8gb ram on vista 64 idles on 2gb??

[mlahatte]

I have 8gb or ram and i just installed vista 64. According to the gadget that shows ram usage the sysem uses 2gb of ram while idling? is that normal??

When multitasking with Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop it runs at 4gb to 5gb of ram consistently. i havent tried maya yet. I'd DEFINITELY say that 8gb of ram on vista 64 if you do graphic stuff is imperative!

 

[Xatrix]

Windows Vista 64 uses as much RAM as it can while idle, but will free it up when you need it for programs.
Read the Vista Sticky

3) Memory usage

Vista will precache to fill your memory. It will also keep a lot more in active memory, depending on how much ram you have. The more RAM you have, the more it will use, and this will be reflected in both used memory and cached memory.

No matter how much its using, it will give up as much as is needed to ANY program or game.

Therefore, stop staring at your memory meter, and going nuts over how vista is using 2gb of your 4gb with a single browser window open. Nothing is wrong. Free memory = wasted memory.


So in summation = More ram needed, disk grinding ok, staring memory meter bad. I know its hard, it took me a while to get used to it too.

 

[mlahatte]

Originally posted by: Xatrix
Windows Vista 64 uses as much RAM as it can while idle, but will free it up when you need it for programs.
Read the Vista Sticky

3) Memory usage

Vista will precache to fill your memory. It will also keep a lot more in active memory, depending on how much ram you have. The more RAM you have, the more it will use, and this will be reflected in both used memory and cached memory.

No matter how much its using, it will give up as much as is needed to ANY program or game.

Therefore, stop staring at your memory meter, and going nuts over how vista is using 2gb of your 4gb with a single browser window open. Nothing is wrong. Free memory = wasted memory.


So in summation = More ram needed, disk grinding ok, staring memory meter bad. I know its hard, it took me a while to get used to it too.

Thanks for explaining! That makes sense now. It's also interesting to watch the 4 core meter.

 

[Nothinman]

I have 8gb or ram and i just installed vista 64. According to the gadget that shows ram usage the sysem uses 2gb of ram while idling? is that normal??

I'd say that's low, you should have as much as possible used for filesystem cache.

 

[n7]

As has been mentioned, this is normal & GOOD

The amount used when running 1 GB vs. 2 GB vs. 4 GB vs. 8 GB is pretty amazing.

I'm multitasking with a bunch of basic stuff like Firefox, IRC, MSN, winRAR & Nero & am using over 3 GB right now, with all the remaining cached.

On my previous 4 GB, active usage would have never hit that high.

How it does it all i don't know, but Vista is very smart with handling memory, that i'll say.

 

[Goldfish4209]

Wow, that's.... I dunno, efficient? Wtih 4Gb I idle at about 1Gb of RAM. Pretty smart, huh?

 

[Cheex]

With 2GB right now I'm idling at just under 1GB.

I'll see what happens when my 4GB kit gets here. I'll post my findings.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Cheex
With 2GB right now I'm idling at just under 1GB.

I'll see what happens when my 4GB kit gets here. I'll post my findings.

You'll find idle usage goes up.

I've seen this with all my systems.

I have a 1 GB notebook, and have had 2 GB on both my HTPC & main PC, & then had 4 GB on my main PC, & now 8 GB on my main PC.
With each different amount, the amount used idling is higher, & performance is better also.

Why so much RAM?

1. It's so cheap.
2. Vista does a remarkable job putting it all to use, even if much of it is just cached.

I've seen how intelligently it scales based on how much RAM you have, & quite firmly believe you really cannot have too much RAM in Vista due to that.

 

[Cheex]

Well said n7.

I hope to also benefit a great deal from running 4GB in x64.
Also, I hope to upgrade to 8GB before DDR2 starts getting expensive again.

 

[Cheex]

I have now received my 4GB kit and in Vista Ultimate x64, I idle at about 1GB.

Go figure, Vista seems to like idling at about 25% of your RAM...

 

[downhiller80]

When I was running vista32 with 1gb it would idle at about 400mb, below that it would show 600mb cached and ~0mb free.

Now I have 4gb and vista64 it idles at about 1.3gb, and says it has 2.8gb cached, and 4mb free.

So yeah, basically, don't worry about it.

The only downside, is when you first boot up, as soon as you stop doing something vista will seize the opportunity to fill that cache, and that means a lot of disk thrashing for a few minutes - which on my raptor is pretty noisy!

still, goes like shit off of a shiny shovel so i'm not complaining ;-)