Re: RAM Question

From: Alex Nichol (alexn.mvpdts_at_ntlworld.delete.com)
Date: 03/30/04 

Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 15:35:07 +0100

Tom wrote:

>I recently got my new PC and I have 2gigs of RAM on it. I noticed, after it
>finishes loading Windows, that it has already used 250mgs of RAM, this after
>clearing out my startup items. On my previous PC, I had 512megs of RAM, and
>after booting, it would only use just over 100megs.

I am very surprised that on the earlier machine it only appeared to be
using 100MB. Either you are measuring with a different tool, or were
running one of the programs that purports to 'free memory' (Don't).
Windows tries at all times to find *some* use for all of RAM, even if
trivial. This means that at the time mentioned it will still have the
code of the startup programs around - just in case they are called
again; and be caching in RAM all the files that have been accessed
during boot. I would expect that to add up to around 250MB; but it does
not prevent the RAM being instantly available when some more important
use come along. On a moderate size RAM - 256 up to around 512MB -
expect to see all of RAM in use almost always
Read more at www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm 

-- 
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K.  Alexn@mvps.D8E8L.org (remove the D8 bit)

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