Mem use when Idle

[Boyiee]

So I just built a new PC on vista 64bit, running 4gb of ram on a pretty good computer.

I don't use gadgets much, but I had sidebar on about a week ago and it was showing me using very low memory when idleing, around 0% even.

This week, I'm seeing even after startup, that it's using 30% or more at startup, up to 49% sometimes. Is this just vista using 2gb? I have aero off, so It's not that, but I remember reading somewhere that with vista you want 4gb of ram at least cause vista will eat up about 2gb of it by itself, is what I'm experiencing just that? Is this normal or should I run some memtests and do some CCleaner and spyware/virus scans and try to see if it's related to something else?

[Crowort]

I believe the memory usage is part of Vista's superfetch service, which basically loads programs into memory that Vista thinks you'll use. If the system needs more memory it treats the superfetch reserved memory as if it was empty, so this shouldn't be a problem. That is my understanding of it anyway, I could be wrong as I'm not an expert.

[Calina]

i was on vista from day it came out up untill 3 weeks ago and with 3gb of ram vista idled at 27-28% always

i think the gadget showing 0% may have just been an error it not updating from day i installed vista till befor i stoped using it it always idled at around 1gb of ram usage

think your current usage was always there dident go up just the gadget dident show it

[SephYuyX]

You can try using a USB flash drive with superfetch, and see if that fixes it. It should free up the RAM, but those programs that are automaticlly booted to the flash wont run as fast on the USB.

Or you could just turn it off in services.

[Boyiee]

Would turning superfetch off speed up or slow down my computer at all?

[Avanarius]

Would turning superfetch off speed up or slow down my computer at all?

in theory it would slow down opening programs apparently, but it's kind of a lol'able feature unless for whatever reason you're too impatient to wait 10 seconds at most for a normal program to open on a newer computer.

[Norellicus]

You could also turn the sidebar itself off and get another 10mb (more if you have extra widgets) back :p

[levish]

Would turning superfetch off speed up or slow down my computer at all?

it'll speed up things like opening pdf's (like 2-3 seconds instead of 5-10) unfortunately it'll eat up as much ram as you can throw at it

With it on chances are you are at 100% physical memory useage or close to it.

I personally prefer to know that my applications have as much ram available as possible rather than worry about loading pdf's 5sec faster.

[njitjk68]

I would recommend that you don't disable superfetch feature.

What it does is it uses x amount of ram to store information about frequently launched programs. This way, when you launch that program again, it will be able to open up fairly quickly.

If you happen to open up a memory intensive program, superfetch will release RAM that it is holding and let the program have access to it instead.

Since you have 4GB of RAM, there is no reason to turn it off as unused RAM is a waste.

[Boyiee]

I guess it's just weird having this new computer and seeing 30% mem use, and up to 70% with wow on, seems like I should have more memory than that but nothing is slow so I guess it's no big deal.

The sidebar came on at startup, only reason I noticed I had mem use at startup lol, it's usually off.

[Rhealana]

Even 100% memory utilization isn't a bad thing; its only when your system starts paging out memory to the swap file constantly where you should be concerned.

Like others said, unused memory is a waste.

[levish]

I would recommend that you don't disable superfetch feature.

What it does is it uses x amount of ram to store information about frequently launched programs. This way, when you launch that program again, it will be able to open up fairly quickly.

If you happen to open up a memory intensive program, superfetch will release RAM that it is holding and let the program have access to it instead.

Since you have 4GB of RAM, there is no reason to turn it off as unused RAM is a waste.

except it doesn't always work right, and if you disable it you do not need to worry if its releasing memory when you load up whatever you actually want to make use of ram

[njitjk68]

except it doesn't always work right, and if you disable it you do not need to worry if its releasing memory when you load up whatever you actually want to make use of ram

Proof that it doesn't always work the way it was intended to?

[levish]

most winxp games that I played had terrible hdd paging issues until you turned it off o_O / (particularly with 2GB of ram it was the worst but the issue could come up with 4GB and more as well).

[Reality]

Windows XP's version/implementation (or however you'd like to say it) of Prefetching is archaic compared to what they've done with it on Windows Vista

Leave it enabled, I've been running Vista since the betas, and over the course of what seems like 2 years, I've played with enabling/disabling Superfetch and from my experience, my system always runs a bit 'snappier' with it enabled

[Elesirdur]

it'll speed up things like opening pdf's (like 2-3 seconds instead of 5-10) unfortunately it'll eat up as much ram as you can throw at it

With it on chances are you are at 100% physical memory useage or close to it.

I personally prefer to know that my applications have as much ram available as possible rather than worry about loading pdf's 5sec faster.

Switching to Foxit Reader will speed up loading PDF's by that much time anyway. Adobe Reader is just horrible software.