How much memory does your pc use up when idle?
- Thread starter Energize
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As per Kermit's post above, 180MB isn't a lot. My system uses about 160MB when idle, but I've been aggressive in what services I have running on boot up.
Soldato
The idea is to keep as much stuff in memory as possible. Free memory is wasted memory.
Soldato
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q="Free+memory+is+wasted+memory"Craig321 said:lol
more free memory = faster pc
Craig.
NathanE said:
Well, you could test by:
Using all your memory and seeing how fast it is.
Then going back to use less memory ( e.g. 400mb ) and it's faster
Of course free memory is wasted memory, but free memory is faster computer aswell.
Craig.
Soldato
Or you could test by rebooting and noticing how everything loads up slower for the first time.
Obviously if the amount of required memory exceeds that which is physically installed then performance is going to take a hit due to the increased frequency of page swapping.
But until you reach that threshold (and most PCs rarely do), then the rule of "free memory is wasted memory" applies always.
This is CS 101.
Obviously if the amount of required memory exceeds that which is physically installed then performance is going to take a hit due to the increased frequency of page swapping.
But until you reach that threshold (and most PCs rarely do), then the rule of "free memory is wasted memory" applies always.
This is CS 101.
Soldato
How can a computer that has a lot of free memory be faster, that doesn't make senseCraig321 said:
Basically you need as much stuff in the memory but still have enough free to load a game.
Associate
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363mb thats with 2 firefox windows open mirc runing nero media player playing an mp3 file and a few other apps in the background msn the other usual crap
msn the other usual crapDutch Guy said:How can a computer that has a lot of free memory be faster, that doesn't make sense
Basically you need as much stuff in the memory but still have enough free to load a game.
Check out the difference between load times (as in opening a new program) with a PC using loads of memory and a PC using less memory.,
Associate
My PC idles at around 190MB but only having 256MB of RAM i like to keep as much memory free as possible
Soldato
Correct, but why is that do you think? Because the OS will be able to store more stuff in memory!Craig321 said:
Soldato
Maybe the one using more memory will have more running programs and therefore be slower, not because of the memory used?Craig321 said:
If I have a lot of programs open and therefore a lot of memory used and I launch say Microsoft Excel, Word and Access, close them and open them again, the 2nd time I open them goes a lot faster than the first time.
Soldato
Correct. The more software that is open the more threads your processor(s) is context switching between. As long as memory usage is less than the total amount of installed physical memory then disk swapping is kept to a minimum and virtual memory access performance remains constant.Dutch Guy said:
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