Ram usage during everyday use?

Hi guys,

Recently I've become frustrated with my computer's performance, just doing everyday tasks. I'm beginning to think I should upgrade from 4 to 8 Gb of ram to fix the problem. Out of curiosity I started monitoring my ram usage and I was wondering what were acceptable levels to maintain good performance.

Right now my ram usage is at 78%. I have Chrome open with ~ 20 tabs, Windows Live Mail, Sticky Notes, Word, Excel, Messenger, and so on (see pics).





The laptop has not been rebooted in ~ 3 weeks.

So my questions are:
1) How does ram usage affect performance?
2) What is the recommended ram usage threshold to maintain good performance?
3) Would you consider me a heavy multitasker? Would I benifit from upgrading to 8Gb?
4) How much would my used 2x2Gb sell for, anyone interested in buying them? Both modules are PC3-8500. One is from Apacer Technology, the other is OCZ model OCZ3M10662G.

Thanks,
Mat

 

1) up to 4gb, RAM helps quite a bit, after 8gb, almost nothing for performance, UNLESS you are doing CAD, photoshop, 3D animation
2) Check your total ram usage, if you're under 100% of the physical available (performance tab of task mgr), you should be fine
3) I'd say you're above average, but not high, upgrading to 8gb would be fine, as long as you're running a 64 bit OS.. (32 bit windows can't address more than 4gb), and you can do it on the cheap.. again, if you're not doing design work, or CAD, I don't know if I would go above 4gb. Another thing to keep in mind, most day to day apps and almost all games are 32 bit applications, regardless of what Windows version you have... meaning they can only access up to 2gb per process, so the jump from 4gb to 8 with regular apps, the performance increase can be hard to see...
4) No idea

 

Crap, just noticed your sig.. so Windows wise, you're good. (64 bit).

 

So you think that as long as it is under 100% there shouldnt be any effects on performance? Everything should run as quickly when the ram is 80% loaded as it does at 20%?

 

As Mikeyy00 suggests, I don't think you'll see much performance difference between 20% and 80% for normal desktop activities. Special software that's really memory hungry might be different (CAD software, video editing, etc.), but normal apps won't be affected that much. As you push towards 90% memory usage you'll probably start to notice the reduced RAM used for caching. You don't show how much swap file you've got enabled but assuming you have a reasonable amount you're probably OK.

That said, that GoodSync.exe you've got running is consuming way more memory (285MB) than a backup program should be using running in the background. Likewise, the sidebar.exe usage (158MB) seems pretty high as well.

I have to say that you keep a lot of stuff running all the time. I hope for your sake that it never blue screens!

 

Can't imagine that thing runs for 3 weeks straight...

Do you have 2 different RAM sticks from different companies in your laptop? If my memory serves me right, there might be latency issues with two unlikely pairs of different RAM sticks.

 

Interesting... By swap I assume you're refering to my pagefile.sys? It's at 5.2Gb.

GoodSync is consuming a lot indeed, and when it does sync my data (once an hour) it's often causing DPC spikes that make my audio crackle. I'm not sure whether its GoodSync itself or if something's wrong with USB transfer of large files, or if it's a combination of high CPU + HDD + USB activity all at once. I cant do without the backup software though, I'm paranoid about something happening to my data for my PhD (6 years of hard work).

The sidebar is my windows gadgets... i only had two running: weather and Sushi's Driveinfo (displays all connected storage device capacity). 158mb is alot indeed. I shut both gadgets down, re-started them and now it only uses 29mb... go figure. I guess things may get clogged after running for 3 weeks

My computer is very stable, no complaints there.

When I complain about performance issues, it's hard to describe but it seems to be related to opening/closing programs and perhaps it also has something to do with graphics performance. I'm happy with the performance when I'm doing a task for a while, but it's when I switch to doing something else that I lose my patience. For example I'll work on Matlab for a few hours, then I'll shut it down, start iTunes, start World of Warcraft and browse the web waiting for iTunes and WoW to load and it takes for ever. My web browsing is down to a crawl and both iTunes and WoW take forever to load (well over 1 minute). Then finally WoW will open, I'll log on my character, and try to fire up a podcast while the loading screen is on. It'll take 20-30 seconds for iTunes to respond and WoW will take about 4 minutes to log my character in. Then I lose patience and try to browse the web and everything's loading slow.

This seems incredibly sub-par for my specs: 3.2Ghz Quad, 4Gb DDR3, GTX260m. I did a fresh Win7 install back in november 2010 and I keep my computer clean, no garbage. My first thought was that it could be a lack of ram, but it could be something else.

 

yeah diff companies... I thought they were running at the same speed but I just checked and they dont:




Is this a big deal?

 

4GB should do you fine for 32-bit applications from the addressing point of view, e.g. there is no need to worry about trashing when using the same application for a longer time e.g. all the process pages have been loaded into the memory at startup or by demand.

Trashing happening when you switch between applications using large amounts of memory is a different story since if you want to avoid it when you switch between them you need to have both/all of them in memory.

For example, if you are at 80% RAM usage, that means you have 0.8GB free memory; if you need to load an application that requires more than 0.8GB you will end up with trashing, either immediately if swapping out some applications will free enough memory for the new application or along the way if the new application could not be loaded in memory completely at startup.

 

I think it's more feasible to have 2 of the same RAM sticks though, not of any combination.

 

Hello roymathieu,

First things first.

1. Browsers and internet sites aren't what they were back in the day. These days all browsers depending on the site/page opened up will use up a lot more memory than what was considered normal even 5 years ago. 20 tabs of Chrome will use up a lot of memory - it's still the best browser out there though IMO.

2. With 4gb of RAM and a quad core that laptop should pretty much decimate anything you throw at it, even on Windows 7.

3. I noticed you said the laptop hadn't been rebooted in a long time. That's your first duty - reboot it. The sluggishness should be gone.

4. As far as your RAM being two different ones - that shouldn't make a difference, of course if they're both good and functioning properly.

 

Wrt the number of tabs, I frequently end up with hundreds of tabs in firefox since I never click on a web hyperlink but rather use the right-click & new tab; you definitely should not worry about 20 tabs.

If you are using resource consuming 64-bit applications, even if you have a large page file, switching between them will be slow. A combination of 6GB/8GB with a SSD - for speeding up swapping in/out - will alleviate these problems.

 

i just made some further tests and I think the ram is definitely bottlenecking my system. The ram usage was at approx 80%, then I fired up WoW and it's usage slowly went up to 1.2Gb, representing more than 20% of the total available memory. However the total usage went from 80% to 90%, so other applications must have lowered their usage to let WoW grab it (is that what you call thrashing?).

So it would make sense that if WoW is drawing resources from the other programs these would become less performant. Doubling my ram should fix this right?

 

Yes, some applications may have lost some of the non-important/data pages from the memory, via page swapping.
Trashing is actually a much worse scenario, when running an application forces the OS to swap pages from the same application and this makes the application run go against its own performance/progression.

Doubling the memory will fix most current 'normal' issues similar to what you have; of course you can always start a lot of applications that eventually will bottleneck those 8GB ram.

If you don't use 64-bit applications that require 4GB+, or even 8GB, they will be able to fit entirely into memory, e.g. they will run fast if you use only that app, and application switching will be better protected against swapping/trashing.

 

The total usage may never go much above 90%, the OS needs some free space for its own health. Otherwise you may end up with a complete trashing situation, since even the OS doesn't have all of its pages in memory all the time.

 

Well, ram modules are really cheap, compared to how they were about 6 months ago..

I just went for 16GB, I'm just going to disable SSD page file and leave it all on RAM.

 

Much cheaper than it used to be, but it's still 85$ for a 8gb set that I cant spend on something else. I always want to make sure it'll be worth it before going ahead and buying something.

 

You could buy one 4GB memory stick now for a total of 6GB (non-dual channel), this way you will increase the usable RAM from ~1.2GB to ~3.2GB.

 

Pulled the trigger on this 8Gb set from Crucial @ 62.99 + shipping, pretty good deal! Newegg.ca - Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model CT2KIT51264BC1339

Now I need to sell my current set, let me know if you're interested.

@ Novah, from the day I was born, the good old rebooting trick has been used and recommended by everyone, but no one has ever provided me a good explanation of why it is good practice. What is the rationale for rebooting when performance becomes sluggish? Why does it become sluggish in the first place?!

EDIT: I think my purchase might have been the deal of the century. The item is already out of stock 6 hours after I ordered and it already went up 10$! Happy me!

 

Basically it fully clears up any memory allocated that did not deallocate correctly, resets swap space, kills all processes that might be in bad states, clears memory leaks if any (quite a few windows libraries have small leaks) clears anything thats conflicting etc etc...

 

Even if you don't have any memory leaks, there is the heap fragmentation that builds over time, especially in multi-threaded systems.

 

Wow... i received my new ram today. I can now multitask at will and never exceed 55% usage. It does make a significant difference on loading time for most applications. This further confirms that I was getting ram-starved at 4Gb. I highly recommend the upgrade to 8Gb for anyone in a situation similar to mine!

 

Pretty much this.

Once you reboot the RAM completely flushes itself out. Think of it this way, its more complex but this is the jist of it:


When you open up a program, some files are put into the RAM (typically files that the program will use often) as to speed up the process, because RAM speed is faster than your page file speed (page file is your HDD acting as RAM).

Once your RAM fills up your page file will kick in. This is not good for system performance.

So what a reboot does is flush out the RAM completely, so all those files that were there to make the programs run quicker is flushed completely.

Hope this clarifies it.

 

Well written programs don't hang in ram Also, Windows just doesn't suit staying up for long periods... The longest I have seen a windows box continuously up was around 6-7 months, I've seen linux and solaris boxes run fine being up over 2 years...

 

A good technical description of these memory problems here:
The Case of the Out of Memory BizTalk Server - Clint Huffman's Windows Troubleshooting in the Field Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Lucky you, I just pulled the trigger on 8 Gig Gskill @ Newegg............$180.00 ! Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Laptop Memory Model F2-5300CL5D-8GBSQ

8bg of ram on the way, a T9300 and an Nvidia 3700m, + Windows 7 disk,sitting in my spare room, just waiting for me to install it all..............just need to find the time now !

 

hahaha yeah DDR2 4Gb modules are pricey!

thanks for all the info guys, i'll take the time to read it when i get a minute!