Vista memory use

[Peter in New Zealand]

Hello. I have Vista Home Premium on a machine with an Athlon 2.2 Ghtz CPU, 1
Gbyte of RAM, and a 256 ATI graphics card. Everything about the machine is
bog standard. My question stems from watching the little gadget on the Vista
sidebar that reads the CPU and RAM usage. The CPU gauge bounces from one end
of the scale to the other at times when the machine is real busy, and that's
good. I feel I'm getting my money's worth out of the CPU. But the RAM gauge
never, and I mean never, gets above 60%.

Now, I am the sort of person who likes to think I am getting my $ worth out
of the hardware. Am I really not using my full 1 Gbyte, or is the little
gadget really just a very approximate indicator that doesn't give a reliable
indication? Or is it just nor able to respond to the peaks of RAM use
because they come and go too fast?

I realise this is maybe a kind of tight-ass question, but I don't loose any
sleep over it. Just love to know what's really going on in there. TIA.

 

[Spirit]

Try Freemeter which is a much better indicator of CPU, RAM and
other system resources.

http://www.tiler.com/freemeter/
Free

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Mine rarely goes above 35% and I have 2gb of memory available. Personally
I'd say that unless you're seeing a performance issue of some sort that
Windows is doing what it needs to do and you're okay ... but that's just me.
;-)

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[Guest]

I too have 1Gb of DDR ram and mine sits around 45% and may go up to 65%

 

[Guest]

You are getting your money's worth. 1GiB RAM is the minimum to run Vista
Home Premium, any less and you would not have all the features of Windows
Vista such as the Aero inteface.

If the RAM meter was nearing 100% it would be a bad thing. Your computer
would be running slowly, or not at all, because it does not have sufficient
free memory to operate properly.

You will not be using all of the RAM memory all of the time. You need to
have the RAM memory available for when a program needs it.

 

[Peter in New Zealand]

You are getting your money's worth. 1GiB RAM is the minimum to run Vista
Home Premium, any less and you would not have all the features of Windows
Vista such as the Aero inteface.

If the RAM meter was nearing 100% it would be a bad thing. Your computer
would be running slowly, or not at all, because it does not have
sufficient
free memory to operate properly.

You will not be using all of the RAM memory all of the time. You need to
have the RAM memory available for when a program needs it.

Thanks for taking a moment to reply. That's reassuring for me to hear. I
have to say I am quite enjoying the "visual experience" of Vista Aero, and I
started out 'way back in the good? old Windows 3.1 days.

Looking at your "nome de post", and in view of your helpful reply, I can
only sign myself as "Arthur".

 

[Peter in New Zealand]

Try Freemeter which is a much better indicator of CPU, RAM and
other system resources.

http://www.tiler.com/freemeter/
Free

Hello. I have Vista Home Premium on a machine with an Athlon 2.2 Ghtz
CPU, 1 Gbyte of RAM, and a 256 ATI graphics card. Everything about the
machine is bog standard. My question stems from watching the little
gadget on the Vista sidebar that reads the CPU and RAM usage. The CPU
gauge bounces from one end of the scale to the other at times when the
machine is real busy, and that's good. I feel I'm getting my money's
worth out of the CPU. But the RAM gauge never, and I mean never, gets
above 60%.

Now, I am the sort of person who likes to think I am getting my $
worth out of the hardware. Am I really not using my full 1 Gbyte, or
is the little gadget really just a very approximate indicator that
doesn't give a reliable indication? Or is it just nor able to respond
to the peaks of RAM use because they come and go too fast?

I realise this is maybe a kind of tight-ass question, but I don't
loose any sleep over it. Just love to know what's really going on in
there. TIA.

Freemeter is indeed a little beauty. Basically confirms what I
suspected. That I should stop trying to be so smart and leave Vista
alone to do it's job. (grin)

Thank you for the link.

Peter