Re: Question about RAM usage
- From: Ron Martell <ron.martell@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:31:31 -0800
"Dan" <none@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I posted earlier about my attempt to add 2 more gig of ram to my newly
built pc, bringing the total to 4 gig. Several people here & elsewhere have
suggested that, except for extreme image processing, such in photoshop,
anything much above 1 gig is wasted. I'm trying to get a handle on exactly
how much ram is being used at any given moment. In task manager under
processes, at the moment under typical use I see a total of ~900K in memory
use, the top 6 listings being Nerovision (burning a DVD) 375k, Newsleecher
(dl'ing files) 122k, Nero Home (playing an AVI on a remote TV) 95k, Outlook
Express (just running in the background) 38k, an svchost service (unknown)
33k, & explorer.exe, 30k. There are 42 items in total, with the total
memory usage again being approximately 900k; though I do try to keep
unecessary background services etc to a minimum. How does this equate to
actual ram use? Is there memory usage which is not in this list, say for
basic system workings, or "reserved" somehow? System is ASUS P5B Deluxe
mobo, 4 gig Corsair pc2 5400 RAM (only showing 2.93 gig), Intel Core 2 Duo
E6600 CPU & about 1700 gig of hdd space over 6 drives (~1500 on 2x320 gig &
2x500 gig non-raided satas). The system is not unmanageable with this load,
but it is slow, slower than I would have expected with the relatively high
level of resources. If more ram is not the answer to speed here, what would
be? I know raid 0'ing the satas would speed them up, but I'm a bit
concerned about the potential data loss.
Fred
Adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.
Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.
There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/
If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.
This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.
Hope this explains the situation.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair
"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
.
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