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Ram Usage Problem

Forum Index > Tech Support
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Goodseed
Profile Joined December 2010
Korea (South)270 Posts
June 09 2011 02:15 GMT
#1
Ok, I've been having trouble with the amount of ram used on my computer. Also, I dont understand where all the ram is being used from because on task manager, I've barely anything running that uses high ram.

[image loading]

If you can look, I dont have anything running high yet it says im using 30percent+ of my ram. When I play like sc2 or HoN, I go up to 80percent and it causes me lag.

I'm not an expert at computer so if someone could explain how to reduce the ram usage, it would be great!
안녕하소~
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 02:18:16
June 09 2011 02:17 GMT
#2
Are you aware that you actually are using 30% of your RAM, and that's not that unreasonable for what you have running? If you think you need more, add RAM. If you want to reduce RAM usage, use less software at once, or google the processes that are running and stop stuff that isn't important.
Goodseed
Profile Joined December 2010
Korea (South)270 Posts
June 09 2011 02:24 GMT
#3
I have a 4g ram and if you look at the picture, all the stuff that is being used is not even near 1g of ram which is 25percent.
안녕하소~
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 02:28:41
June 09 2011 02:27 GMT
#4
Those numbers are in KB. As in, multiply by 1000.

Which suddenly puts the number much higher.

Edited to sound slightly less hostile.
skyR
Profile Joined July 2009
Canada13817 Posts
June 09 2011 02:27 GMT
#5
That's just how memory is managed in Windows 7. If you don't like it, disable superfetch.
Madoga
Profile Joined January 2011
Netherlands471 Posts
June 09 2011 02:31 GMT
#6
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%
Grobyc
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
Canada18410 Posts
June 09 2011 02:32 GMT
#7
Yeah memory is managed to act as somewhat of a cache in Windows 7 by default. I have 16GB and I idle with about 3GB in usage.
If you watch Godzilla backwards it's about a benevolent lizard who helps rebuild a city and then moonwalks into the ocean.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 09 2011 02:32 GMT
#8
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.
Madoga
Profile Joined January 2011
Netherlands471 Posts
June 09 2011 03:16 GMT
#9
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 03:21:39
June 09 2011 03:20 GMT
#10
On June 09 2011 12:16 Madoga wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.


Actually that just causes Windows to freak out and freeze. HDD's are slower than RAM by roughly a metric asston. Fragmentation can also affect it, although that's unlikely unless he turned off the automatic defrags.

Basically, you're wrong.
manawah
Profile Joined May 2011
123 Posts
June 09 2011 03:42 GMT
#11
My only advice to you would be better management of what programs you have running when you startup the PC.
Use msconfig app and uncheck all the programs you don't need starting up with the PC. Lots of useless programs hide here like adobe reader helper apps and app helpers that just take up memory and wait for you to run the main app, and their only purpose is getting the program to start in 10 seconds instead of 20 or whatever.
Doesn't matter if its one program using 30% ram or 10 programs using 3% each it still adds up to the same thing.
It looks to me you also have a bunch of useless services running in the background. Companies like Adobe and Apple love to install their helpers as services also to avoid the avg. user uninstalling them since they are not always listed as user processes but rather as system ones in TM.
You need some PC spring cleaning that's all.
Madoga
Profile Joined January 2011
Netherlands471 Posts
June 09 2011 12:24 GMT
#12
On June 09 2011 12:20 JingleHell wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 12:16 Madoga wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.


Actually that just causes Windows to freak out and freeze. HDD's are slower than RAM by roughly a metric asston. Fragmentation can also affect it, although that's unlikely unless he turned off the automatic defrags.

Basically, you're wrong.


Actually no I'm not. 1. 80% ram utalization wouldnt cause sc2 to lag.
2. If he had insufficient virtual memory space for whatever reason it would allso cause sc2 to lag.

As for your 30% idle usage its normal cus windows preloads programs.
Now if you're going towards the 90% ram utalization and higher just close some stuff like forefox/torrents w/e you're doing.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 12:48:09
June 09 2011 12:37 GMT
#13
On June 09 2011 21:24 Madoga wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 12:20 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 12:16 Madoga wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.


Actually that just causes Windows to freak out and freeze. HDD's are slower than RAM by roughly a metric asston. Fragmentation can also affect it, although that's unlikely unless he turned off the automatic defrags.

Basically, you're wrong.


Actually no I'm not. 1. 80% ram utalization wouldnt cause sc2 to lag.
2. If he had insufficient virtual memory space for whatever reason it would allso cause sc2 to lag.

As for your 30% idle usage its normal cus windows preloads programs.
Now if you're going towards the 90% ram utalization and higher just close some stuff like forefox/torrents w/e you're doing.


That's a moronic blanket statement. 80% RAM usage with no multitasking wouldn't cause SC2 to lag. 80% RAM usage with heavy multitasking, even if most of the processes are background services, could.

Also, the speed of the paging HDD, which is currently an unknown, is a big variable on performance when paging.

Insufficient page file is an unlikely culprit compared to the speed of the paging file, since filling 12GB of physical and virtual memory takes a fair amount of effort, and unless he changed some settings, that's what he should have.

Windows avoids using 100% of your system memory like the plague. As a guess, it's an intentional tradeoff between slightly worse performance all the time due to swapping a little here and there and a sudden, massively noticeable dip in performance if you do use all your memory and everything suddenly needs the page file.

For the average user on Facebook and MS Word, that's a pretty logical way to go about things.

Right now, idle browsing, out of 6GB of RAM, I'm using 2GB, and 2.5GB of my page file. That wouldn't fill my memory, but Windows is still opting to do it that way, which kind of supports that line of reasoning.
Madoga
Profile Joined January 2011
Netherlands471 Posts
June 09 2011 13:12 GMT
#14
All your assuptions come from the fact that he is heavy multi tasking, who sais he is?
He just sais hes playing SC2/HoN and running firefox/vent and some other minor programs in the background. (Allso note he sais up to 80%, which means mostly below)
As for my "moronic blancket statement" thats pretty much all you can say without making illogical assumptions.
So I dont really see why you're making such a big deal of out it.
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 09 2011 13:15 GMT
#15
On June 09 2011 22:12 Madoga wrote:
All your assuptions come from the fact that he is heavy multi tasking, who sais he is?
He just sais hes playing SC2/HoN and running firefox/vent and some other minor programs in the background. (Allso note he sais up to 80%, which means mostly below)
As for my "moronic blancket statement" thats pretty much all you can say without making illogical assumptions.
So I dont really see why you're making such a big deal of out it.


Did you look at his screenshot of his resource monitor? Pretty hefty list of services, background or otherwise.

Any blanket statement is moronic, including this one.

Everything I said is actually useful, instead of just trying to argue against the most likely culprit, which is what you're doing.
xarthaz
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
1704 Posts
June 09 2011 13:22 GMT
#16
On June 09 2011 12:20 JingleHell wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 12:16 Madoga wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.


Actually that just causes Windows to freak out and freeze. HDD's are slower than RAM by roughly a metric asston. Fragmentation can also affect it, although that's unlikely unless he turned off the automatic defrags.

Basically, you're wrong.

They USED to be a lot slower than ram. But the fundamentals are no longer like this. You see, RAM bus is outside the chip, hence subject to abysmally slow speeds compared to intra-chip solutions. It also means that the speed growth of the connections is limited. And while harddrive read/write speeds are increasing EXPONENTIALLY, similarly how hard drive sizes are, the linear growth of ram speed cant keep up. So hard drives ultimately have come close to the speed of RAM read and write, only being limited by the same outside-chip fundamental problems.
Aah thats the stuff..
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 13:34:50
June 09 2011 13:31 GMT
#17
On June 09 2011 22:22 xarthaz wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 12:20 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 12:16 Madoga wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:32 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 11:31 Madoga wrote:
How does using 80% ram make you lag? there is still 20% free, thats a bit less than a gb.
Anuways, its normal, so if something is making you lag its not your ram. Unless its getting to near the 100%


80% is near enough to 100% that things are going to be bouncing in and out of the page file fairly regularly if he's multitasking, so it actually makes sense.

Paging is the devil.


I doubt it unless the harddrive he uses for his virtual memory is nearly full.


Actually that just causes Windows to freak out and freeze. HDD's are slower than RAM by roughly a metric asston. Fragmentation can also affect it, although that's unlikely unless he turned off the automatic defrags.

Basically, you're wrong.

They USED to be a lot slower than ram. But the fundamentals are no longer like this. You see, RAM bus is outside the chip, hence subject to abysmally slow speeds compared to intra-chip solutions. It also means that the speed growth of the connections is limited. And while harddrive read/write speeds are increasing EXPONENTIALLY, similarly how hard drive sizes are, the linear growth of ram speed cant keep up. So hard drives ultimately have come close to the speed of RAM read and write, only being limited by the same outside-chip fundamental problems.


Lets see. No seek times, higher bandwidth, multiple channels. Nope, RAM is still faster.

Feel free to get a system that uses nothing but a page file for memory, let me know how it does.

You going to tell me next that SSD's aren't noticeably faster than HDD's?

Basically, faster is faster is faster, and if he's relying on something slower, such as his paging file, while gaming, it can noticeably affect performance.
DooMNoThx
Profile Joined January 2011
Bulgaria185 Posts
June 09 2011 14:09 GMT
#18
why dont you just disable the paging ? and see if it helps.
Only those who can see the invisible ... can do the impossible ... NoThx's TV : http://www.twitch.tv/doomnothx
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
June 09 2011 14:17 GMT
#19
On June 09 2011 23:09 DooMNoThx wrote:
why dont you just disable the paging ? and see if it helps.


He has nowhere near enough RAM for that. Anyway, some software is designed to expect paging to be there, and will spaz out and cause various problems, including freezes, if you do that, or even if your page file is too small.

Better yet, if disabling paging causes problems, re-enabling it can cause problems too sometimes.

In Vista x64, when I learned the joys of Windows not liking disabled paging files and tried to re-enable it, I kept getting freezes, and had to reformat.
DooMNoThx
Profile Joined January 2011
Bulgaria185 Posts
June 09 2011 14:29 GMT
#20
well i have also 4gigs of ram and i never allow paging, i never had problems so i tought that would help ^^
Only those who can see the invisible ... can do the impossible ... NoThx's TV : http://www.twitch.tv/doomnothx
a176
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
Canada6688 Posts
June 09 2011 15:25 GMT
#21
On June 09 2011 23:17 JingleHell wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 23:09 DooMNoThx wrote:
why dont you just disable the paging ? and see if it helps.


He has nowhere near enough RAM for that. Anyway, some software is designed to expect paging to be there, and will spaz out and cause various problems, including freezes, if you do that, or even if your page file is too small.

Better yet, if disabling paging causes problems, re-enabling it can cause problems too sometimes.

In Vista x64, when I learned the joys of Windows not liking disabled paging files and tried to re-enable it, I kept getting freezes, and had to reformat.


I never had an issue with disabling the page file either, on my 2gb system :p Except for, you know, out-of-memory issues
starleague forever
JingleHell
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States11308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-09 15:47:22
June 09 2011 15:42 GMT
#22
On June 10 2011 00:25 a176 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 09 2011 23:17 JingleHell wrote:
On June 09 2011 23:09 DooMNoThx wrote:
why dont you just disable the paging ? and see if it helps.


He has nowhere near enough RAM for that. Anyway, some software is designed to expect paging to be there, and will spaz out and cause various problems, including freezes, if you do that, or even if your page file is too small.

Better yet, if disabling paging causes problems, re-enabling it can cause problems too sometimes.

In Vista x64, when I learned the joys of Windows not liking disabled paging files and tried to re-enable it, I kept getting freezes, and had to reformat.


I never had an issue with disabling the page file either, on my 2gb system :p Except for, you know, out-of-memory issues


Well, maybe my PC just hates me, the evidence may be anecdotal and circumstantial, but there's a decent amount of it.

There's certainly better evidence that it's a paging issue than there is that paging on an HDD is almost as fast as RAM, or whatever that one silly idea was.

Either way, I'd still put money on the OP's issue being paging speed, and all he needs to do is pretty much what's been said 3-4 times now, google processes and kill stuff he doesn't need, and deactivate stupid shit in startup manager.
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