Vista Ultimate x86 using 80% RAM??????

the cpu and RAM usage bar on the sidebar shows my RAM usage as 8-% even on idle stage
When Im browsing and listening to music and stuff it reaches to 90%

What in God's name is it so high????????

 

Vista pre-loads stuff into memory to reduce loading times.

 

. vista ram/processes management & usage work as designed - the best of Windows OS so far
. idle/not used ram = wasted ram
. one should only be concerned when bottlenecks in apps occur

cheers ...

 

That's why people recommend 2gb if using Vista for anything more than just very basic tasks.

 

Not neccesarily, no.
it's more to do with what qhn said.
Why would you ever want unused RAM? If applications don't need it, then why shouldn't the OS grab it for internal use?
As long as it can free up memory when other apps need it, it's not a problem. And Vista does precisely that. It uses a lot of memory when lots of memory is available. It can then cache recently used applications and other goodies, and if the system gets low on memory, it'll release (part of) the memory used for that cache.

 

Which music player are you using by the way? Cause if it's Windows Media Player, then it might explain some stuff...

 

I use AlbumPlayer

But I mean when I wanna run games and they need free RAM, since already 80% is being used, where will the games get more RAM??

 

Why don't you try and run Task Manager and see which application / service is actually using up all those RAM? You might need to get more RAM then in that case if you want to play games, especially with Vista.

Just trying to identify whether there's some drivers issues first. Cause mine shot up to 100% when playing with Windows Media Player and I've got 2Gb RAM! Sorted it out by removing 'System Sound Effects' under Sound (Control Panel) and it runs fine now at 40% or so.

 

New Vista memory management, similar to Linux's/Unix's.

This thread explains it.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=2000877&enterthread=y

 

It'll automatically dump what's currently on RAM and make room for gaming.

 

Just to make it clear:

The technology behind this 100% memory usage is called SuperFetch. Vista "learns" what you usually use and it loads it into memory before you need it. Deleting the prefetch data will cause Vista learning it again - so don't do it.

Other thing that people are mentioning is Resource Exhaustion Prevention making games for example have all resource they need at a given moment. I have witnessed the difference between starting STALKER on 1 GB and 2GB - in both cases RAM was used almost entirely (check the free Physical memory on Vista - it is usually close to zero). Vista can unload like 500Mb in a sec or two, and give it all to the game. The problem is that this particular game on Vista uses around 800 MB and 1GB is simply not enough for a normal gaming. 2gb makes things much smoother. But even with 2 GB Vista unloads huge amounts of data from memory making the game run great. You end the game, it unloads, and in a while the whole memory is full again - Vista using superfetch. I wonder if you play the game every single day - is it already loaded into ram when you turn on the comp?

According to many articles I have read both are working ok and usually bring the performance up.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

This is suppose to be one of the main features of Vista. In fact, it's one of those things that I drool over with XP (but stability trumps everything else)

 

Simple. Game goes "Give me 500MB of RAM". Vista goes "Hmm, we don't have that much free. Here, use the memory I've been keeping my cache of recently opened programs in."
Game goes "ok, thanks"

And that's all there is to it. It doesn't matter how much memory Vista uses, as long as it can release it instantly when necessary.

What you have to remember is that Vista and the game are not really "competing" for the same memory. The game asks Vista for memory when it needs it, so Vista always knows exactly what memory is used and what isn't, and when an application requests more memory, that request goes to Vista.
The game, on the other hand, only knows what Vista tells it. As long as Vista can deliver the memory it asks for, it doesn't know or care what else Vista does behind the scenes.

 

SO if I asked Vista for more memory it would give it to ME?

 

whoa that it some interesting stuff
never heard about that but it sounds like a breathtaking technology

so is it worth for me if I upgrade to 2GB RAM? Keep in mind the cost factor.
Also keep in mind that these days I'm playing STALKER, C&C3, Oblivion Elder Scrolls.

 

I have a feeling that the Ultimate version has the most memory intensive usage due to the Alero interface. The Alero eye candy is probably whats zapping the battery. I also notice the fan is max'd all the time and the laptop getting hotter than usual.

I have the Ultimate but tweaked it to performace mode with smooth edges of screen fonts as the only option. Now the fan is hardly noticeable, runs super slow and the battery lasts longer as in XP.

 

Yep. Assuming you're a program...

 

what have u tweaked??

 

tweaking it more for more performance.. I know it's insignificant but the fan isn't on all the time now as with the full Alero interface.

 

beat.up old m6805 - vista ultimate on 25gb partition (XP and Suse on others) = fan hardly goes on while surfing, music listening and some light word processing, laptop running cool

... full aero mode and no applying tweak so far

cheers ...