Windows 7 RAM usage

Diggsy · 12 Jan 2011 at 00:39

Guys, how do I know if Windows 7 is making full use of my RAM?

Just curious, as I have noticed some posts stating that Windows 7 can use almost all available RAM, yet I have not really noticed this. According to System Monitor gadget, my usage is rarely above 2gb of my available 8gb.

Any ideas, or does this sound about right?

EDIT - to give an example I just opened IE, iTunes, Word, Powerpoint, Publisher and my usage was still only showing just over 1800mb. With just the browser open it usually sits around 15-1600.

Klo · 12 Jan 2011 at 00:42

I have 4gb, it uses around 1.78gb. Its nothing to worry about at all.

MagicBoy · 12 Jan 2011 at 00:53

Depends what parameter the System Monitor gadget is using.

The remaining 6GB will get used as system cache to improve performance. It probably doesn't show in your system monitor tool as that memory is not used by an Application. Take a look in Task Manager, unused ram will show under Physical memory as Free.

Atom · 12 Jan 2011 at 01:32

The longer mine is on the more memory it uses. 4GB fell to under 300meg free after roughly 6 hours.

Diggsy · 12 Jan 2011 at 12:51

Thanks guys, the Task Manager tip was great, that shows at the moment with very little happening that there is just over 5gb free, whereas the System Monitor would have you think there was almost 7gb.

Might have a look in the settings of the little gadget and see if I can get it to display that info.

Fire Wizard · 12 Jan 2011 at 14:30

The value in the system monitor gadget is most likely showing the amount of physical memory assigned to processes which are currently active i.e. their working sets. What you seem to be interested in are pages of memory sitting on the standby page list, which represents cached data. Memory on the standby page list can be given to another process without performing a disk I/O, i.e. available memory. Task manager does not show how much memory is on the standby page list and you are going to have to either open up the resource monitor or use a program like RAMMap to see the breakdown.