Report: Most Windows 7 PCs Max Out RAM, Choke

[Guest]

reading the comments, i couldn't help but laugh my head off, i dont believe there are that many peeps out there who legally own a copy of cs4......

maybe this article was used to highlight something else

 

[jamjam101]

i dont know how they are getting their results, but my win7 is idling at1.36GB/4GB....and XP use to idle at even less than what they are claiming- i remember mine at like ~800MB...

 

[dbrooks08]

I think this article is BS right now after running for 3 days and many many apps ran i have 40% The most i ever saw my RAM at was 75% and that was running Crysis!

 

[keither5150]

Their findings are odd even with superfetch. I have windows 7 on 3 machines with no such usage of ram. In fact, my gaming machine had 4 file transfers between drives, antivirus scan, encoding a dvd, all this while playing Need for speed shift at it's highest settings. I can't duplicate any the bottlenecks that they speak of.

However I have 12 gigs @ 1600Mhz

Even my wife's laptop never runs more than 50% with 3 gigs of ddr 2.

My main HTPC runs fine on 4 gigs of ddr2.

I call shananagans on this one. What is XPnet pushing anyways?

Their article and findings have motive.

Just because an OS makes better use of the ram does not mean that there are bottlenecks.

 

[matt87_50]

if they... say so...

I have been using the RC and now the retail copy, have had no problems with my 6 gig of ram, and certainly had no problems like these on my old 2GB amd64 939 machine either.

the operating system should be using all the ram, using all free ram to cache files for instance, otherwise its just going to waste! are they saying that simply having ram "filled" causes slow down??? really?? sounds like a hardware problem to me.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I am a tad suprised at two things:

1. That the guys doing this are unfamiliar with SuperFetch.

2. That THG would post this without acknowledging SuperFetch.

SuperFetch has been known since Vista. Its nice to have it utilizing the free RAM the system has to load frequently used programs. If you do not like it you can disable it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/superfetch.aspx

Thats just the basic info from Microsoft, Marcus you could use it for the article.

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1048

They say no, but I find it helps to load games faster for me so maybe its been enhanced in Windows 7?

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/disable-windows-7-superfetch/

Just IF you want to disable it. In most cases of people who have 4GB or more, that wont be necessary.

And I like this one:

http://www.osnews.com/story/21471/SuperFetch_How_it_Works_Myths

Look at that. I could have had a article to go showing that the guys at XPNet are just not up to date......

 

[macclearly]

I have a laptop with Win7 home Premium x32 w/3gigs and a system with Ultimate x64 w/4. The laptop used to have Vista, but was sold with the upgrade promise (or I wouldn't have bought it) and when running Vista it ran against the ram wall all the time. With 7 it usually is just over 2gigs and that is using it the exact same way. I couldn't be more happy with moving to 7. As far as my main system??? It actually uses less ram. I usually don't see more than half being used at any one time outside of when I am playing a game with firefox (total memory pig) running and bitcomet all at the same time. Still have not seen any performance issues and I think XPnet is way out to lunch.

 

[Guest]

Memory unused is memory wasted.

Most of this memory consumption is file cache, which the OS can discard and reuse for applications at a moment's notice. Compared to NT/2000/XP, Vista/7 will more proactively fill the file cache and therefore waste LESS memory.

The only real measure whether a computer chokes on memory is to look at "hard page faults" during typical usage patterns.

 

[nebun]

ha ha ha, i remember a while back tom did a test and said that anything over 4gb of ram is a waste, i guess not, lol. i will stick with my 12gb and 64bit OS. this is just too funny. more applications are taking advantage of the larger ram and 64bit OS, maybe TOM's should update the article, lol

 

[intesx]

I'm sorry... but O.M.F.G. why are we still talking about this? It's been a well known, established fact that a considerable amount of the memory used on a Windows Vista/7 system at idle is SuperFetch cache data.

When there is memory available and the system is essentially idle SuperFetch loads frequently used programs in the background so when you go to use them, they load considerably faster. This technology has been expanded in Vista/7 over the old prefetch technology from Windows XP.

This is why Vista/7 users will see their "free" memory at deceptively low levels. However, they also see the "cached" memory which is technically free memory, being put to good use, that will be vacated immediately if necessary.

 

[evmannnn]

I don't notice any slow-downs.... Windows 7 64bit with firefox and utorrent open using only 1.28GB..... not 3.3....

 

[Supertrek32]

Okay... how did they possibly come up with those numbers?

Windows 7 Pro x64, 3GB RAM.

Running:
Chrome, 4 tabs
Media Player 12 (x64 version), 1080p .mkv file
Gimp (x64), rendering 2000x2000 Nature>Flame
Vuse (x86)
AIM, 2 Convos+buddy list
Also had F@H CPU+GPU in the task bar, though I doubt they were running (and I forgot to check).

All programs were at least partially visible.

Keeping my eye on the task manager, my physical memory usage average 80%, maxed at 87%. The render was noticeably slower, but all other programs were working beautifully.

My 3GB is below their average Windows 7 RAM amounts. Who the heck did they survey for their numbers?

 

[Guest]

I ran Win 7 32x on my aging desktop with 2 Gigs of DDR. It idled at about 700-800 MB used. That would approximately double with a couple programs running. I never experienced a slowdown that affected performance. These guys must be running on 1 Gig or have Ram-Heavy programs going all at once.

 

[neonneophyte]

dishonest report is dishonest.

 

[alpine18]

More proof that most of the "experts" quoted in stories are just people trying to say something flammitory so they can get quoted in a story to drive traffic to their websites.

 

[Goro]

I've posted before and now that I'm home I was testing and I call total BS.

I have Photoshop,Fireworks,Adobe Reader, Malwarebytes (scanning), PowerISO, Media Player, ATI Catalyst, Chrome with 9 tabs, IE with 6 tabs, Java API,CoD, and some other stuff open and I'm at 47% 2.84Gigs use out of 6Gigs

 

[bakaneko]

I have 8GB of ram and the only time i see it being used above 50% is when i am running multiple VMs and doing disk scans.

I am now trying to figure how to utilize them better because i have NOT paid for the rams to be un-utilized.

XPNet failed to provide insights on what software might be running on those affected PCs. which makes the report not credible.

 

[rantoc]

I doubt that Win7 really uses all that ram beside caches (superfecth ect) wich are benificial and even scale down when programs need the space. I rather have my mem used for caches than beeing free doing nothing but then again the so called experts might disagree not understanding the nature of it....

 

[reasonablevoice]

These idiots are acting like the disk content that Windows 7 caches is actually using memory, when it is just sitting there in case it is used, if an application needs that ram windows makes it available nearly instantly.

These people are either very stupid or intentionally misrepresenting Windows 7 memory usage.

Either way, IDIOTS.

 

[logan the huge]

[citation][nom]warezme[/nom]RAM is dirt cheap, at least the cheap RAM is...., no excuse not to get the most possible.I have 12GB on my i7 machine and 8GB on my laptop... BAM![/citation]
Apparently, you have been living under a rock for the past 5-6 months.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Interesting.... 28% RAM usage of 12GB on my desktop, and 33% of 4GB on my laptop. I'd love to see some specs on the machines that they got their numbers from. After reading the Computerworld article, I had to get up and walk away from my computer to stop the laughter-induced pain. The article is a joke, and Gregg Keizer should be fired immediately.

 

[doomtomb]

I have 4GB of RAM and I think that's plenty. I laugh every time a consumer asks me how much RAM a computer has as if that is any indication of performance. You can have 60GB of RAM but still have a slow machine if your processor, CPU, or RAM are slow.

 

[RogerDeath]

I've let my computer run 24/7 for two weeks now (running Folding@Home when not in use for gaming) and even with F@H the current RAM usage is 1.77GB. What are these people doing that causes this average 3.33GB to be used up?
FYI I use 7 x64 so that may have an effect (6GB)

 

[anamaniac]

36% being used right now. Varies from 25% to 40%.
I have 4GB (6GB actually, but one DIMM is unstable).

Maybe people just need to stop installing every single program they can think of. On one of my neighbours computers, and it takes 15 minutes to start up because its startup list contains more programs than my terabyte drive has gigs...
I generally leave my PC on for a week to a month at a time too...

 

[RogerDeath]

I guess that I should specify that I've got the GPU and SMP clients going right now. Steam running in the background and my two Chrome tabs. I don't think I see more then 50% during any of my gaming sessions!