why does Windows suck up so much ram and not give it back when I need it?

[toyota]

this always bothered me on Vista and the same thing happens on 7 too. with nothing more than Steam and FF with 20 tabs running all 4 gb of ram eventually gets eaten up. at this point just clicking on tabs or opening up a file becomes a little sluggish. if I try to run a FRAPS video it will literally just pause for a few seconds as the hard drive has to do everything. these are not problems for the first couple of hours after a reboot but will eventually happen every time. and again it has happened on every Vista and 7 install I have ever used even on completely different comps.

 

[Texashiker]

I asked the same thing about windows 95 back around 1997 or 1998.

When I upgraded my system memory to 128 megs, it was funny how an operating system that only used like 20 - 30 megs of hard drive space took up almost 40 or 50 megs of memory.

Regardless of how much technology progresses, sometimes things stay the same.

 

[MrChad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch

 

[Nothinman]

this always bothered me on Vista and the same thing happens on 7 too. with nothing more than Steam and FF with 20 tabs running all 4 gb of ram eventually gets eaten up. at this point just clicking on tabs or opening up a file becomes a little sluggish. if I try to run a FRAPS video it will literally just pause for a few seconds as the hard drive has to do everything. these are not problems for the first couple of hours after a reboot but will eventually happen every time. and again it has happened on every Vista and 7 install I have ever used even on completely different comps.

That's really odd. As much memory as Windows uses for caching, it shouldn't have a negative affect on performance. I'd say something besides Windows itself is causing your issues.

 

[Texashiker]

SuperFetch

Superfetch - the new name for memory hogs.

I remember AOL doing superfetch, until all of my computers memory was consumed and the system locked up.

 

[toyota]

That's really odd. As much memory as Windows uses for caching, it shouldn't have a negative affect on performance. I'd say something besides Windows itself is causing your issues.

again it did it with Vista and 7 installs on various computers so its nothing specific to my pc. I originally blamed Vista and then I thought just 2gb was the problem. the same issues still occur with 7 and 4gb.

 

[Nothinman]

again it did it with Vista and 7 installs on various computers so its nothing specific to my pc. I originally blamed Vista and then I thought just 2gb was the problem. the same issues still occur with 7 and 4gb.

I had no such issues on both of my Win7 laptops, one with 2G and a new one with 8G.

 

[toyota]

I had no such issues on both of my Win7 laptops, one with 2G and a new one with 8G.

thats what people say until I show them that theirs does the same thing. once all the memory is cached and you open a program thats not in cache it is noticeably slower. clicking on a tab or opening a program will be a little bit sluggish. I think FRAPs is the main culprit here for me though. it seems to need a lot of memory fast so when its all cached it slows down the whole pc while its accessing the hard drive.

 

[Nothinman]

thats what people say until I show them that theirs does the same thing. once all the memory is cached and you open a program thats not in cache it is noticeably slower. clicking on a tab or opening a program will be a little bit sluggish. I think FRAPs is the main culprit here for me though. it seems to need a lot of memory fast so when its all cached it slows down the whole pc while its accessing the hard drive.

Doubtful. I've got ~5.2G cached right now and it's running as fast as normal. And I've been using the thing more than normal lately because I haven't been at home much and I haven't noticed any slowdowns that I can think of.

 

[toyota]

maybe having 8gb instead of just 4 will help.

 

[Nothinman]

maybe having 8gb instead of just 4 will help.

Maybe, like I said I went from 2G to 8G. With 2G I would notice some chugging occasionally but I also tend to leave everything I use open all of the time so obviously something is going is going to be evicted from memory eventually.

 

[EddyKilowatt]

That's really odd. As much memory as Windows uses for caching, it shouldn't have a negative affect on performance. I'd say something besides Windows itself is causing your issues.

How about Firefox? Responsible for many a memory leak in the past. Close all FF windows and see if things improve.

 

[Nothinman]

How about Firefox? Responsible for many a memory leak in the past. Close all FF windows and see if things improve.

Most FF memory problems are due to 3rd party extensions. And I've had FF running for days or weeks without issue.