How much RAM is my computer using?

williamd

williamd

williamd

Associate
Joined
31 Mar 2007
Posts
696
Is there a more accurate way to view this than the Task Manager Performance tab.

I only have 2GB at the moment and task manager says:

Total 2045
Cached 1129
Free 0

Does it really mean I have 0 memory left? What is the cached memory?

Thanks
 
In Task Manager->Processes tab, then View->Select Columns, here you can add or remove what info that is displayed in the Processes window....
 
I find this intresting, at work some machines only have 512mb ram yet if you load up task manager you can be using 700+mb it reports. Can anyone explain this?
 
LupoLover said:
I find this intresting, at work some machines only have 512mb ram yet if you load up task manager you can be using 700+mb it reports. Can anyone explain this?
Click to expand...

If a pc needs more RAM than is physically available it uses an area of the hard drive called the pagefile to allow it to run more programs, task manager shows RAM + pagefile usage. Using the pagefile gives a significant performance drop though.
 
Task manager figures are ambiguous and confusing. Real data is available through the performance monitor:

start -> run -> perfmon <enter>

A useful counter is Memory -> pages/sec. Consistently high values here can indicate low memory problems.
 
Cached memory is what Windows uses for superfetch. This is where Windows loads frequently used program files into memory so that load times are improved. But don't worry, because if you start loading files that have not been "cached" Windows simply overwrites the cache with the files/programs you are loading into memory.

Put simply, "cached" memory is free memory, it's just being used more efficiently by Windows.

The bits circled in red in the following picture show how much memory is being used. I wouldn't worry too much about the more detailed bits like cached memory, etc.

r0dtvs.jpg
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom