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40% (3gb) of 8gb RAM being used by nothing- help!

C

Currymancer

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Jan 30, 2015
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so yesterday i was just using my pc normally, normal ram usage, then towards the end of the night after i closed all programs my pc was using 30-40% of my ram from nothing (nothing showing in task manager either) the highest program that was open was using 400mb. so i thought the problem would fix itself after restart, but i turn on my PC today to find out that the problem is still there- 40% of my 8gb ram being used by literally nothing. heres my task manager tab-
ram usage 40 percent.png
 
Do you use hibernate?
 
Currymancer said:
no, could that be whats causing it?
Click to expand...

I had a memory eating problem a while ago, that was because I was using hibernate.
I don't use it anymore and my memory eating problem was gone.
 
Don't worry so much, the more RAM you toss in the more Windows will load it. You actually WANT more things in memory (within reason), that's where good system response comes from. Everything that is ran (your OS, programs, games) need to run in memory. Windows 8 does a fine job of handling memory utilization.

I would be more concerned if you were using 6-7GB with just that stuff running (not including what is cached in preparation for what you normally do throughout your logged in sessions) than seeing the utilization you have now.

What do you have running right now? What starts up with your system?

I see you have at least have a dozen Chrome tabs open, those use quite a bit of memory depending on what's being ran in each tab, Skype uses memory. There is also a difference between the memory being used that you posted in your screenshot and the actual memory utilized for that process, which is going to be a larger number.

Many people worry too much about memory utilization, it is actually a good thing...I would much rather see my RAM utilized than my page file, which is so much slower even with SSD's in RAID 0 it is frustrating.

I wouldn't worry about it, I don't see any problems here. You have Windows 8.1 x64 with other programs, drivers and objects open, it's using upwards of 4GB ram. Looks fine to me in all honesty.

I have 16GB of RAM on my personal workstation at home, and with Windows, Chrome + tabs, Foobar, I'm using ~4.5GB RAM, sometimes more, sometimes less. I've chased this stuff down before, and if you are truly concerned, then we need to look and see what you're running that is bleeding into memory, it's likely not Windows, as I said before 8 handles memory very well.
 
Kursah said:
Don't worry so much, the more RAM you toss in the more Windows will load it. You actually WANT more things in memory (within reason), that's where good system response comes from. Everything that is ran (your OS, programs, games) need to run in memory. Windows 8 does a fine job of handling memory utilization.

I would be more concerned if you were using 6-7GB with just that stuff running (not including what is cached in preparation for what you normally do throughout your logged in sessions) than seeing the utilization you have now.

What do you have running right now? What starts up with your system?

I see you have at least have a dozen Chrome tabs open, those use quite a bit of memory depending on what's being ran in each tab, Skype uses memory. There is also a difference between the memory being used that you posted in your screenshot and the actual memory utilized for that process, which is going to be a larger number.

Many people worry too much about memory utilization, it is actually a good thing...I would much rather see my RAM utilized than my page file, which is so much slower even with SSD's in RAID 0 it is frustrating.

I wouldn't worry about it, I don't see any problems here. You have Windows 8.1 x64 with other programs, drivers and objects open, it's using upwards of 4GB ram. Looks fine to me in all honesty.

I have 16GB of RAM on my personal workstation at home, and with Windows, Chrome + tabs, Foobar, I'm using ~4.5GB RAM, sometimes more, sometimes less. I've chased this stuff down before, and if you are truly concerned, then we need to look and see what you're running that is bleeding into memory, it's likely not Windows, as I said before 8 handles memory very well.
Click to expand...
yeah when i play gta 5 it uses almost all my memory with another game client open, almost 7gb ram, and it lags a bit because of the insane ram usage, but im upgrading to 16gb ram in a couple days so i guess its not that big of a problem
 
well my first idea was that windows uses some caching when there is a lot of drive activity... but are you saying on a FRESH BOOT that it's 3gb usage?
 
Currymancer said:
yeah when i play gta 5 it uses almost all my memory with another game client open, almost 7gb ram, and it lags a bit because of the insane ram usage, but im upgrading to 16gb ram in a couple days so i guess its not that big of a problem
Click to expand...

It's a huge game, I would expect it to use a lot of RAM. When I run Star Citizen with my 16GB of RAM I have to close my 40+ tabs of Chrome (when I have that many open) or it'll start hitting the page file hard.

The lag isn't the insane RAM usage, it's the items in memory or going to memory being redirected to your much slower page file (area reserved on hard drive/solid state storage as a RAM store or overflow space in a sense). Upgrading to 16GB should handle the issue for you. Keep us posted though. Odds are you're fine.

If you do get concerned there are some utilities out there you can run to analyze what's going on further in depth...honestly if you're malware free and have a few programs running, odds are Windows has stuff loaded for what you are running and what you will run.

Many fail to realize, especially with Windows 8 that a fresh boot will still cause loading and caching of commonly used items into RAM, this has happened since the Vista days it's just more pronounced and efficient now. Again I wouldn't worry too much.

:toast:
 
thats pretty avg .... my system uses 2.5GB with chrome open + you are running skype and god knows what else
 
Free RAM = wasted RAM.

Every thing looks ok, especially cached part. Browser is usually the biggest hog with that many windows. But what exactly runSW executes... That's fishy.

Skype? I stopped use it as a plague just as they sold out. It has newer worked properly on any platform. I could say the same about any AV, it is more like a double edged sword.
 
chrome has its own task manager within the program itself to make it easier to see its total ram usage, start there. most of the adblockers for chrome are memory hogs as well, i moved to ublock and saved about 1GB of ram.
 
Currymancer said:
yeah when i play gta 5 it uses almost all my memory with another game client open, almost 7gb ram, and it lags a bit because of the insane ram usage, but im upgrading to 16gb ram in a couple days so i guess its not that big of a problem
Click to expand...

As others have said it's nothing to worry about and it's more of plus than a negative that the OS is using the ram of not paging, and that lag could be very well it caching to HDD.

16GB will surly help.
 
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Sysinternals RAMMap will show you where it is allocated.

Windows has alot of mecanisms regarding to RAM, most of the are less known. Most often, there is a metafile pool that is used mainly for the system file cache. It would gobble up memory in a scenario much like yours, but it would readily be handed over to other processes if need be.

If you really want to avoid the metafile, there is a registry key you can set to limit the file cache.

But all in all, it is harmless.
 
While I agree with all of the above, you should still scan for malware - just to be sure.

And your shot of Processes doesn't show much - what do you see in Resource Monitor?

And what happens after a reboot?
 
I'm considering getting 32gb kit version of my ram. I use almost all 16gb daily with the programs I use
 
End task on all the chrome and you will see it go down. Why you have many open chrome tabs it uses its own process. Also any browser add ons run without chrome even been launched.
 
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