Report: Most Windows 7 PCs Max Out RAM, Choke

[grieve]

4 gigs of DDR2 = $80 ? why would you ever have less.

 

[C0BRA]

I have 8 gigs in mine, and like the others in this comment section, I am using NOWHERE NEAR that kind of percentage. Several other sites, are poo-pooing this report as well. I see no one else verifying this situation. Maybe they should remove the viruses they put on their machines 1st before reporting false crap like this.

I have about 46+ machines at my company all running Win 7 with 2 - 4 gigs on them, with either 32 bit, or 64 bit. NONE of them have this problem.

 

[viper_11]

I've got Win7 pro 64bit on my laptop for 3 months now.
My gpu has it's own 512DDR memory and can take up to 3GB from my system.
I have 8GB RAM never had a problem. I have never seen it above 30% usage normal use (because with Maya, Fusion, photoshop, AfterEffect, Compustion and HD content, that i am working with, RAM is never enough!!).

I only had 1 problem but I gues it's a firefox issue or a bug.
Whenever i leave firefox open for many hours downloading from rapidshare constantly i see my ram usage growing hour by hour. But again after 54hours of continuous dowloading i saw my RAM maxed out and my system lagging and it was keep lagging until i reboot!

Right now with
Firefox (10 tabs with a flash game opened and jave loaded),
uTorrent (with 30 torrents active),
gmail notifier,
Eset firewall and antivirus,
all my drivers (sound, wacom tablet, webcam, touch pad, touch buttons), 2-3 gadgets
magicISO and all the effects loaded.

It's on 19% with 1.53GB used and 6.5 available!!!
The same system with Vista 64bit was always between 1.6GB after a cold start and at 2.5/2.8GB with the apps I running right now!!!!

So I find this article at least useless. they put apples and oranges together.
1.5GB for a 64bit OS it not a lot. If you consider that it uses a lot of 32bit apps that apparently due to the emulation consume more ram (like u Torrent it never goes over 10MB in 32bit OSes but right now it is using me 21MB same for firefox it's using 160MB with 10 tabs when the same version takes 100MB with 15tabs).

So the answer to this article is YES win7 PC's max out ram the same way that 10years ago a PentiumIII with 128MB RAM was maxed out running winXP instead of win98!!!!

 

[adamwood]

Hmmm strange - did anyone bother to talk to Microsoft about the issue? If so - microsoft would tell them that Vista, and Windows 7, are designed to use MUCH more RAM than in previous versions for system cache. This is designed to speed up the system.
So, the "available" RAM figure that we all relied upon in the days of old is not actually that valid any longer. I would LOVE to hear from someone in the forum that has had Windows Vista/7 crash because it "ran out of memory"...

 

[adamwood]

According to the Computerworld report, XPnet found that 40 percent of its Windows XP machines ran into low-memory situations, while 86 percent of its Windows 7 machines are regularly consuming 90 percent to 95 percent of their available RAM.

HOWEVER - notice that they DO NOT say that the Windows 7 machines ran into the same low memory situation as an XP. The Windows 7 machines simple "consume more" - as they are designed to do - for system cache...

 

[Parsian]

I have Phenom 2 X4 810, 4 GB of DDR3 and Win 7 Pro x64, as of this moment, i have Chrome open, FireFox Open, Youtube playing HD video on another Firefox browser, OpenOffice open, 2x 2 megapixel images open, 2 .pdf open and im only consuming 40%

 

[tamalero]

Win 7 uses all that ram for precaching, if they want to do apples to apples comparision, they should turn off precaching.

 

[steiner666]

even in teh middle of GTA4 or whatever game, i never really catch windows using more than 4 out of 8GB, seems pretty reasonable to me. better it to be ram usage than more hdd accessing.

 

[marraco]

I open up to 50 parallel tabs in firefox, 4 or 5 word documents, the same number in excel, one or two autocad, Virtual XP with 2 Gb of ram, and some utilities, on a 6 Gb Win7-64 system, and I ever have 1,5/2 Gb free.

 

[wiinippongamer]

strange, i have ultimate x64 and load is only about 400mb when sitting on the desktop, i have 4gb and it rarely hits 45% usage even under heavy load.

 

[bboysil]

Windows 7 uses the memory for caching... if it needs it for something else discards it right away and uses it.

 

[porksmuggler]

Good to see THW spreading FUD. No matter, Devil Mountain Software is now a laughingstock. Hope the only official response Microsoft give's is: lol noobs

Check out the follow-up article on Computerworld /gets popcorn
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159158/Metrics_vendor_defends_Windows_7_memory_claims

 

[porksmuggler]

links not working correctly in the comment section now?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159158/Metrics_vendor_defends_Windows_7_memory_claims

 

[edilee]

I have 8 gigs of ram and I don't think Win7 has ever went past using half of it. I think their report is just more MS bashing.

 

[DiggityDoggie]

I'm back on XP-32 bit after using Win7 64-bit with 4GB for a while and I am happy. XP is better. Win7 just doesn't let me work at my full speed like XP does. Even tho only 2.75GB is showing again it still feels better. I'm not dissin win7 either I am speaking the truth from my own personal experience. Plus I have my custom PC hooked up to my tv and in Win7 when I make the switch from single to clone display it rearranges all my icons on my desktop which is annoying cause I watch movies a lot off the pc to the tv. My tv only supports 1024X768 resolution which is why all the icons get rearranged when win7 switched my monitor off to the tv, BUT in XP I can keep my monitor on and it doesn't switch resolution everytime I switch to clone mode so when I close my media player I'm back on my desktop with no messin with icons or nothin. Another thing I hate about Win7 is they removed the editing features in Sound recorder, all you can do is record and have to get a 3rd party prog. XP's sound recorder comes with everything you need and mixed with movie maker you have pretty much all the tools if you know how to use it right. Movie maker isn't even included in Win7, although you can download it as a 3rd party prog it still does not have all the options XP's version has. What happened? new things should come with the same features as the old just better along with a few new features, not take away features! LONG LIVE XP!!!!!! I can go on and on about more stuff Win7 cannot do that XP can all by it's base default self without having to look all over the place for 3rd party progs but I've said enough as it is! Now I say good day to all!

 

[victomofreality]

[citation][nom]skit75[/nom]This does not suprise me to be honest. I feel that we are missing some information though, like how many of these machines are are simply OS upgrades done on hardware purchased originally for Win XP......4-5 years ago. I'm sure most of the readers on this site know people who insist on using thier old machines to run newer operating systems/software, flat out refusing hardware upgrades that would otherwise make thier lives so much easier simply because "it works right now, why would I need new hardware".[/citation]

+1

I find it so annoying to have to remind people how slow XP was on the original recommended 128mb. They throw 7 or Vista on 1g of ram and complain that xp ran faster. Well DUH it was running on the upper echelons of the tech that it could support. Give the tech a little while to advance and you'll find the os flies.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

I'm sporting 2 GB of RAM using Win 7 64-bit. I'll upgrade to 4 GB when I NEED TO. I will admit that when I first installed Windows 7, for about a month and a half, I would have consistent memory problems and would have to reboot. Not anymore. It must've been a patch that was released. Either that, or it was because I stopped using Firefox. I think it was causing issues with Windows 7 at first. I've been using Google Chrome. I'm still waiting for a 64-bit browser that's compatible with every other site out there, though with plugins and all.

 

[kokin]

Interesting... I'm using 4GB of DDR3 RAM on Win7 Prof. 64-bit, with no applications running it usually runs 800mb-1GB of RAM, with firefox and other lightweight applications, I go up to about 1.3gb-2gb. If I game or do benchmarks, I never see it higher than 75%/3GB. No system slowdown whatsoever, so +1 for Windows 7!

 

[Guest]

1. I knew before I clicked that this was an iMarcus iYam article.
2. I have never heard of Exo.performance.network, what are their credentials?
3. MS will tell you what I already know: Windows 7 uses free ram for indexing, which speeds up load time; and swap file, like every OS on the planet. The more RAM you have, the more Windows will use. If you NEED the RAM, Windows drops the indexing and boom - instant RAM.

 

[oblivionlord]

let me also be another to contribute my ram using on Win7 x64 with 4gb ram...

1.02gb .. that's all.

That's with me optimizing the OS and running just Mirc and Firefox along with the rest of the services and drivers.

 

[kikireeki]

Well actually some win7 versions do have a problem with memory usage related to file download. There is a hidden memory consumer in the system that will progressively swallow the whole physical memory.
To test if your system is affected:
1- create a list of larg queued downloads
2- monitor your memory in task manager.
2- let your system download the files, and you will witness how each download is taking a small portion of the free ram for good.
3- eventually -after several hours or even days- you will almost ran out of memory and your system will start using the virtual memory which means serious slowdowns and lag.
- stopping the downloads or closing the download manager won't help
- no task manager can show you what is taking so much memory in detail not even ProcessExplorer

- tested on 3 systems so far two desktops and one laptop, all x64 with 4Gigs of ram. using the same widows 7 build 7600.16385

 

[gorropufia]

funny you spend a lot of money buying a lot of memory just to have it doing nothing on your computer.. awesome!

 

[oblivionlord]

"Well actually some win7 versions do have a problem with memory usage related to file download. There is a hidden memory consumer in the system that will progressively swallow the whole physical memory.
To test if your system is affected:

1- create a list of larg queued downloads"

What software are you using to download? It's not the OS.. it's the software you are using. I use Newsleecher to download from USEnet and I can download TB's without the OS using memory to any level you are making it sound like.

I don't think there was ever a time when my OS ever used any amount of large memory just for simplistic downloading.

 

[kikireeki]

What software are you using to download? It's not the OS.. it's the software you are using. I use Newsleecher to download from USEnet and I can download TB's without the OS using memory to any level you are making it sound like.

I don't think there was ever a time when my OS ever used any amount of large memory just for simplistic downloading.

I tried different types of wares FDM, FreeRapid Downloader, Utorrent. the same case with variation in time. but I have to admit that FDM was the fastest one to fill the ram!
btw non of these wares has an official support for Win7.
but if a software is the cause then shutting it down should cure the problem but it is not!
Anyway I will try Orbit Downloader and see if the problem persists.

My point is whether it is a software or not this still indicates a defection in Win7. some versions at least.

 

[Doomsy2006]

Ok so I have the originally purchased for XP Hardware running Windows 7 Ultimate right now.

Pentium 4 w/HT 3.00 32-Bit ( Showing 2.99 )
Ram : 1GB ( That's Right only 1GB )
Resources show:
Physical Memory 52% @ Total 1022 - Avail 486 - Cached 502 - Free 10
Kernal Memory @ Paged 103 - Nonpaged 22
System @ Handles 20026 - Threads 711 - Processes 55 - Commit 969/2046
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit

I have the 64-bit software too but waiting for the hardware I want before I go for the full upgrade. Oh and by the way I have been using Windows 7 since the Beta Release and it has worked fine for me. I have done a fresh Wipe and Re-Install when I got the Retail Version, and again everything seems to run better than XP ever did. Vista was never installed. I do notice a hesitation loading to the Desktop on startup but really this is just because I have old hardware and once I am in, there are very few sluggish problems. Biggest wait I have is loading Internet Explorer 8 so I just don't use it.