Windows 8: Never uses all of my memory

[whs]

Where does page file come into play ?

Virtural memory should play a part in memory usage,?

Perhaps one could speak about this RAM/pagefile relationship ?

With 4GB or more RAM, you can forget the pagefile. A 2GB file should be there but it will quasi never be used (under normal PC usage).

 

[CountMike]

Where does page file come into play ?

Virtural memory should play a part in memory usage,?

Perhaps one could speak about this RAM/pagefile relationship ?

With 4GB or more RAM, you can forget the pagefile. A 2GB file should be there but it will quasi never be used (under normal PC usage).

I found out that with 8GB I can safely turn off but keep 1 GB because some programs (like Photoshop) do insist on having some and it doesn't take too much space on disk. Widows does some righting on disk so ust turning PF off is not much of performance improvement anyway.

 

[jds63]

Where does page file come into play ?

Virtural memory should play a part in memory usage,?

Perhaps one could speak about this RAM/pagefile relationship ?

Your right David my mistake on the mention of Pagefile, Virtual memory in my post as this would use up disk space not the RAM.
As virtual memory uses disk as memory so not the issue for this OP.

 

[Barman58]

The issue of the need for a page file when you have lots of memory is a curious one, obviously from a technical point of view with 16 + GB of ram it's unlikely that it will be needed and the old rule of 150% of ram installed as the ideal for a Virtual memory store is not valid.

However, some applications are designed to run with a page File, and if there is not one available will spend memory cycles looking for the page file and can actually cause lag.

Due to this I always set a fixed page file of about 512 MB to 1 GB even with machines with plenty of RAM

 

[David Bailey]

Hre's mine---



I have about 90% free space.[on C:\]

 

[whs]

I think the minimum for the pagefile is 16MB. Some processes seem to use the pagefile mechanism for something but do not actually write to the pagefile. If you look into the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, you will see the occasional hard fault. But those are dummy page faults if you have enough RAM. Nothing goes to the actual pagefile.

 

[CountMike]

I think the minimum for the pagefile is 350GB. Some processes seem to use the pagefile mechanism for something but do not actually write to the pagefile. If you look into the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, you will see the occasional hard fault. But those are dummy page faults if you have enough RAM. Nothing goes to the actual pagefile.

View attachment 54668

I suspect you meant 350 MB ???

 

[Barman58]

I'm glad I got involved with this thread - Out of interest I checked my settings and realised when I moved my Page file off my system SSD I must have accidentally clicked on System Managed rather than my normal set and forget fixed option.

As a result the system had decided I needed to have a 48 GByte Page file!!! My system is currently idling along with about ten tabs open in Firefox plus a few background apps and is using about 10% (of 32GB), have reset to it's supposed optimum of 8Gbyte, (the Page file is on an empty 500GByte scratch drive I use for various photo editing), so no worry about space

 

[CountMike]

I'm glad I got involved with this thread - Out of interest I checked my settings and realised when I moved my Page file off my system SSD I must have accidentally clicked on System Managed rather than my normal set and forget fixed option.

As a result the system had decided I needed to have a 48 GByte Page file!!! My system is currently idling along with about ten tabs open in Firefox plus a few background apps and is using about 10% (of 32GB), have reset to it's supposed optimum of 8Gbyte, (the Page file is on an empty 500GByte scratch drive I use for various photo editing), so no worry about space

Is that on OS/2 ???? Gee I forgot I had that once.

 

[Barman58]

I did a lot of work on OS/2 and OS/2 Warp back in the day - It had a true 16 bit support when windows was still at 8 bit and was used for the real time data acquisition systems I was designing / maintaining at that time - Nice bit of kit in it's day

 

[CountMike]

I did a lot of work on OS/2 and OS/2 Warp back in the day - It had a true 16 bit support when windows was still at 8 bit and was used for the real time data acquisition systems I was designing / maintaining at that time - Nice bit of kit in it's day

Yes it was but I just didn't have enough patience or time for it back than. Warp was a bit better but than windows became mainstream and once 3.11 came out it was curtains for IBM.

 

[whs]

I suspect you meant 350 MB ???

Yeah right. It was a typo.

 

[bassfacer22]

I just got done playing Battlefield.. have 5+ tabs in firefox open.. havne't turned off my computer in days.. and been playing games, interenet.. downloading.. videos..

i bought 16gigs ram and what a waste.. all i needed was 8 maybe 12..

i have used ramdisk but i still am not happy with the result.. ofcourse i think its just buggy coding in the software i use..



and my Pagefile

 

[David Bailey]

I think the minimum for the pagefile is 350MB. Some processes seem to use the pagefile mechanism for something but do not actually write to the pagefile. If you look into the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, you will see the occasional hard fault. But those are dummy page faults if you have enough RAM. Nothing goes to the actual pagefile.

View attachment 54668

Mine says---{16 MBs}

 

[bassfacer22]

I mean you can see in my picture mine also says 16 but I clearly turned it totally off.. I've had no issues at all with no pagefile.. i've also turned off my hiberfil.sys and all that junk.. but i guess i dont sleep..

 

[liammau]

I see nothing unusual or cause for concern in either screenshot. I wouldn't change anything. It is all a matter of proper interpretation.

The 54% usage reported is rather misleading in that it doesn't account for all usage. It was never meant to. Look at the "Memory composition" display in either screenshot. The item that is second from the right is the standby list. This is not part of the 54% but is very much in use. It acts as a kind of cache and is a major contributor to overall system performance. Only the rightmost item is free and doing nothing. This is less than 1/6 of the total or about 15%. In actuality more than 10 GB is being put to a useful purpose. In a system with 12 GB RAM that is good by all normal standards.

The ideal would be zero free memory at all times. But we are not there yet. At the present time there is no OS in use that can achieve this at all times, particularly in systems with a large amount of memory. With 12 GB RAM it takes a very heavy workload to achieve this. The reason why full usage is not reported is that in systems with 4 GB and less RAM usage would approach 100% much of the time. This obviously would not be very useful. But the portion shown is by no means arbitrary but very closely defined. But it is not simple and I will not attempt to describe it.

Without much more information (which would take considerable effort to provide) there is no way to tell if the current usage is "normal". That is if "normal" has any real meaning, which I would question. There are a large number of legitimate explanations for the usage being what it is. Memory management in any modern OS is enormously complex, such that even many computer professionals do not understand even the basic concepts.

Edit: Within reasonable limits adding memory will improve performance. But there is always a point of diminishing returns where adding more memory provides little benefit. That point is heavily dependent on the workload but is typically between 4 and 8 GB. When running multiple virtual machines it can be much higher. With 4 GB RAM running even 1 modern OS in a virtual machine is constraining to either the host, client, or both. My experience tends toward the latter.

you are so professional, are you a programmer?:thumb:

 

[David Bailey]

It is better to have too much than too little.

 

[whs]

I think the minimum for the pagefile is 350MB. Some processes seem to use the pagefile mechanism for something but do not actually write to the pagefile. If you look into the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, you will see the occasional hard fault. But those are dummy page faults if you have enough RAM. Nothing goes to the actual pagefile.

View attachment 54668

Mine says---{16 MBs}

Thanks for the update. You were right. I had not looked for a long time. My num must have been from the Vista times, LOL.

 

[LMiller7]

I see nothing unusual or cause for concern in either screenshot. I wouldn't change anything. It is all a matter of proper interpretation.

The 54% usage reported is rather misleading in that it doesn't account for all usage. It was never meant to. Look at the "Memory composition" display in either screenshot. The item that is second from the right is the standby list. This is not part of the 54% but is very much in use. It acts as a kind of cache and is a major contributor to overall system performance. Only the rightmost item is free and doing nothing. This is less than 1/6 of the total or about 15%. In actuality more than 10 GB is being put to a useful purpose. In a system with 12 GB RAM that is good by all normal standards.

The ideal would be zero free memory at all times. But we are not there yet. At the present time there is no OS in use that can achieve this at all times, particularly in systems with a large amount of memory. With 12 GB RAM it takes a very heavy workload to achieve this. The reason why full usage is not reported is that in systems with 4 GB and less RAM usage would approach 100% much of the time. This obviously would not be very useful. But the portion shown is by no means arbitrary but very closely defined. But it is not simple and I will not attempt to describe it.

Without much more information (which would take considerable effort to provide) there is no way to tell if the current usage is "normal". That is if "normal" has any real meaning, which I would question. There are a large number of legitimate explanations for the usage being what it is. Memory management in any modern OS is enormously complex, such that even many computer professionals do not understand even the basic concepts.

Edit: Within reasonable limits adding memory will improve performance. But there is always a point of diminishing returns where adding more memory provides little benefit. That point is heavily dependent on the workload but is typically between 4 and 8 GB. When running multiple virtual machines it can be much higher. With 4 GB RAM running even 1 modern OS in a virtual machine is constraining to either the host, client, or both. My experience tends toward the latter.

you are so professional, are you a programmer?:thumb:

I am only an amateur programmer, but have been since the 1970's.

But memory management is a particular interest of mine and have read a great deal about it. This is more difficult than it should be because there is so much misinformation out there.

It is important to understand that hard pagefaults do not in themselves indicate pagefile access. Reads of application executable files, DLL's and most system files are initiated by hard pagefaults. Even reads of data files often start with a pagefault. Typically the large majority of hard pagefaults do not involve the pagefile at all.

In most cases the biggest issue in disabling the pagefile is the major reduction in the commit limit. Without a pagefile this will be close to RAM size and is a hard limit. When exceeded bad things will happen such as application failures, a BSOD, or worse. The limit can be reached even when there is a large amount of available or even free memory.

 

[bassfacer22]

My pagefile is completely disabled.. I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary.. but i do have 16 gigs of ram.. I just play games.. maybe thats why?

so I should turn my pagefile back on?? I only turned it off so it doesn't keep writing on my Samsung 840 EVO 250gig..