ASUS G1 - 46% memory usage with no windows open?!

Hello,

I purchased an Asus G1 laptop a couple months ago. I really liked the specs... Intel dual CPUs @ 2 GHz, 2 GB memory, nVidia 8600M GT video card...

It sounded fast, but the laptop isn't performing as fast as I had hoped. It has Vista Premium by the way.

I disabled some of the appearance settings, and also got rid of some startup programs (like the Outlook check mail). When I first booted this up after purchase, the system tray was so filled with junk. I cleaned that up a little. I uninstalled the Norton anti-virus and installed AVG Free.

I also used Black Viper and some other web site to get tips on disabling certain processes/services that I felt were safe to disable.

Still, the CPU or fan starts making sounds like it's doing something, but no windows are open. When I checked the task manager with NO other windows open, it showed a memory usage of 46%!!! With just this Internet Explorer open, it's showing 49% usage. The CPU usage fluctuates, but it's around 7% only.

Can someone help me get the best performance out of this laptop?

Thanks.

 

Oh, by the way, I do like playing games sometimes. I downloaded the Crysis demo, and I had to turn the graphics settings somewhat low just for it to run smoothly. Very disappointing.

 

Hi. Memory usage is normal, Vista uses a technique called prefecth / super-fetch. The memory will become free when you need it this is not performance bottleneck.

CPU usage & general slowdown:
Cause 1. Bloatware. Check my Vista optimization guide.
Cause 2. Vista settling in: indexing, learning to prefetch, windows updates & the ensuing autoconfigurations etc.

BTW, the CPU makes no sounds. The Fan on the other hand, will always run on that notebook (and on any new notebook) because new CPUs and GPUs get very hot.

 

That's Vista for you. Please look at the Vista Tweaks thread on NBR. There are other threads in the Windows OS and Software forum for additional tips, please look there!
Sometimes a quick search is faster than posting a new thread... As well check out E.B.E's Asus optimizing guide..

 

Been awhile since I have seen a person freak out over Vista memory usage Pass the word on, its normal, and your ok.

Remember ram is there to be used, unused ram is just a waist.

 

I think that´s not normal. I own the Asus C90 with 2GByte Ram and the Nvidia 8600 GT with 512 MB.

When no window is open the ram usage is on a level of 23% that´s 50% from your level. Perhaps there are too many processes running on your computer and they eat up your ram.

 

Here is a pic of the Ram-usage:

 

A fresh install of Vista with no programs installed and only updates uses about 35-40% of available memory. On my system, which is tweaked according to BlackViper's guide, uses about 46% of my available memory on a fresh restart of the system. Your numbers are fine.

If you have chkmail installed, please uninstall it. It contains a memory leak, meaning that it will slowly use more and more memory the longer your system is on. I have seen chkmail.exe hog about 350 megs of my system's memory.


When you load up Internet Explorer, the first instance of the program also loads up the phishing filter, any security protocols needed, flash, any toolbars, and any other plugins. Every new instance will not reload all the stuff again and will instead present you with a window. Thus, what happens is with 1 window of IE open, you see it use about 50 megs or so. Open another window, not tab, and you might see the iexplore.exe process jump to about 70 megs of memory usage. Over time, it will reduce down to a more reasonable amount once it figures out that iexplore.exe is already loaded.


Really, don't worry about memory usage in Vista. It uses a much much better system memory manager than the one in XP.

 

Yes there is no problems with memory usage

Crysis performances are REALLY bad, and the demo is worst. Atl east install the 169.xx drivers.

 

Yeah, using Crysis as an example for laptop performance right now isn't really fair, most laptops won't be pulling in good framerates at the highest quality settings(except for the insanely expensive and bulky Clevo's with SLi). Heck, desktops are only pulling mediocre levels except if you have a a pair of 8800 GTx(or GTs) with a quad core system.