High RAM usage in Windows 8

For anyone using Windows 8, what is the typical RAM usage that you guys are getting on idle. I'm using Windows 8 64bit and on idle, my RAM usage is around 2.4GB. Is this normal or would I have to do a factory reset soon?

It's kind of strange as for some people their RAM usage is only about 1.1GB so I'm wondering if there's something on my system which is causing it to use that much. Thanks.

 

What brand and model do you have? Some companies add a lot of "bloatware" to their factory images (asus comes to mind)
You may want to do a clean install Clean Install - Windows 8 to reduce RAM usage

 

I have the Samsung Series 7 Chronos (NP700Z5C). It came with Norton Internet Security and I removed all of the Norton software but I left a Cyberlink (Power2Go 8) in case I will need it in the future.

Here are some screenshots, if they help.

View attachment 91827 View attachment 91828 View attachment 91829

 

All Adobe, Cyberlink, Realtek and powerDVD can be disabled at startup.
Nice machine BTW ! Unless you system is sluggish i would not do a clean install.

 

Under 500MB here, on several w8 laptops.

 

Mine is similar to the OP its 2.6GB

 

Active and background programs and services are most likely what are taking up so much memory. Windows 8 is slightly less resource heavy than Windows 7, which already reduced resource hogging-ness (if you will) from Windows Vista.

 

Thanks, I really love this laptop; very powerful and yet so pretty.

So disabling Adobe, Cyberlink and PowerDVD at start-up should have no negative impact on the system right? Wouldn't I need Realtek for sound or is that for something else? Thanks in advance.

 

RAM usage is in line on my X120e running W8 with what it was in W7. Do note that the more RAM you have, the more RAM programs tend to "reserve," but at no cost to performance. So if you're comparing RAM usage in a system with 8GB of RAM to a system with 2GB of RAM, it's not going to be really accurate to draw any conclusions from that.

 

Indeed, although, I have noticed that you hit a plateau at one point. There wasn't much difference in idle RAM usage between 8GB, 16GB and 32GB for me.

 

As a general rule all those mentioned startup porgams do is put an icon in the systray and/or run in the background. You will still have realtek for sound but may have to find it in programs or control panel to make changes for instance. I have all 3 you mention (win 7 versions) and all of the programs work fine.

 

Why do you have 1250MB hardware reserved?

 

32 bit os = approx 3 GB useable out of 4 installed, and the shared video memory uses 250 MB.

 

To OP as others have mostly said. Your RAM usage does not seem out of line. Midnight Sun and tijo I think hit the nail on the head. While we can argue all night about the thought "unused RAM is wasted RAM" it is at least true up to a point. And your <3GB seems right in line I would think. You have plenty of reserve. If it was even a little higher I wouldn't worry. Windows used to want to get to about 1/2 of the RAM up to the sweet spot tijo mentioned.

6730b suggestion of disabling a few processes I don't think that would free much up. Also as 6730b suggested if you are not noticing any performance issues why do?

OP you used the term idle which is vague. I associate that term more with CPU not RAM. I do so because how many applications I have open impacts RAM whether or not I am actively using or not. Also how many I had open also. This increasing RAM usage is very nice for performance as if open and in RAM or closed and still in RAM speeds up access as RAM is faster than going to the drive.

One thing you could do is look at memory usage for processes in Task Manager. See if anything is out of line.

I think you are fine good luck.

 

Actually, the best indicator of whether you're hitting the page file often or not is perfmon (which is a tad harder to find than the task manager). You can pull stats on how often you need to access data on the page file. The resource monitor has more information on memory usage per process too and that one is easily accessible.

 

Going back to the Vista days when these threads were predominate I am sure Win 8 is using the same concept.

RAM is a resource and when not used its wasted, by using more of your RAM when it is not in need by other software or programs it can help your computer use its available resources and give you better overall performance.

So the real question of if there is an issue or not is still the same as it was with Vista, is the system merely being smart enough to lease your RAM and will release it to your other software when needed, or is something actually consuming it and you check this by purposely running some tasks that need memory.

 

Sounds good to me?

Nice hat, but more important I think I agree with you overall. Don't hold back I think you are right!

 

Sorry, I guess I should have made it more clear. By idle I meant I had no active apps open, just background apps that Windows uses and Task Manager open. It's the same if I reboot and wait up to 10 mins and without opening any apps.

I just found it slightly strange as my sister's laptop which runs Windows 7 with 8GB RAM uses about 1.5GB when there is no active apps open and mine is at around 2.4GB in the same conditions (granted that they are different configurations + both systems have 64-bit version of Windows). But I thought Windows 8 uses less resources than Windows 7, I thought it would use less RAM as it can run on laptops with only 1-2GB of RAM.



As you can see from this screenshot, it seems to me that 1.7GB RAM is cached which improves performance for apps etc but is not actively in use. And 2.8GB is being actively used up but if I close IE and everything else, that only drops to 2.4GB. That's where I seem lost as I don't know if the OS is using that much as it seems a little bit excessive to me.

 

I believe you need to read this How-To thread.

 

For OP or anyone that would like to know: Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Performance Monitor (shortcut).

 

I have been doing some more research on this matter as I have found that my Non Paged Pool is 1.1GB which is quite high. I found that a lot of people with Samsung laptops have had something called IntelliMemory which used up a lot of RAM. Link

I can't find IntelliMemory on my laptop, but the non paged pool is unusually high as in the thread that I linked. It's exactly the same situation. Can someone help me identify which the non paged pool is so high?

 

Fundamentally, there should be no reason for you to start futzing around with the memory management of your system. That's what an operating system is for, among other things: To figure out how to make the best use of the memory you have. Note that this means, in particular, that memory should be used, not left sitting around empty. Unless you are seeing performance issues (which would indicate something is seriously wrong with your setup), my advice is to leave things alone.

 

EDIT: The problem seems to have gone away. I think it was the Intellimemory program, but the computer just needed to be restarted several times for the program to stop running. I also took out the memory on the board, and then plugged it back in so maybe it wasn't in very well.

I have a similar computer to the OP (Samsung Series 7 780Z5E-S01), and I am getting extremely high idle memory usage which seems to slow down the computer. I've had the computer for several days, and it's constantly hovering around 60% (see attached images). The running processes don't seem to add up to the amount of memory being used, so I'm not sure what's using it. The computer came with very little bloatware, and it should all be removed. For comparison, my 2-year-old computer with Windows 8 only uses about 20% when idle.

Someone suggested uninstalling Intellimemory which I've already done. It did drop memory usage down to 60% from 65%.

I started thinking that maybe one of my sticks was bad, but I've run the Windows 8 memory check and everything seems to be fine. System properties shows 8gb installed--so does a 3DMark11 benchmark that I ran.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Still going on? No real clear OS or memory info? Serious, this is a very dumb thread. Many have tried to explain things like unused RAM is wasted RAM. The more RAM you have the more OS might feel free to use.

Some people really lack an ability to understand how a system works and what might be benificial or not.

I did notice it was said that nothing was opened after startup so will give a little credit. But I will say that in general to comment "at idle" is just silly.

In this day and age for people to not understand is tiresome.

I want a fast CPU because I run many apps at the same time? Well that is RAM not CPU when they are just open apps currently not in use.

Good luck guys fixing a problem that is not real.

 

I'm sorry but you're saying that based on what? I know there is something definitely wrong which is why I started this thread. Cached memory is good, I know that but the problem here is not that it is being cached, but it is being used up by something, which I later found out to be driver issue for ExpressCache (for a SSD hydrid drive).

Here is the RAM used with no apps running except Task Manager, with the high RAM usage:



And here is a screenshot after I removed ExpressCache:

View attachment 92475

As you can see, the RAM usage has dropped quite a bit during the same conditions, as well as the Non Paged Pool I had before. Therefore there was a real problem which was the driver for Expresscache because when I uninstalled it, the RAM usage was what I'd expect it to be at with no apps running.

 

What is your goal? To use the least amount of RAM? I am not joking. You are not the first and you won't be the last. Wow 36% RAM usage and you worry about what. I mean it, you want to out think and so on. I can do things to get almost zero RAM.

My argument or disscussion is why do you think that is in any way advantages? It is not. The long and the short, the up and the down.

Please at least consider the concept.

 

I'm using 12% of 16 GB of ram on my M6700 Precision with Win8Pro x64; but, I have things running that I want to run in the background like Android Notifier to show incoming calls on my Nexus 4, Steam...Dashlane...Premier Color...but, it's only 12% so I don't care about it....