Vista using too much RAM?

[Solberg]

My vista is using 1.65 GB of Ram on idle. Is that normal?

[Viper007Bond]

It's Vista -- that's what it does!

But seriously, I think it caches crap to RAM to make for "faster" loads times.

[jensked]

Here's your answer:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

[Shawn]

Mine uses about 1700mb when idling with 2 or 3 things open in the taskbar. It's Vista, you gotta have lots of RAM if you want it to run decently.

[MadCow809]

about 700mb when I was on 2gb ram.

Now that I have 6gb ram, it's about 1.4gb when idling.

[yuchungman]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Mine uses about 1700mb when idling with 2 or 3 things open in the taskbar. It's Vista, you gotta have lots of RAM if you want it to run decently.

but still, most of us are using 2Gb rams only, is that sufficient?

[MadCow809]

read my above post.

Vista decides on how much memory to leech depending on the amount of your physical ram.

2gb should run Vista quite nicely, although I do recommend 4 or 6gb if you are heavy with multitasking.


Anything less than 2gb would be slow.

[Lilleput]

Another thread easily answered by Google.

[Solberg]

I'm using 6 GB, so I guess it's normal.

Thanks

[Vette Boss]

It's just how Vista works. Even when you optimise Vista, it still tries to cache as much RAM as possible.

[prizrak]

They are doing it the Linux way. It minimizes the use of a paging file in favor of RAM in order to speed it up.

[Shawn]

So supposedly Vista 32-bit can only handle 3.5gb of RAM? Before I installed SP1 the My Computer window would tell me I have 3.5gb of memory (I have 2x2gb) but when I installed SP1 it updated to show me the accurate amount of 4gb.

Do you guys know if they changed something in SP1 or if they just fixed it to be more accurate, even though you still need 64-bit if you want to use more RAM?

[prizrak]

You don't need 64bit OS to handle more than 4GB of RAM. XP and Win2K both can handle more than that, the difference is whether it is handled "natively" or not.

[der_jackal]

Originally Posted by prizrak

You don't need 64bit OS to handle more than 4GB of RAM. XP and Win2K both can handle more than that, the difference is whether it is handled "natively" or not.

Nope, another myth.

PAE is "gimped" on all non-server 32bit versions of Windows.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...78(VS.85).aspx

Originally Posted by Shawn

So supposedly Vista 32-bit can only handle 3.5gb of RAM? Before I installed SP1 the My Computer window would tell me I have 3.5gb of memory (I have 2x2gb) but when I installed SP1 it updated to show me the accurate amount of 4gb.

Do you guys know if they changed something in SP1 or if they just fixed it to be more accurate, even though you still need 64-bit if you want to use more RAM?

A fix went in to actually report the physical amount of RAM on the system rather than the addressed amount because people were constantly asking, "How come I installed 4G of RAM and Windows shows only 3.75?"

[argatoga]

Originally Posted by der_jackal

Nope, another myth.

PAE is "gimped" on all non-server 32bit versions of Windows.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...78(VS.85).aspx




A fix went in to actually report the physical amount of RAM on the system rather than the addressed amount because people were constantly asking, "How come I installed 4G of RAM and Windows shows only 3.75?"

Well that sucks, but then you can't really buy a 32bit cpu anymore and Vista 64bit, from what I have heard, is usable.

[der_jackal]

Originally Posted by argatoga

Well that sucks, but then you can't really buy a 32bit cpu anymore and Vista 64bit, from what I have heard, is usable.

Almost every Intel C2D and AMD x64 system are both x86 and x64 capable.

They're using an "extened" x86 (tagged x86-64) instruction set architecture that AMD created for their first generation AMD64 CPUs. That means they are both x86 and x64 capable. Its mode is set by the OS you install.

And I'm running Vista 64 on my primary DevBox at work....zero issues so far, even w/ Creative drivers installed

[prizrak]

Originally Posted by der_jackal

Nope, another myth.

PAE is "gimped" on all non-server 32bit versions of Windows.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...78(VS.85).aspx

Yes I was going mostly by servers as these are the only Windows machines that I really deal with from time to time. Then again my basic point was that you don't need 64bit to have more than 4GB of RAM which still holds up.

[der_jackal]

Originally Posted by prizrak

Yes I was going mostly by servers as these are the only Windows machines that I really deal with from time to time. Then again my basic point was that you don't need 64bit to have more than 4GB of RAM which still holds up.

No you just need to drop 1k on a Windows Server OS and be willing to suffer a perf hit on your dual core gaming machine to get the full 4GB of RAM addressable.