "Select columns...". Alternatively, you could use Process Explorer to show this information.

As far as how to see how much of a processes private pages of memory isn't in it's working set but is still occupying space in physical memory sitting on the modified page list. Task Manager, or any other tool in Windows, wont show you this sort of information and you will need to download a program called RAMMap to see the breakdown. Once you have downloaded RAMMap and you have it running, if you navigate to the "Processes" tab, you will be able to see how much of a processes private data is in the working set but is also sitting on the modified as well as the standby page list. You can also see the breakdown of physical memory by type of memory for the paging lists (Standby, Modified, Modified-No-Write, Zeroed, Free and Bad) as well as what's active by navigating to the "Use Counts" tab in RAMMap

If you're looking to diagnose a problem or are just interested in the state of the system, Task Manager isn't particularly a great tool to use because it's rather inconsistent and isn't entirely accurate when it comes too its labelling scheme. The most insidious one is the "Page File" counter in the Windows XP and Windows Vista Task Manager. Even if the system has been configured to run without a pagefile, that page file counter would still display a non-zero value because it doesn't represent page file usage, it is displaying the amount of committed virtual memory processes have allocated which is backed by physical memory or the paging file(s), i.e. system commit.

So, in conclusion, don't use Task Manager.

Follow the instructions and bathe in the glory of free memory: http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem

This is not like the other "memory cleaners", in the slightest

*Ignore this please *

svchost.exe is a kinda "helper" task for any kinda service so it could potentially be something legit using that amount of RAM.

Whether task manager is 100% accurate or not, your system is definately bloated man! I only get 1.1GB used with several FF tabs and a 1080p movie playing.

Neolink said:

Follow the instructions and bathe in the glory of free memory: http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem

This is not like the other "memory cleaners", in the slightest

Click to expand...

As with all of these "RAM optimisation" programs, they're completely useless and do absolutely nothing. All that happens when you run this particular one is that it emptys processes working sets and sends the data out to the modified and / or standby page lists. There is no benefit in a process freeing memory and then touching it again as opposed to letting the memory manager decide when to trim working sets. You can use the "Empty Working Sets" function in RAMMap to essentially do the same thing or on a per-process basis by using VMMap. Also, considering Cleanmem includes a "Page File" counter which isn't actually indicating page file usage, it doesn't give me much confidence in the developer.

I seem to remember that photoshop has some memory leaks, depending on version. Task manager is not accurate with regards to memory usage, which you can see if you do any programming (dim'd memory locations aren't included until you write data to the memory locations).

How's it look after a restart?

How much memory is being used by the kernel on the process tab? It's possible for paged/non-paged memory to use up a fair bit of RAM and not be showing up under the process tab.

Just to re-iterate, this isn't a "omg RAM being used what do???11" thread, more of an idle curiosity thread than anything, these days I multitask my PC more than ever before and just wondered if others have noticed it

The RAM usage does change if I load up a heavy app or game for example, can see it go up and down but it reverts back when the game is exited which makes sense.

Thanks Wizard, will check that info out and I'm certain it's not an app leaking memory anywhere too else I'd have had error messages from Win7 by now (having seen that happen on workstations at work!).

Neolink said:

Follow the instructions and bathe in the glory of free memory: http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem

This is not like the other "memory cleaners", in the slightest

Click to expand...

Everyone feel free to ignore this post.

NathanE said:

Everyone feel free to ignore this post.

Click to expand...

Everyone feel free to ignore his utterly helpful post too.

Thanks Fire Wizard for clarifying that, your post was very informative and I feel a bit foolish for believing that this one worked, it actually did show positive results in task manager which the others ones never did so I believed it worked :/

Khaaan! said:

Just to re-iterate, this isn't a "omg RAM being used what do???11" thread, more of an idle curiosity thread than anything, these days I multitask my PC more than ever before and just wondered if others have noticed it

Click to expand...

These types of threads always quite interesting because you get to see other peoples perspective as to what they think the issue may be, which can then be useful for future purposes. Broken Hope made a excellent point related to kernel resources; Paged and Nonpaged Pool, which could be the cause of the increased physical memory usage of your system. Because you're experiencing problems relating to physical memory and not virtual memory, if it is actually due to a kernel resource, it will most likely be related to nonpaged pool as opposed to paged pool.

I have run a test on my own system to illustrate what happens when a system leaks nonpaged pool, which shows some similarities with your own system. To do this, I used a tool called NotMyFault. Under the workload where I took the following snap shot, the physical memory usage of the system would normally be roughly 1.3GB with about 2.6GB of available physical memory. However, if you take a look at Process Explorer, you can see the physical memory usage of my system is roughly 3.6GB with around 350mb of available physical memory. Despite the fact the system is experiencing an abnormally high physical memory usage for this specific workload, looking at the "Working Set" column of processes in Process Explorer, there isn't any indication there is necessary a problem.

If you load up RAMMap and take a look at the "Use Counts" tab, you can see the breakdown of the physical memory of the system by type of memory. You can see in the image below, nonpaged pool is consuming a significant amount of physical memory which is resulting in the increased physical memory usage of the system. While a nonpaged pool leak may not be the reason for the increased physical memory usage on your own system, it's defiantly something worth looking into.

Proper page file?

Also, considering Cleanmem includes a "Page File" counter which isn't actually indicating page file usage, it doesn't give me much confidence in the developer.

Click to expand...

The CleanMem Mini Monitor uses the GlobalMemoryStatusEx API to pull memory and page file usage.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366589(v=vs.85).aspx

So Windows reports page file usage through that API. Yet if i open the performance monitor in windows the numbers don't match.

So what do you think is the best API to use to pull proper page file usage?

Better API

GetPerformanceInfo API would be better wouldn't it?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683210(v=vs.85).aspx

Fire Wizard said:

While a nonpaged pool leak may not be the reason for the increased physical memory usage on your own system, it's defiantly something worth looking into.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips, something to look in to next time it happens (if it does!) but at the moment having just come back from 3 days away up in Stoke I notice the physical mem usage has dropped to normal levels, with uptime now at over 8 days:


(ignore the cpu spike, the gadgets update every 5 secs and snipping tool caught it during a spike)

So whatever it was it appears to be have been just temporary.

My Op was posted just before leaving for Stoke and I intended to check back for updates while over there (I did, kind of ).

Edit*
I must say I'm quite pleased with stability too, on Vista before I upgraded last Nov I had very few issues but on 7 I've overclocked considerably more and do a lot more and with 4 sticks of 2GB I wasn't expecting it to be 100% stable 100% of the time like it is!

Try removing all those desktop gadgets

or reboot?

Sidebar gadgets use no amount of resources worth posting about tbh.

Anyway, this isn't an issue at all as has been discussed