Question about RAM usage

[Dan]

I posted earlier about my attempt to add 2 more gig of ram to my newly
built pc, bringing the total to 4 gig. Several people here & elsewhere have
suggested that, except for extreme image processing, such in photoshop,
anything much above 1 gig is wasted. I'm trying to get a handle on exactly
how much ram is being used at any given moment. In task manager under
processes, at the moment under typical use I see a total of ~900K in memory
use, the top 6 listings being Nerovision (burning a DVD) 375k, Newsleecher
(dl'ing files) 122k, Nero Home (playing an AVI on a remote TV) 95k, Outlook
Express (just running in the background) 38k, an svchost service (unknown)
33k, & explorer.exe, 30k. There are 42 items in total, with the total
memory usage again being approximately 900k; though I do try to keep
unecessary background services etc to a minimum. How does this equate to
actual ram use? Is there memory usage which is not in this list, say for
basic system workings, or "reserved" somehow? System is ASUS P5B Deluxe
mobo, 4 gig Corsair pc2 5400 RAM (only showing 2.93 gig), Intel Core 2 Duo
E6600 CPU & about 1700 gig of hdd space over 6 drives (~1500 on 2x320 gig &
2x500 gig non-raided satas). The system is not unmanageable with this load,
but it is slow, slower than I would have expected with the relatively high
level of resources. If more ram is not the answer to speed here, what would
be? I know raid 0'ing the satas would speed them up, but I'm a bit
concerned about the potential data loss.

Fred

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I posted earlier about my attempt to add 2 more gig of ram to my
newly built pc, bringing the total to 4 gig. Several people here &
elsewhere have suggested that, except for extreme image processing,
such in photoshop, anything much above 1 gig is wasted. I'm trying
to get a handle on exactly how much ram is being used at any given
moment. In task manager under processes, at the moment under
typical use I see a total of ~900K in memory use, the top 6
listings being Nerovision (burning a DVD) 375k, Newsleecher (dl'ing
files) 122k, Nero Home (playing an AVI on a remote TV) 95k, Outlook
Express (just running in the background) 38k, an svchost service
(unknown) 33k, & explorer.exe, 30k. There are 42 items in total,
with the total memory usage again being approximately 900k; though
I do try to keep unecessary background services etc to a minimum. How does
this equate to actual ram use? Is there memory usage
which is not in this list, say for basic system workings, or
"reserved" somehow? System is ASUS P5B Deluxe mobo, 4 gig Corsair
pc2 5400 RAM (only showing 2.93 gig), Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU &
about 1700 gig of hdd space over 6 drives (~1500 on 2x320 gig &
2x500 gig non-raided satas). The system is not unmanageable with
this load, but it is slow, slower than I would have expected with
the relatively high level of resources. If more ram is not the
answer to speed here, what would be? I know raid 0'ing the satas
would speed them up, but I'm a bit concerned about the potential
data loss.

Use RAID 10 (Striping for performance, mirroring for redundance - reduces
you to three drives usable) - or get a better RAID card and use your 6
drives and RAID 5. (You'll lose a drive - but gaid performance and
redundancy with the least number used.)

As for the memory - look at the performance tab of Task manager.
The 'Physical Memory' Section should give you an idea of the actual memory
usage...

Windows XP handles memory quite well - up to a certain point (all versions,
the x64 not so limited).
I always just allow Windows to manage the PageFile/Virtual memory in Windows
XP.

32-bit versions of the Windows operating (Windows XP except for x64) system
can manage a maximum of 4GB of addressable memory. The 4GB is divided into
2GB for user applications and 2GB for kernel processes. This means that any
given application is restricted to 2GB of memory. The /3GB switch placed in
the boot.ini file increases the size of the user process address space from
2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1
GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers
a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to
take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be
met:

- the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4
Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server
- the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application.

However - there may be trade-offs you cannot live with when using this
switch in the boot.ini file... Like:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839490
Supposedly fixed - but...

Someone (an MVP if i remember correctly) has a great article on the /3GB
switch and/or using more than 2GB RAM in Windows XP - wish I could remember
it. Oh well... HHappy hunting for that one.. Maybe you can find it or
someone else will post it here and we'll both know!

 

[Jerry]

I found that a Google search on BOOT.INI results in many articles on the
subject.

 

[Ron Martell]

I posted earlier about my attempt to add 2 more gig of ram to my newly
built pc, bringing the total to 4 gig. Several people here & elsewhere have
suggested that, except for extreme image processing, such in photoshop,
anything much above 1 gig is wasted. I'm trying to get a handle on exactly
how much ram is being used at any given moment. In task manager under
processes, at the moment under typical use I see a total of ~900K in memory
use, the top 6 listings being Nerovision (burning a DVD) 375k, Newsleecher
(dl'ing files) 122k, Nero Home (playing an AVI on a remote TV) 95k, Outlook
Express (just running in the background) 38k, an svchost service (unknown)
33k, & explorer.exe, 30k. There are 42 items in total, with the total
memory usage again being approximately 900k; though I do try to keep
unecessary background services etc to a minimum. How does this equate to
actual ram use? Is there memory usage which is not in this list, say for
basic system workings, or "reserved" somehow? System is ASUS P5B Deluxe
mobo, 4 gig Corsair pc2 5400 RAM (only showing 2.93 gig), Intel Core 2 Duo
E6600 CPU & about 1700 gig of hdd space over 6 drives (~1500 on 2x320 gig &
2x500 gig non-raided satas). The system is not unmanageable with this load,
but it is slow, slower than I would have expected with the relatively high
level of resources. If more ram is not the answer to speed here, what would
be? I know raid 0'ing the satas would speed them up, but I'm a bit
concerned about the potential data loss.

Fred

Adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.

Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.

There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.

This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Tim Slattery]

System is ASUS P5B Deluxe
mobo, 4 gig Corsair pc2 5400 RAM (only showing 2.93 gig),

More and more people are seeing this kind of thing as RAM becomes
cheaper and more machines get outfitted with 4GB. 32-bit WinXP and the
Intel hardware it runs on has a 32-bit address space. That comes out
to 4GB, but that space must be used for more than just system RAM. See
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html for a discussion of this.

 

[Al Dykes]

Adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.

Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.

There is perfmon.exe in every version of WIndows since NT4. It can
count your pagefile activity in great detail. It's a great tool, I'm
not an expert. I've been looking for a good writeup on it on the web
and haven't found one.

Taskman can show lots of stuff. Go to View->Select Options.

I look at VM Size, Page Faults, Page Fault Deltas and CPU.

If the Page fault delta is low, at the moments you wich you had a
faster computer, you don't need any more RAM or to increase your
pagefile size (which just has to be "big enough".)

Is there a "guide" to taskman everywhere? It would shure save people
from buying too much memory or wasting disk space for page files.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I posted earlier about my attempt to add 2 more gig of ram to my
newly built pc, bringing the total to 4 gig. Several people here &
elsewhere have suggested that, except for extreme image processing,
such in photoshop, anything much above 1 gig is wasted.

I can't remember whether it was to you, but I might have one of those who
suggested that even as much as 1GB is wasted. It's a relatively rare person
who can make effective use of more than 512MB.

I'm trying
to get a handle on exactly how much ram is being used at any given
moment.

Wrong question, in my view. Windows will always try to use as much of your
RAM as it possibly can, so none of it goes completely wasted. But much of
that use can be relatively trivial and will have only a tiny effect on
performance.

What you should actually be looking at is how much page file space you are
using (actually *using*, not just allocated). If you are currently using the
page file significantly, more memory will decrease or eliminate that usage,
and improve your performance. If you are not using the page file
significantly, more memory will do nothing for you.
Go to http://billsway.com/notes_public/winxp_tweaks/ and download
WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your pagefile usage. That should give you
a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how much more.

I know raid 0'ing the satas would speed them up, but I'm a bit
concerned about the potential data loss.

Two points re RAID 0:

1. The speedup you are likely to experience will probably be small.

2. The solution to the potential data loss problem is to always be sure you
have a good backup of anything you can't afford to lose. Since that need is
always there regardless of whether or not you use RAID 0, whether you use it
not shouldn't change anything.

 

[Al Dykes]

I can't remember whether it was to you, but I might have one of those who
suggested that even as much as 1GB is wasted. It's a relatively rare person
who can make effective use of more than 512MB.

I just set up a shiny new, high-end Dell "Media Center" machine for a
friend. It has tons or processes running that I don't recognize.

When I was closing TaskManager, I think I noticed Commit Charge at
490MB, which is damn close to 512MB of physical ram. I had not yet
installed any extra software or running any applications. I'm not
really up to speed on XP memory management but I think it's a valid
measure. Tell me if I'm wrong.

He had a GB of memory. Thank Dog.

OTOH, an eMachine I set up was very basic, and had no anoying added
software. Nice.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I just set up a shiny new, high-end Dell "Media Center" machine for
a friend. It has tons or processes running that I don't recognize.

When I was closing TaskManager, I think I noticed Commit Charge at
490MB, which is damn close to 512MB of physical ram. I had not yet
installed any extra software or running any applications. I'm not
really up to speed on XP memory management but I think it's a valid
measure. Tell me if I'm wrong.

He had a GB of memory. Thank Dog.

OTOH, an eMachine I set up was very basic, and had no anoying added
software. Nice.

Look at your PHYSICAL MEMORY section of task manager instead...

I generally stay above 505000(K) in 'Commit Charge (K)' while my 'Physical
Memory (K)' (actual RAM usage - not including PageFile, etc) is leaving me
256000(K) of my 654828(K) Total. And what do I have open? Outlook, Outlook
Express, Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 2.0 and other miscellaneous (but not
intensive - mostly passive) background applications.

Page File usage generally stays above 490MB - so yeah - I probably need more
RAM.
Do I bother?
Nah - I have other systems to use when I am doing more than answering
newsgroup posts. heh

 

[Dan]

Look at your PHYSICAL MEMORY section of task manager instead...

I generally stay above 505000(K) in 'Commit Charge (K)' while my 'Physical
Memory (K)' (actual RAM usage - not including PageFile, etc) is leaving me
256000(K) of my 654828(K) Total. And what do I have open? Outlook,
Outlook Express, Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 2.0 and other miscellaneous
(but not intensive - mostly passive) background applications.

Page File usage generally stays above 490MB - so yeah - I probably need
more RAM.
Do I bother?
Nah - I have other systems to use when I am doing more than answering
newsgroup posts. heh

Thank you to everyone who replied. I can see I need to do some homework, as
I really don't have a good grip on this. I WILL be looking at the links
everyone kindly supplied. May take a moment to digest. Or 2. I got the
extra ram at newegg (where I get all my kit), which as far as I can tell
will take it back in 30 days or less.

I really, REALLY appreciate all of you sharing your hard-earned knowledge.
Probaly doesn't get said often enough ;-)

Fred

 

[Ron Martell]

There is perfmon.exe in every version of WIndows since NT4. It can
count your pagefile activity in great detail. It's a great tool, I'm
not an expert. I've been looking for a good writeup on it on the web
and haven't found one.

Taskman can show lots of stuff. Go to View->Select Options.

I look at VM Size, Page Faults, Page Fault Deltas and CPU.

If the Page fault delta is low, at the moments you wich you had a
faster computer, you don't need any more RAM or to increase your
pagefile size (which just has to be "big enough".)

Is there a "guide" to taskman everywhere? It would shure save people
from buying too much memory or wasting disk space for page files.

The problem is that none of the tools you mention provide a
measurement of just how much, if any, active memory content has been
moved from RAM to the paging file so as to allow that RAM to be used
for other, currently more important purposes.

It is the elimination or at least the reduction of this movement of
active memory content that provides the performance benefit from
adding more RAM. If nothing is being moved from RAM to the pagefile
then there can be no benefit from added RAM.

Task Manager, for instance, includes a lot of "phantom" pagefile usage
in the PF Usage value that it reports, so much so that this reported
value can often be vastly larger than the actual physical size of the
pagefile. On my own system at this moment Task Manager is reporting
PF Usage of 510 mb but my actual pagefile (c:\pagefile.sys) is only 80
mb in size. This is because Task Manager counts the unused portions
of memory allocation requests, which are mapped to the pagefile
instead of RAM, as part of the PF Usage. However they are not
relevant to the memory upgrade decision.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Al Dykes]

(e-mail address removed) (Al Dykes) wrote:



The problem is that none of the tools you mention provide a
measurement of just how much, if any, active memory content has been
moved from RAM to the paging file so as to allow that RAM to be used
for other, currently more important purposes.

IMO, the NUMBER of pages mapped into pagefile is not the right
measureof what has a performace cost. As you say, there are lots of
reasons why pages get mapped, and disk space is cheap for most of us.

The only thing that cost is ACCESSING them, which is, roughly, the
number of reads and writes on the pagefile, which perfmon can coount.

I'm still looking for a dummies guide to perfmon. It's a neat tool
that I've not learned to use to it's capability.