Where'd ze RAM go?

[dd051]

Running Vista, I added up most of the processes I had running's ram usage, for a total of ~200mb.

What the **** is Vista doing to eat up another 1GB of RAM? There are 1.5gbs in the system of reference - approx 200MB used by processes, 1.2~ total system usage.

What GG Vista item can I kill or what is Vista doing to cause this?

 

[Crusty]

Superfetch, it helps you out so leave it alone.

 

[dd051]

by eating s omuch ram that running a VM doesn't work? NOEP

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

It's definitely not SuperFetch alone. Disable it and Vista will still use 850~1225MB.

Edit:
Because I can never get a post right on the first go... :/

In taskmgr:

Total Memory
- Cached Memory
- Free Memory
------------------
Memory in use.

On my system with 850~1125MB reported memory use, Vista might actually be as "low" as 600MB of usage.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
It's definitely not SuperFetch alone. Disable it and Vista will still use 850~1225MB.

Edit:
Because I can never get a post right on the first go... :/

In taskmgr:

Total Memory
- Cached Memory
- Free Memory
------------------
Memory in use.

On my system with 850~1125MB reported memory use, Vista might actually be as "low" as 600MB of usage.

it is superfetch and system cache, superfetch works differently for different system/user.

 

[BD2003]

Mem usage in the task manager doesnt tell the whole story. Memory managment isnt as simple as X program uses X bytes - there no simple way to quantify how much memory a process is using, theres shared memory between programs, drivers have to be loaded, working memory, all sorts of caches etc etc.

That memory didnt just disappear into thin air if thats what youre thinking.