High Memory Usage on idle - windows 7

dalehitchy1 · 24 Nov 2011 at 00:33

im noticing my memory usage starts off reasonably low but after being on the computer for a couple of hours its going up and up and up...

at the moment its on 50% (4gb) on idle and still going up! im only running a few programs.. safari, itunes, steam,

im looking on the task manager and there isnt anything insanly high.. adding all the memory theres no way it should be reaching 4gb...

Surveyor · 24 Nov 2011 at 00:57

Click on the Resource Monitor in the Task Manager and then the Memory tab.

It should give you an idea of how your RAM is being used.

bremen1874 · 24 Nov 2011 at 01:00

Windows 7 memory management will try to do something useful with as much of the memory it can. It won't just leave memory sitting empty like XP did.

Open the resource monitor and see what Windows is doing with the the memory.

If you Google something like 'windows 7 memory management' you should find plenty of information about the changes.

dalehitchy1 · 24 Nov 2011 at 01:36

bremen1874 said:
Windows 7 memory management will try to do something useful with as much of the memory it can. It won't just leave memory sitting empty like XP did.

Open the resource monitor and see what Windows is doing with the the memory.

If you Google something like 'windows 7 memory management' you should find plenty of information about the changes.

so this is normal?? cant say ive ever looked at my memory useage in windows 7 before.. ive only noticed it today because i got a little desktop app that pointed it out.

have noticed though that once it gets to around 50% it will drop back down to 25% then work its way back up again..

bremen1874 · 24 Nov 2011 at 01:59

dalehitchy1 said:
so this is normal?? cant say ive ever looked at my memory useage in windows 7 before.. ive only noticed it today because i got a little desktop app that pointed it out.

have noticed though that once it gets to around 50% it will drop back down to 25% then work its way back up again..

It's probably normal.

Look at what the resource monitor is telling you, and take a judgement. The important figure is the 'In Use' memory.

If you dont't understand what the resource monitor is telling you, there are plenty of online articles that'll explain it.

Magic Man · 24 Nov 2011 at 12:42

Empty memory is wasted memory.

Win 7 pre-caches and tries to make the most of what memory it has available to it. If it's needed for anything else it just drops memory pages out.

two00lbwaster · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:32

Erm, does Task manager show the same usage pattern as the app?

To me it doesn't sound normal at all. It sounds like an application is leaking memory until it causes an issue that Windows 7 deals with, which is where you see the RAM usage drop back to 25%. When Windows 7 caches memory, it doesn't show up as in use RAM, however, in Task manager, you can see how much is being used in the performance tab and under the memory tab in resource monitor.