Available RAM

[Guest]

Why is it that I have 2 gigs of RAM yet only 1 gig is available for use?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Why is it that I have 2 gigs of RAM yet only 1 gig is available for use?

Because you don't have any applications running to use it all.
Available (Free) RAM is wasted RAM.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Xenomorph]

Welcome to Windows Vista!

Yes, 2 Gigs of RAM or more is recommended.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Why is it that I have 2 gigs of RAM yet only 1 gig is available for use?

Vista caches a lot of stuff for speedier response, so it appears to use a
lot of RAM even though you have no applications running. When apps need the
RAM, it gets reallocated to them, so there is nothing to worry about. It is
better that Vista tried to use unused RAM to cache stuff, as it is useless
when usused.

ss.

 

[John Barnes]

Where are you getting your figure from?

 

[Verger]

Vista caches a lot of stuff for speedier response, so it appears to use a
lot of RAM even though you have no applications running. When apps need the
RAM, it gets reallocated to them, so there is nothing to worry about. It is
better that Vista tried to use unused RAM to cache stuff, as it is useless
when usused.

ss.

Can you in Vista change settings to have it use more cached space
rather than RAM? Not sure how to put the question but I guess I want
to know if you have any control over Vista's RAM usage?

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Can you in Vista change settings to have it use more cached space
rather than RAM? Not sure how to put the question but I guess I want
to know if you have any control over Vista's RAM usage?

It's probably possible somehow, but the memory management in Vista is one of
the things that is improved over XP, and it reallocates to applications when
it is needed, so I see no reason to change anything with it.

There are probably memory management programs for Vista, but they probably
make things worse.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour...T4SUNA_enGB227GB227&q=Vista+Memory+management

ss.

 

[Jim]

Can you in Vista change settings to have it use more cached space
rather than RAM? Not sure how to put the question but I guess I want
to know if you have any control over Vista's RAM usage?

--

Verger

"What are we in time going by"-- Mountain ( For Yasgur's Farm)

It caches stuff in free RAM to improve the performance of the system. If an
application comes along which needs more RAM, then
the system either deletes the cache or stores the cache on disk somewhere
(most likely the pagefile). There are only so many places
to store cached items, and RAM is by far the fastest. One use for cached
items is to avoid time consuming recovery of data from disk.
As the unused memory is available, why would the system cache such items
elsewhere?
Jim