Solved Ram performance after size increase

[staalza]

Hi,

I was wondering how RAM is utilized by the system.

I recently upgraded my DDR3 4GB Crucial Tactical Tracer 1866Mhz to 8GB.

When Running Battlefield 4 (64bit) I kept the performance tab open in task manager and noticed that the Ram usage went up to about 3.2GB of the 8GB total, and constantly hovered around that area.

The load speed only increased slightly overall as well.

I am curious how extra RAM effects PC performance, as it would appear that I am barely utilising half of my current capacity. Would there be advantages adding more RAM at all?

 

[mikeytg]

My opinion is that the RAM performance reporting is bogus. I have 6 GB, and my usage hovers around 2.5 GB all the time. I have tried starting every program I have and the RAM usage does not seem to change at all.

Maybe someone here knows of a working RAM analyzer, perhaps third party...

 

[CountMike]

Hi,

I was wondering how RAM is utilized by the system.

I recently upgraded my DDR3 4GB Crucial Tactical Tracer 1866Mhz to 8GB.

When Running Battlefield 4 (64bit) I kept the performance tab open in task manager and noticed that the Ram usage went up to about 3.2GB of the 8GB total, and constantly hovered around that area.

The load speed only increased slightly overall as well.

I am curious how extra RAM effects PC performance, as it would appear that I am barely utilising half of my current capacity. Would there be advantages adding more RAM at all?

Most probably BF4 doesn't need so much memory. If you were to use multiple programs at same time RAM usage would go up.

 

[asvent]

First things first...

RAM doesn't really improve performance so much as it helps maintain consistent performance. Maybe before the upgrade if you had a web browser open with several tabs and a couple of other things, you would start to notice some delays switching between programs where it took 2-3 seconds for the GUI of a program to show up. After the upgrade that switching is very smooth and responsive, happening instantly. It's one of those things that's difficult to describe, but as soon as you experience it you'll know exactly what it is I'm talking about.

Also, something of a little known fact is that 32-bit Windows programs can use a maximum of 2GB of RAM by default. There's a way, if the program is compiled to take advantage of it, to up that value to 3GB, but probably over 99.99% of 32-bit programs are 2GB. Doesn't really pertain to your question specifically, but odds are it will be useful to someone who reads this post now or in the future.

Now, you say you're using a 64-bit client for the game, so if that's true odds are what it's doing is loading a lot of additional data. Where before the game might have used some kind of demand loading when you started moving towards some area of the map, now the whole map is kept in memory at all times. So you'll rarely see any kind of increase if you're just measuring FPS or even subjective performance, because RAM is rarely the limiting factor in performance. What you should notice is that things seem more fluid. Maybe before there were places where the game might stutter ever so slightly while it was loading in data from some unexpected chain of events, but after the RAM upgrade that same sequence is smooth. Not faster, smoother.

 

[LMiller7]

The memory usage graph does not show full usage of RAM. It was never intended that it would.

Specifically, memory on the standby list is not shown as being used but it is by no means unused. This memory serves a dual purpose. It is fully available to any application that needs it, just like free memory. But until needed it acts as a kind of cache. Having this memory is always beneficial, but how much so depends on many factors. All memory except that labeled as"free" is being put to some useful purpose.

On my system standby memory is typically over 50% of the total. If the graph showed all usage it would be 100% or very close in many systems most of the time. This would be neither interesting or useful.

Within reasonable limits adding memory will always benefit performance. But there will always be a point of diminishing returns beyond which very little benefit will be noticed. That point depends very much on your workload. In your case I suspect you are already past that point most of the time.

Memory management in a modern operating system is far more complex than you imagine.