Weird memory behaviour in Windows 7

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Batman

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#59921 15-Apr-2010 08:28

Got a win 7 64 bit and would like to report interesting memory 'leak'.

When you power it up it uses 1400mb of ram and about 30 secs into booting it drops to 900mb then plateaus at 1000mb when the HDD activity stops.

After many many days, and without any apps open (check in process manager) the resting ram has shot up to 2400mb. So i reboot at this stage.

No viruses nor trojans nor spywares.

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#318620 15-Apr-2010 08:37

some specs:
home premium
amd athlon dual core
4gb ram
8600 gt
around 20-50 sleep-wake cycles, at one stage with about 20 IE tabs open and cpu maxing out due to the IE processes!

interestingly i have a vaio laptop running same win 7 version and it's never done that vista memory leak thingy

perhaps it's due to IE? but cannot account for it as the IE's been shut down and task manager cannot account for more than 8-900mb of ram.

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freitasm

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#318621 15-Apr-2010 08:46

This is probably normal behaviour. First not all services start when the PC starts. Some have delayed start to allow for essential services to have priority.

Then the OS uses the memory as a large cache for applications using SuperFetch (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/superfetch.aspx).

With all that RAM available why not use it?

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ArcticSilver

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#318630 15-Apr-2010 09:09

freitasm summed it up in a nutshell.

Unfortunitly this is one of the things that gave Vista a bad reputation.

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#318637 15-Apr-2010 09:16

The way the new Windows uses RAM is very very different paradigm to the classic old way of MS-DOS and old Windows use them. Windows Vista and 7 use RAM as "level-4 cache" before it even touches HDD For memory page swapping.

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#318643 15-Apr-2010 09:24

ArcticSilver: freitasm summed it up in a nutshell.

Unfortunitly this is one of the things that gave Vista a bad reputation.

Wrongly gave Vista a bad reputation. People should see the RAM as a big cache. It's cheap now and much faster than a HDD. Loading up as much as possible from the HDD into RAM makes sense. Free RAM is wasted money.

If memory is needed and the program is loaded but not in use the OS frees up the space.

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ArcticSilver

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#318823 15-Apr-2010 14:42

freitasm:
ArcticSilver: freitasm summed it up in a nutshell.

Unfortunitly this is one of the things that gave Vista a bad reputation.

Wrongly gave Vista a bad reputation. People should see the RAM as a big cache. It's cheap now and much faster than a HDD. Loading up as much as possible from the HDD into RAM makes sense. Free RAM is wasted money.

If memory is needed and the program is loaded but not in use the OS frees up the space.

This is what ive told people time and time again. Most of the people just take RAM usage on face value (ie more is worse). Times have changed.

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#318845 15-Apr-2010 15:00

oops i always had the impression that ram used as superfetch cache is not displayed as 'used ram'.
for example i have 1130mb free ram, of that 971mb is used as cache, the cache is not displayed as used ram. that's how i've always thought of it anyway.

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#318882 15-Apr-2010 15:43

I see Windows only sees 3 GB on your PC. Are you running 32 bit by any chance?

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FreakyKiwi

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#318890 15-Apr-2010 15:56

From what I've seen that is normal for a 64bit windows, with 4 GB of RAM, you will only see 3-3.5 available just as you would for 32bit. Not sure why (havent bothered to be honest) but perhaps to address the larger amounts you actually need to have over 4 GB?

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#318974 15-Apr-2010 17:32

it is a 64-bit but on my vaio. already tore my hair out on this discussion http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=37&TopicId=29281 and contacted sony who refuses to provide the bios memory mapping support

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#318975 15-Apr-2010 17:34

Great. Never buy a Sony laptop again then.

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#319087 15-Apr-2010 22:13

joker97: oops i always had the impression that ram used as superfetch cache is not displayed as 'used ram'.
for example i have 1130mb free ram, of that 971mb is used as cache, the cache is not displayed as used ram. that's how i've always thought of it anyway.

That does seem quite high to be honest, my Win7 Enterprise x86 system idles at ~650MB RAM usage.

What processes are taking up the most RAM? (Processes tab > sort by mem usage)

The highest 4 on my machine are as follows:

steam.exe @ 21.708MB - Steam client
DWM.exe @ 7.216MB - Desktop Window Manager
sidebar.exe @ 7.124MB - Windows Desktop Gadgets
explorer.exe @ 6.444MB - Windows Explorer

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#319089 15-Apr-2010 22:15

If it is the factory Sony image there is probably Sony "bloatware" installed. Things like hardware monitoring software etc

Have a look at the processes, that should tell us what is using the most at idle