How much memory usage is "best"

[Plumcuda1]

I recently upgraded from 1 gb of pc3200 to 2gb (2x1gb) of pc3200 ram. I play Battlefield 2 alot. The other day I have my task manager open and noticed the PF usage (page file) was @ 1.53gb while in BF2. Where a friend of mine who has 2gb of ram also runs at about 700mb while in the game. So is it better to be using 75% of your memory of less than 50%?
Is there a better program out there to test the memory usage? and Is that really what "page file" usaage is? SO if I sound like a complete n00b ... but i am ! Also at the bottom of the task manager screen in the right corner it says "commit charge" what is that? I get that it is PF usage ... but the last number makes no since. Mine is 3429M.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Plumcuda1
I recently upgraded from 1 gb of pc3200 to 2gb (2x1gb) of pc3200 ram. I play Battlefield 2 alot. The other day I have my task manager open and noticed the PF usage (page file) was @ 1.53gb while in BF2. Where a friend of mine who has 2gb of ram also runs at about 700mb while in the game. So is it better to be using 75% of your memory of less than 50%?
Is there a better program out there to test the memory usage? and Is that really what "page file" usaage is? SO if I sound like a complete n00b ... but i am ! Also at the bottom of the task manager screen in the right corner it says "commit charge" what is that? I get that it is PF usage ... but the last number makes no since. Mine is 3429M.

What percentage of your physical RAM is in use (as long as it is less than 100%) has very little bearing on performance. The only thing that having less "free" RAM does is reduce the amount of filesystem data the OS can cache.

The "Pagefile Usage" name is often grossly misinterpreted. This is how much data is being handled by the paging system, and has NOTHING to do with your swapfile on disk. However, if this number is bigger than the amount of physical RAM you have, some data is being paged out to disk.

The number to look at for memory usage is the 'commit charge' -- this is how much memory space has been set aside for various processes. 'Total' is how much memory space is currently in use, 'Peak' is the highest value reached since the last system reboot, and 'Limit' is the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Plumcuda1
The other day I have my task manager open and noticed the PF usage (page file) was @ 1.53gb while in BF2. Where a friend of mine who has 2gb of ram also runs at about 700mb while in the game. So is it better to be using 75% of your memory of less than 50%?

Interpreting Windows performance data is not easy, and often "experts" will disagree on what they indicate.

I suggest looking at the process data instead of the aggregate data (although both matter of course), and through View / Select Columns adding at least CPU Time, Peak Memory Usage, and Virtual Memory Size. Seeing the information per process will let you tune your system better, by identifying potential CPU / memory hogs and memory usage patterns.

Originally posted by: Plumcuda1
Is there a better program out there to test the memory usage?

Task Manager is one of my favorite applications , but if you want to look at system performance more in depth, you can use the Performance Monitor tool under Administration. This will give you some of the same counters, and many many more, together with some information about them under the Add Counters / Explain option, and let you graph their usage over time, and save that data to file (in another section). This is a very powerful application, but is not the last word in user interface design.

Originally posted by: Plumcuda1
Is that really what "page file" usaage is? SO if I sound like a complete n00b ... but i am ! Also at the bottom of the task manager screen in the right corner it says "commit charge" what is that? I get that it is PF usage ... but the last number makes no since. Mine is 3429M.

Even if you don't use it, you can use the Performance Monitor and its related documentation for finding out about this sort of thing.