11gb of cached RAM mem.?

[jebbo]

Hi all, i have a problem, my system (windows 7 64)(16gb RAM) is currently using 11gb of cached memory. I have left my computer on about two days. I have a suspicion that leaving it on for a couple days that the memory would casually build up, but not to 11gb! i only have about 50mb of usable space left which leaves web browsing in the mud . is there a way to fix this? have i done something wrong? I prefer not to have to reboot in the middle of doing work etc... please help.

Thanks
Tim

 

[poweruser_24]

Thats kind of what Windows does. If your memory is not being used by applications and is available, it will slowly cache things that you frequently load. If an application actually needs some memory, then the cache will release it by dropping the oldest items, or least used items, and making the memory available.

The fact that only 50MB is usable (I assume you mean free), means that the algorithm has figured out that the app's you use do not frequently need large chunks of memory at short notice so it is happily increasing the size of the cache.

All in all, it is perfectly normal. Windows will release the cache as your applications need memory, until the point where the cache is 0 bytes, and all the memory is used for applications (usually with VMM trying to keep around 128MB free).

Think of it a different way, you have 11GB of memory which you didn't need to pay for as Windows has figured out it can use it for a large cache.