Re: Physical Memory/RAM
- From: "Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:36:42 -0700
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:14:00 -0700, Mary Lou <Mary
Lou@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have an HP Desktop Pavilion m8150n, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Windows Vista
Ultimate (32), 4GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS. I have
upgrade Vista with sp1.
I have been having some problems with my pc hesitating when I'm clicking on
things in a game. I have just recently upgraded my memory from 3 to 4GB,
thinking this would solve my problem. It hasn't.
Not a surprise.
When I go into the Task
Manager, it shows Physical Memory (MB) Total 3581,
That's normal. All 32-bit versions of Windows (not just XP) have a 4GB
address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can
not go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.
Cached 2730 and only 56
Free.
Also normal. Wanting to minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is
a counterproductive desire. Windows is designed to use all, or most,
of your memory, all the time, and that's good not bad. Free memory is
wasted memory. You paid for it all and shouldn't want to see any of it
wasted.
Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the
time. For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that
part for caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In
this way Windows keeps all your memory working for you all the time.
Is this my problem?
No.
I have a long list of processes and services
running
How many? Most of us do too. That's normal.
and I'm sure I don't need all of this running at the same time.
Although it's possible that you could do without some of these, in my
experience that's very seldom responsible for performance problems. It
isn't where I would start looking for problems.
Is your problem only with games? Some games? All games? Which ones? I
personally don't play computer games, so I can't be too specific, but
be aware that game performance is often constrained by your video
card's performance. It may be possible that that's your bottleneck.
This
could also be causing my problem, but not sure. I have shut down some of
these processes, but I'm not sure which ones I actually need to run the
computer.
This problem is extremely frustrating. I have 211GB free on my hard drive
and the box is checked for Index drive for faster searching. I would be happy
to provide any other information.
Anyone out there have any suggestions/advice for improving the performance
of this pc. I have defrag running on a weekly schedule
Almost certainly that's way overkill, but it's not causing your
problem.
and I run RegistryFix
Ugh! Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.
The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.
I recommend that you discontinue use of this product immediately. If
it hasn't yet caused you a problem, consider yourself lucky.
and Disk Clean every day.
Also overkill.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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