Tool for showing physical (!) memory usage during the last hour?

[Hans Cerny]

Is there a tool which shows me the usage of physical memory over the last say 1 hour ?

After upgrading my memory from 1 GB to 2 GB I had occasionally a look into the
TaskManager. There always the "available physicall memory stays at 800 MB up to 1300 MB)
no matter what applications I currently run: VMs, graphic editors, video encoding,...

Why is most of my wonderful physical memory not used?

Maybe a smart memory tool shows that situations exists where really more that 1.2 GB
(maximum known so far) are used.

Hans

 

[PD43]

Why is most of my wonderful physical memory not used?

Simple: because it's not needed.

 

[John John (MVP)]

Is there a tool which shows me the usage of physical memory over the last say 1 hour ?

After upgrading my memory from 1 GB to 2 GB I had occasionally a look into the
TaskManager. There always the "available physicall memory stays at 800 MB up to 1300 MB)
no matter what applications I currently run: VMs, graphic editors, video encoding,...

Why is most of my wonderful physical memory not used?

Because it's not needed, you already had just about as much as you
already needed. Also, keep in mind that while the Working Sets Standby
List is actually being used (it contains data) it is nonetheless counted
as Available Memory, the data in the standby list can be zeroed out at
any time and the RAM can be made available to another process, yet if
you restart the process that owned the working set the data in the
Standby List will be available to the process again.

Description of What the Available Bytes in Task Manager Represents
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312628/en-us

Maybe a smart memory tool shows that situations exists where really more that 1.2 GB
(maximum known so far) are used.

You can monitor and log memory usage with Perfmon.

John

 

[Jim]

Is there a tool which shows me the usage of physical memory over the last
say 1 hour ?

After upgrading my memory from 1 GB to 2 GB I had occasionally a look into
the
TaskManager. There always the "available physicall memory stays at 800 MB
up to 1300 MB)
no matter what applications I currently run: VMs, graphic editors, video
encoding,...

Why is most of my wonderful physical memory not used?

Maybe a smart memory tool shows that situations exists where really more
that 1.2 GB
(maximum known so far) are used.

Hans

There may be such a tool. However, the best answer to your question is that
your workload does not need more
that what you have seen. It did need more than 1 GB though.

Jim

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Is there a tool which shows me the usage of physical memory over the last say 1 hour ?

After upgrading my memory from 1 GB to 2 GB I had occasionally a look into the
TaskManager. There always the "available physicall memory stays at 800 MB up to 1300 MB)
no matter what applications I currently run: VMs, graphic editors, video encoding,...

Why is most of my wonderful physical memory not used?

Probably because your workload doesn't require more than the 1GB you
started with.

Why did you upgrade to 2GB? Despite what you here so often, more
memory is not always better. More memory helps you only if you are
currently using the page file. How much memory you need depends on
what apps you run and how you use them, but for most people running
Windows XP, 1GB is more than enough.

 

[Gerry]

You could have installed more RAM memory than you need!

You have the wrong end of the telescope to your eye! You need to the
look at your perceived problem from another direction.

What is relevant is how much use is being made of the pagefile.

Use pagefilemon to observe what is the peak usage. Start it to run
immediately after start-up and look at the log. Pagefilemon takes
snapshots. You need to run it at the beginning of the session at then
run it again at intervals throughout the sessions. The log is Pagefile
log.txt. If you right click on the file in Windows Explorer and select
Send to, Desktop (Create Shortcut). The same applies to
XP_PageFileMon.exe.

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Note that programs using undo features, particularly those associated
with graphics and photo editing, require large amounts of memory so if
you use this type of programme check these first observing how the page
usage increases when they start and whether the usage decreases when you
close the programme.


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Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
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